Reflection on the Readings at Mass for the Second Sunday of Lent – Year A. The Liturgical Sense of the Scriptures Podcast, by Catholic Author and Theologian David L. Gray.
The Liturgy Wants to Make us Uncomfortably Comfortable
Cooperating with God always sounds like a grand idea and a wonderful way to live one’s life; that is until God asks us to do something difficult or something that is contrary to how we thought our lives was going to play out. Cooperating with God and His grace is always easy for us to do, until cooperating with God makes us uncomfortable.
What I always loved about this First Reading for the Second Sunday of Lent – Year A from Genesis 12:1-4, is how magnanimous God is with His blessings of Abram. He asked Abram to do one thing, which was not a simple ask, saying, “Go forth from the land of your kinsfolk and from your father’s house to a land that I will show you.” I think for most people, especially in a time before moving vans, packers, and storage pods, moving when it is something you had planned to do, is difficult enough, but being called to move; suggestively evicted, in a sense, by God is even more challenging. We cannot discount how comfortable Abram’s life must have been. He was living in the home he had grown up in, surrounded by family, he was already married to Sarai, and he had his brother’s son Lot with them. Not only that, but Genesis 12:5 informs us that they had accumulated many possessions and even “persons they had acquired from Haran.” So, there is a lot going on in Abram’s life and he does not know anything about this place where God is sending him, but this is what he does know, and this is where it gets good. Here, God establishes a promissory covenant with Abram; saying if you do this one thing that I am asking of you, I’ll do two things for you and two things for those who receive you. And what I love about this promissory covenant is how personal God makes it; pointing to Himself, saying, “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.” So, that is two blessings for Abram if he uproots his life and go to some unknown country, and then God says, “I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you. All the communities of the earth shall find blessing in you.” Then the text says, “Abram went as the LORD directed him.”
We do not always live along enough to witness all of God’s blessings for us, but when we love God, we cooperate with God, and as the Second Reading from Second Timothy 1:8-10 reminds us today; we are cooperating with God and His grace to save us and make us holy, “not according to our works but according to his own design and the grace bestowed on us in Christ Jesus before time began, but now made manifest through the appearance of our savior Christ Jesus.” In saying, “made manifest,” the Apostle Paul is referencing the life of Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah, the Son of Man who walked with us, but this phrase is also an idiom for the Holy Eucharist, Jesus Christ, who is made manifest through His appearance as bread and wine. Therefore, as long as we are being obedient to God, we will be given whatever strength and help we need to endure whatever hardships that comes along with calling. And we invoke this guarantee from God whenever we pray, asking Him for our daily bread.
In today’s Gospel Reading from Matthew 17:1-9, the Transfiguration becomes part of our Lenten journey this season. “Jesus took Peter, James, and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. And he was transfigured before them; his face shone like the sun and his clothes became white as light. And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them, conversing with him. Then Peter said to Jesus in reply, “Lord, it is good that we are here. If you wish, I will make three tents here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” Simon Cephas response to this incredible consolation and blessing he, James, and John received, is the best example of the human tendency to always desire comfort. No matter what is going on around us, we just want to make ourselves and those close to us comfortable, but that is not the theme of today’s readings. Lent is a time to remember that God is constantly pushing us out of our comfortable little spaces and into a liturgy of discipleship, which will be very uncomfortable at times. Such as here when Simon Cephas was still talking and a bright cloud cast a shadow over them, then from the cloud came a voice that said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.” When the disciples heard this, they fell prostrate and were very much afraid.”
In processing us through salvation history; from creation to the cross, and by calling us to stand and sit and knell, not when we desire to, but when the liturgical calls us all to stand, sit and knell, and to pray and confess, pray and confess, not our own words, but what the liturgy call us all to pray and confess, the liturgy wants to make us uncomfortable in our own space and thoughts, so that we might become more comfortable in God’s space and in His desires, so that we might become more uncomfortable following our own desires, and become more comfortable in cooperating with God.
Moreover, processing us through the entire liturgical calendar, from Advent to Ordinary Time to Lent, to Easter, to Pentecost and back to Ordinary Time Again, the liturgy is reminding that we are mere pilgrims who are carrying our cross to calvary. We are a nomadic people, traveling through deserts and valleys on our way to our inheritance. The closer we get to home, the more uncomfortable we are in the world and the longer we travel, the less baggage from the world we are deciding to carry with us.
This is just one way how the readings at Mass this Sunday connect to the liturgy and how the liturgy is forming us how to live our lives in the world. Be in the world what you have received through the liturgy.
