SECOND SUNDAY OF LENT - FEBRUARY 25, 2024

SECOND SUNDAY OF LENT

Dualism has played a central role in the expression of religion since the beginning of human history. It seems to be ingrained within us to identify things either as belonging to ourselves or as things to which we belong, or as that which is outside of ourselves. We also tend to assign positive attributes to that with which we identify and negative attributes to that with which we do not. Life and Death, Good and Evil, Light and Darkness, etc. But there also seems to be a dualistic approach to the distinction between body and soul, where we consider the soul to be good and holy, and the body corrupt and predestined for evil. The very existence of Jesus Christ, and the fact that God chose to give Himself a body, ought to correct this misconception. The body is good and holy, we corrupted it, and now God offers to transfigure it for us.

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READ THIS SUNDAY'S MESSAGE

The sanctity of the human body goes beyond Christ; within the story of Israel, there were plenty of prefigurements for the Incarnation. Consider this Sunday’s first reading, the well known story of the sacrifice of Isaac. We know that this story is meant to be a clear and obvious prefiguring of the person of Jesus Christ and his sacrifice on the cross: we have a human sacrifice taking place on wood, a father offering his son as that sacrifice, the one to be sacrificed carrying his wood up to the site of his sacrifice, the actual sacrifice of a ram being caught in a thicket like Christ wore the crown of thorns, etc. The initial approach to this scene might be the thought, why in the world would God ask Abraham to sacrifice his son, for whom he waited so long? In reality, the answer to that question is obvious: the religions of the time were incredibly familiar with human sacrifice, and the more difficult it was to offer someone, the more pious the sacrifice was considered. The only reason why we are appalled at the fact that Abraham would be willing to sacrifice his son is because at this moment, God avowed to His people that He does not desire human sacrifice. There is something precious about the human body that God desires to protect. We are told in the Church that Jesus Christ was like us in all things but sin; this means he still suffered the consequences of others’ sins. He was in pain, he hungered, he thirsted, he mourned, he was angry. And God desired for it to be so; if He were to come among us and not experience any of the trials and obstacles that have become typical of the human experience, he would not have been in true solidarity with His people, which was His goal from the very moment we first sinned. But through the trials and obstacles, through the pain, hunger, thirst, mourning, and anger, He offers us a way out. First it was through His own sacrifice, a Father who did not spare His own Son. Then, His resurrection, a fulfillment of the potential of the human body. Now, we can do it in our own sacrifices, especially those bodily sacrifices we focus on in Lent.

This Sunday’s Gospel speaks of the scene of the Transfiguration, when Christ’s body literally changed its figure, not its essence, to show a glimpse of what was to come. What was to come was not an exclusive Resurrection for Christ because of his divinity. The Transfiguration is a glimpse of what our own bodies are capable of undergoing - to be sanctified and to be so holy, it cannot separate from our souls. As St. Mary of the Assumption, our parish is founded upon the hope that we may all one day have our sanctified souls be reunited with our sanctified bodies, just as Mary did. Mary was a human. Moses and Elijah were human. Christ was human. They all had bodies, and used those bodies to serve God, not to be vehicles for sin. We do this by listening to Christ, just as his Father commanded us to do as we witnessed his transfigured body.