Journeys are an ordinary part of life today as well as a thread through history.
Literature and religion often describe life as a journey, not a destination. Today’s readings offer three valuable commentaries that help us understand our lives as a journey.
Abraham, at 75, is told by God in today’s first reading to go on a journey that would unfold before him. Abraham was not given a destination, nor even a suggested itinerary. He and his family were simply told to “go to the land that I will show you.” What Abraham did would be called foolhardy by some. The proposed journey was daring, with the unexpected, the risky, the potentially dangerous.
Abraham did more than take a risk. He accepted God’s call to an intimate relationship. The attitude that Abraham most needed to exercise is trust, for the circumstances of the journey would be unclear and difficult. Fear could have paralyzed Abraham, but it didn’t.
With Abraham in mind, I can’t help thinking of today’s people, on migration, moving across waters and continents, not knowing what is ahead. Even people who are forced into career changes or are compelled by natural disasters to move have to trust. Abraham could well be the patron saint of and model for all who experience unwanted, unanticipated change. Can we trust God as Abraham did when our journey takes a detour?
In the second reading, Paul reminds Timothy that the journey through life does not end in death. God has robbed death of its power, Paul says. Christ has revealed that death is the entrance into fullness of life. When we are healthy or young, we tend to shut out thoughts of our own death. Then when illness is upon us, we think of death with fear and anxiety. It takes great faith in Christ’s resurrection to internalize the belief that in death, life is changed, not ended. It is not morbid to begin thinking this way now. It puts our journey into perspective.
Our Gospel today is the Transfiguration – the account of a moment in the journey of Christ and three of his disciples – a glimpse of the big picture, a hint of the glory to come. In the Transfiguration, Jesus was revealed as the Holy One, resplendent in glory. But something happened to the disciples as well. They could see Christ more clearly. Their perception became at once more acute and bigger.
But the account of the Transfiguration is sandwiched in between some painful realizations in the relationship between Jesus and His disciples. Just before the mountaintop experience came the first prophecy of Jesus’ passion and the call to embrace the cross as a condition for following Christ. And as soon as the group came down from Mt. Tabor, the tempo of responding to human need picked up again. There was also a second prophecy of the passion and the disciples argued about who was the greatest among them.
Lent, if you will, is a moment in life’s journey in which the meaning of Jesus and the meaning of our own discipleship can be seen with greater clarity.
Lent is a time to face the truth about us and our Christ. It is a six-week school of discipleship when we pause to rest in God on some mountaintop of our journey – to see and embrace more deeply the Lord who accompanies us on the way.
On the far side of Lent will still be an uncompromising world. We will still experience brokenness, contradiction and conflict, the barrenness of human promise. But on the other side of Lent and Holy Week is Easter – the confirmation of all we hope to embrace and become on the journey we call life. That’s where Lent is leading us.
~Sister Joan Sobala
