This is the vigil mass for the second Sunday in Lent. The preface and the Gospel are on the transfiguration of our Lord in His glory on the mountain. The theme of the scripture is that God in His love for man, even though he had fallen from grace, wanted him to be saved as he had made man for Himself. There is no happiness, no life, nothing of any lasting value away from and outside of God. The greatest sin is pride and it is pride that keeps us from turning our lives over to God and imploring His help.
In the first reading from Genesis, we see God choosing Abram in the little town of Ur and making a covenant with him to make of his descendents a great nation through whom would be brought forth God’s plan of salvation. The Old Testament – salvation history- the great act of Abram that made what followed possible was faith. “Abram put his faith in the Lord” and humbly followed Him wherever He led.
In the Psalm prayer we say, “The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom should I fear?” Salvation history from Abram to Christ the culmination of God’s plan spans nineteen hundred years. Through slavery in Egypt, the Exodus, the Passover, wondering in the desert, the giving of the law to Moses on Mt Sinai, to Jerusalem and the great kings and the temple, to decline and captivity which came out of disunity, to finally occupation by the Greeks and the Romans. The Jews would go over to other gods and would be back sliders from God’s law, the constant struggle between the goods of the temporal order and the demands of God’s commandments. “You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of Good and evil, for you will most surely die.”
There were three Major Prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel who foretold the Advent of the figure of the Messiah plus the Book of the Prophet Daniel and the figure of Elijah. That people began to look for and anticipate the coming of the Messiah.
In the 7th chapter of Isaiah we read, ‘The virgin shall be with child and shall bear a son whom she will call “Immanuel”.’ Immanuel means “God is with us.”
Christ was born. God the Father of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob sent his only Son who took on our flesh and born of woman came to die as man and God to take upon Himself all the sins of men no matter how terrible in effect to become sin. So that if we accepted Him, believed in Him, and were baptized into Him, we will have eternal life. What a plan! What a gift! What a sacrifice of love! All man had to do was to have faith and obey and to love. He would not have to do these things alone. However, for God’s grace would be with him.
But the same age old problem existed, the struggle between good and evil, between the temporal and the eternal.
Before we move on there is one other element of history that must be spoken of.
The Greeks who preceded the Romans had a highly developed democratized society. In the 4th century B.C. there appeared three great men in close succession who were seekers of wisdom, Sophia, Philosophers, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. These men discovered many things about reality and truth. Their writings are still in existence. They are important because, as the Catholic Church which is the person of Christ gives us revelation which is God’s word, the word which is also Christ, in which we have faith, the faith of Abraham, the philosopher of the Greek 4th century B.C. give us the basis of reason the results of sound reasoning.
God has given us free will and reason the basis for finding the God of revelation.
As the one, holy catholic and apostolic church developed and grew great theologians who were great philosophers came forth, St. Augustine in the 4th century based his theory on Plato and in the 14th century St. Thomas Aquinas formed his on Aristotle.
And so we have the inviolable word of God in revelation, the birth, life and death of Christ the Son of God and the development of western civilization. This could not have come about without the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church as its foundation. That church is the person of Christ who is the way, the truth and the life without whom one does not come to the Father. And Peter is Christ’s vicar on earth for all time. He has the keys to the kingdom of heaven, to lose and to bind, and to forgive man’s sins. “Whatsoever you shall loose on earth, shall be loosed in Heaven. And whatsoever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven.”
The connecting link between the Old Testament and the New and everlasting covenant is the Passover - The sacrifice of a one year old unblemished male lamb and the affixing of its blood to the doorposts of the houses of the Jews and the eating of its flesh, as a prelude for the freedom from slavery in Egypt via the Exodus.
This is the meaning of the passion and death of the Son of God, Jesus the Christ, the Lamb of God, as a price for the forgiveness of man’s sins. Jesus hence rose from the dead on the third day and ascended into heaven where he intercedes for each one of us “Through his stripes we were healed.”
This time of Lent is penitential – a time to walk with Christ in the dessert for forty days, a time to reevaluate our lives and to look deeply into ourselves to again find the ways to become all His, for there is no happiness, no life, nothing of lasting value away from and outside of God. Through the sacraments of Christ in His church we find strength for the age old struggle between good and evil, the struggle between the earthly and the heavenly.
This is why we should let ourselves be transformed by the transfiguration of Christ on the mountain. In the Gospel, we see the apprehensive Jesus ascending Mt. Tabor with His three closest disciples to pray. This was in anticipation of His ascending Mt. Calvary. They were joined by Moses representing the old law and Elijah the prophets. They came in glory “to speak of His Exodus that he was going to accomplish in Jerusalem”.
They were covered by the cloud from whence a voice was heard, the voice of God the Father saying, “This is my Beloved Son, listen to Him.”
What does this mean for me, you may be asking yourself, for you are a child of God and an heir to the kingdom of heaven?
In this age of dissent and secular ideas that confuse our view of the Catholic Church. That propose that one religion, whether it be Christian or some other, is as good as another. You must be confirmed in the knowledge that the Catholic Church is that founded by our Savior Jesus Christ to bring men and women of every age to the fullness of truth and through the living of that truth which is Christ finally to eternal life.
These days of Lent can be grace filled for each of us. We should take the invitation of God to look inside ourselves and to mend that which has become worn or torn. In the coat we wear everyday often time a tear will appear in a sleeve and if we continue to wear it like that, the tear will get worse. Someone who knows how to repair it will take the coat and turn the sleeve inside out and mend the sleeve from the inside. It is the same with our spiritual lives. We are temples of the Holy Spirit wherein dwells the Trinity who alone can mend our souls.
There is no happiness, no life, nothing of lasting value away from and outside of God. Listen to Him.
In the first reading from Genesis, we see God choosing Abram in the little town of Ur and making a covenant with him to make of his descendents a great nation through whom would be brought forth God’s plan of salvation. The Old Testament – salvation history- the great act of Abram that made what followed possible was faith. “Abram put his faith in the Lord” and humbly followed Him wherever He led.
In the Psalm prayer we say, “The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom should I fear?” Salvation history from Abram to Christ the culmination of God’s plan spans nineteen hundred years. Through slavery in Egypt, the Exodus, the Passover, wondering in the desert, the giving of the law to Moses on Mt Sinai, to Jerusalem and the great kings and the temple, to decline and captivity which came out of disunity, to finally occupation by the Greeks and the Romans. The Jews would go over to other gods and would be back sliders from God’s law, the constant struggle between the goods of the temporal order and the demands of God’s commandments. “You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of Good and evil, for you will most surely die.”
There were three Major Prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel who foretold the Advent of the figure of the Messiah plus the Book of the Prophet Daniel and the figure of Elijah. That people began to look for and anticipate the coming of the Messiah.
In the 7th chapter of Isaiah we read, ‘The virgin shall be with child and shall bear a son whom she will call “Immanuel”.’ Immanuel means “God is with us.”
Christ was born. God the Father of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob sent his only Son who took on our flesh and born of woman came to die as man and God to take upon Himself all the sins of men no matter how terrible in effect to become sin. So that if we accepted Him, believed in Him, and were baptized into Him, we will have eternal life. What a plan! What a gift! What a sacrifice of love! All man had to do was to have faith and obey and to love. He would not have to do these things alone. However, for God’s grace would be with him.
But the same age old problem existed, the struggle between good and evil, between the temporal and the eternal.
Before we move on there is one other element of history that must be spoken of.
The Greeks who preceded the Romans had a highly developed democratized society. In the 4th century B.C. there appeared three great men in close succession who were seekers of wisdom, Sophia, Philosophers, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. These men discovered many things about reality and truth. Their writings are still in existence. They are important because, as the Catholic Church which is the person of Christ gives us revelation which is God’s word, the word which is also Christ, in which we have faith, the faith of Abraham, the philosopher of the Greek 4th century B.C. give us the basis of reason the results of sound reasoning.
God has given us free will and reason the basis for finding the God of revelation.
As the one, holy catholic and apostolic church developed and grew great theologians who were great philosophers came forth, St. Augustine in the 4th century based his theory on Plato and in the 14th century St. Thomas Aquinas formed his on Aristotle.
And so we have the inviolable word of God in revelation, the birth, life and death of Christ the Son of God and the development of western civilization. This could not have come about without the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church as its foundation. That church is the person of Christ who is the way, the truth and the life without whom one does not come to the Father. And Peter is Christ’s vicar on earth for all time. He has the keys to the kingdom of heaven, to lose and to bind, and to forgive man’s sins. “Whatsoever you shall loose on earth, shall be loosed in Heaven. And whatsoever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven.”
The connecting link between the Old Testament and the New and everlasting covenant is the Passover - The sacrifice of a one year old unblemished male lamb and the affixing of its blood to the doorposts of the houses of the Jews and the eating of its flesh, as a prelude for the freedom from slavery in Egypt via the Exodus.
This is the meaning of the passion and death of the Son of God, Jesus the Christ, the Lamb of God, as a price for the forgiveness of man’s sins. Jesus hence rose from the dead on the third day and ascended into heaven where he intercedes for each one of us “Through his stripes we were healed.”
This time of Lent is penitential – a time to walk with Christ in the dessert for forty days, a time to reevaluate our lives and to look deeply into ourselves to again find the ways to become all His, for there is no happiness, no life, nothing of lasting value away from and outside of God. Through the sacraments of Christ in His church we find strength for the age old struggle between good and evil, the struggle between the earthly and the heavenly.
This is why we should let ourselves be transformed by the transfiguration of Christ on the mountain. In the Gospel, we see the apprehensive Jesus ascending Mt. Tabor with His three closest disciples to pray. This was in anticipation of His ascending Mt. Calvary. They were joined by Moses representing the old law and Elijah the prophets. They came in glory “to speak of His Exodus that he was going to accomplish in Jerusalem”.
They were covered by the cloud from whence a voice was heard, the voice of God the Father saying, “This is my Beloved Son, listen to Him.”
What does this mean for me, you may be asking yourself, for you are a child of God and an heir to the kingdom of heaven?
In this age of dissent and secular ideas that confuse our view of the Catholic Church. That propose that one religion, whether it be Christian or some other, is as good as another. You must be confirmed in the knowledge that the Catholic Church is that founded by our Savior Jesus Christ to bring men and women of every age to the fullness of truth and through the living of that truth which is Christ finally to eternal life.
These days of Lent can be grace filled for each of us. We should take the invitation of God to look inside ourselves and to mend that which has become worn or torn. In the coat we wear everyday often time a tear will appear in a sleeve and if we continue to wear it like that, the tear will get worse. Someone who knows how to repair it will take the coat and turn the sleeve inside out and mend the sleeve from the inside. It is the same with our spiritual lives. We are temples of the Holy Spirit wherein dwells the Trinity who alone can mend our souls.
There is no happiness, no life, nothing of lasting value away from and outside of God. Listen to Him.
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