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03/04/2007

Knights of Columbus

FR. OLMAN'S HOMILIES

01/14/2007

01/21/2007

01/28/2007

02/04/2007

02/11/2007

02/18/2007

02/25/2007

03/04/2007

Baptism and penance are the twin themes of the Lenten season, and today’s Mass again brings them before our minds.  Abraham’s faith reminds us that baptism calls us to trust in God completely.  The Gospel presents us with our Lord’s transfiguration, showing that Christ fulfills the promise made to Abraham, but only through the sacrifice of himself to God.  Paul invites us to walk in the footsteps of the Lord if we are to be glorified with him.

We have heard in the First reading the Lord telling Abraham: “Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them…so shall your descendants be”.  Later the Lord told Abraham: “To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates”.  The Lord therefore promised two things to Abraham.  The first is to give him descendants as numerous as the stars.  The second is to give the land of Palestine.  The Lord took an oath according to the custom of the time that he would keep his promises.  The Lord made a covenant with Abram.

The purpose of the covenant was to make Abraham the ancestor of all who believe.  Faith is the basis of God’s covenant with man.  Those who receive God’s word with faith enter into the covenant with God.

Today’s liturgy unites the beginning of the covenant (Abraham) with the final one.  This definitive covenant is made by God with humanity in the incarnation of the Word, the Eternal Son who became man.  He was born and lived among the people of the old covenant, Israel, in order to institute the new and eternal covenant and fulfill his messianic mission.  God created man in his image and likeness and for this reason he has made him capable of accepting his salvific initiative.  Man as God’s image has in himself the capacity for immortality which God alone can bestow with his presence, with his divine life, giving himself to man in the full reality of his divinity.  God, who is love, wishes to give himself to man in this way.

The Transfiguration comes at the climax of Jesus’ Galilean ministry.  The time has now drawn near for Jesus to be taken up to heaven, and so he resolutely takes the road for Jerusalem -a road to victory through innocent suffering.  The transfiguration demonstrates this to the disciples.

Luke sets the scene in Old Testament style for a divine revelation: they are on “the mountain”; Jesus was praying; the divine light and the Father’s voice; the presence of the two Old Testament figures who had been gifted with a direct experience of God; Peter’s suggestion about the tents, so that God could remain as he did in the desert in the days of Moses.

The revelation is directed at the disciples first of all, but more especially at those listening to Luke’s Gospel. It gives the meaning of the fourteen chapters which follow.  Unlike Matthew and Mark, Luke tells us what Jesus, Moses and Elijah were actually talking about: “his passing (exodus) which he was to accomplish in Jerusalem”.  The glorification of Jesus is quite certain and to be achieved by the journey through suffering and death in Jerusalem.

 Through baptism we set out on the same road taken by Jesus.  It demands that we be willing to put up with the hardships –moral and physical- that we meet on the way.  Baptism is our “covenant” with the Lord.  Like Abraham, we set out with faith and trust, determined not to break our commitment to follow Christ.  The words of the Responsorial psalm give us something to take away: “the Lord is my light and my help, hope in him, hold firm and take heart”.

 St Paul tells us and we heard it in the second reading: “but our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.  He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself”.  We must journey towards our homeland as the Israelites journeyed towards the Promised Land.  In heaven our bodies will be transformed.  We must live the life of grace.  We must embrace the cross. we must not set our minds on earthly things.  We must listen to Jesus.

Jesus today reveals the great Lenten theme of transformation.  He begins to reveal the Paschal Mystery. 

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