GOD SHARES THE FATE OF MAN

SECOND SUNDAY OF LENT

Gen 15:5-12; Ps 27:1,7-9,13-14; Phil 3:17-4:1; Lk 9:28-36

The Recommendation of Jesus Christ

In this second Sunday of Lent, the Church presents many models or examples of faith for our emulation. These examples are of men who believed the word of God and entered into a covenant relationship with him. About the covenant with God, we have noted many times that the nature of God necessitates a covenant relationship with anyone who receives his word in faith. The creatures of God share in the covenant nature of God; for everything God created is what they profess to be without any form of deceit. Hence, God judged everything he made to be good. Lies and darkness entered the world through the temptation and fall of Adam and Eve. Because we are born and groomed in the fallen nature, knowing and doing evil, which is practically lies and darkness, we experience difficulty in receiving and heeding the word of God. God created our original state to be connatural with the truth of the word of God. Eve propagated the doubt cast by the evil one in her mind about the word of God down her bloodline. Because the doubt lingers and is often reinforced by the evil one in the face of our ignorance of God’s will, God takes extra steps to bring us into a covenant relationship with him.

God's dealing with Abram in the first reading exemplifies the extra steps God takes to prompt our faith. First, God led Abram out to show him the stars. By so doing, he aided his imagination to work along with the word of God. “Look up to heaven and count the stars if you can. Such will be your descendants.” God worked on Abram’s memory and imagination by showing him the starry sky. In acquiring knowledge, memory and imagination are of great help. We must also employ these two faculties in our meditation as Abram did here with the aid of God. God purifies these faculties to improve our prayer experience. Abram’s vision of the stars helped his conception of the infinite power of God, for he believed thereafter. “Abram put his faith in the Lord, who counted this as making him justified.” Second, God employed the treaty-making process of the people of the Ancient Near East to help Abram believe his word about giving him the land of Canaan as a heritage. To clear Abram’s doubt, God says to him: “‘Get me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtledove and a young pigeon.’ He brought him all these, cut them in half and put half on one side and half facing it on the other; but the birds he did not cut in half.” Through this process, very familiar to Abram, God took an oath to fulfil his promise to Abram. God went through all these to help our sick human mind.

We thought what God did to help Abram was the extreme he could go to help us in our sick state. But, no, God did not stop at taking an oath; he extended his oath-taking to all men. In the Man, Jesus Christ, God, and man share the same fate: to suffer and to die for the other. Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Son of Man. He is the New Covenant between God and man. The Father bears witness to the presence of his Son in Jesus Christ and urges us to identify and own what belongs to our shared humanity. The great messengers of the Law and the prophecy, Moses and Elijah, were present to converse with the Son of God on the shared fate: “and they were speaking of his passing which he was to accomplish in Jerusalem.” The passing through the gate of death into life, of God and Man together, to destroy the fear of death which makes us doubt God’s will. The Father’s voice came through the cloud to urge us to go with his Son. “And a voice came from the cloud saying, ‘This is my Son, the Chosen One. Listen to him.’” We are to follow Jesus Christ; if we die with him, we will live with him.  

The Incarnation of the Eternal Word of the Father aids our senses, memory, imagination, intellect, and will (or mind and heart). Meditating on the sacred humanity of our Lord purifies our memory and boosts our imaginative capacity for prayer and meditation. Thus, aided by his sacred humanity, which is our way, our minds know him easily, and our hearts flame with love to follow him through his passing. The easy model of faith, hope, and charity the sacred humanity of Jesus Christ has become for us prompts Saint Paul to urge the Philippians and us to copy him (and others) as he is copying the Lord. “My brothers, be united in following my rule of life. Take as your models everybody who is already doing this and study them as you used to study us.” The Christian vocation is to follow Jesus Christ. God gave us the perfection of everything he promised Abram by giving us his Son: the fullness of descendants, the Promised Land of heaven, and the inheritance of God himself. With the Psalmist, let us walk with confidence and unfailing hope through the gate of death, saying: “The Lord is my light and my help; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; before whom shall I shrink?”

Let us pray: O God, who have commanded us to listen to your beloved Son, be pleased, we pray, to nourish us inwardly by your word, that, with spiritual sight made pure, we may rejoice to behold your glory. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.