| Homily
for the 2nd Sunday of Lent: March 4, 2007
Given by the Most
Reverend Stephen E. Blaire at the Cathedral of the Annunciation
in Stockton.
It has always been interesting to me that the
Church selects the second Sunday of Lent to present the Transfiguration
of Jesus. It is as if the divinity of Christ shines through
his humanity. The voice of God speaks: “This is my beloved
son in whom i am well pleased; listen to him.” This
Jesus who would suffer and die was truly the Son of God, fully
human and fully divine.
The Council of Chalcedon in 451 declared it
so: “Following the holy fathers, we all with one voice
teach and profess that our lord Jesus Christ, the one and
the same, is perfect in divinity and perfect in humanity,
the same is genuinely god and genuinely a human being with
a rational soul and a body, the same is consubstantial to
the father according to divinity and consubstantial to us
according to humanity, like us in all things apart from sin.
The same was begotten from the father before the ages according
to divinity, for us and for our salvation begotten in the
last days from the Virgin Mary, the God-bearer, according
to humanity.”
In our baptism we were transfigured, so to speak,
by becoming the daughters and sons of God. In our baptism
we became divine in the sense of being adopted by grace to
be the children of God. “You are my beloved sons and
daughters,” God speaks to us. There is a little prayer
that the priest or deacon says during the preparation of the
gifts in the Mass. He pours a drop of water into the wine
and prays: “By the mystery of this water and wine may
we come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself
to share in our humanity.” The season of Lent is a time
for us to advance in baptismal grace as the sons and daughters
of God.
The divinity of Christ dwells within our humanity
– not a morally perfect humanity, but in our broken
condition, with all our limitations and flaws.
The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the
Modern World from Vatican II puts it this way: (I will substitute
the words “human beings” for “men.”)
“Human beings have the experience of their limitations
as creatures.” It is in human beings with all their
limitations that God loves to dwell. You do not have to be
perfect for God to dwell in you. We must never think of Christianity
as a religion based on ethics – as if an ethical life
is the Christian way of life. The Christian way of life is
living as a son or daughter of God. Christ lives within us,
with all our flaws, brokenness and limitations. We live an
ethical life not because we are committed to ethics but rather
because we are committed to Christ and to living for God in
Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. The Pastoral Constitution
then goes on to say: “Human beings know that there is
no limit to their aspirations, and that they are called to
a higher kind of life.” Lent is the time to acknowledge
this call and to respond to these inner aspirations from God
to live ever more in the way of God. We ask God to purify
our hearts so that we might advance in baptismal grace, living
in fidelity to God our Father as His sons and daughters.
“You are my beloved daughters and
sons,” says God “Listen to my beloved Son in Whom
I am well pleased.”
Last Update March 7, 2007
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