What's the most glorious thing I've ever seen?

Homily

2nd Sunday of Lent B2

25 February 2024

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

What's the most glorious thing I've ever seen?

For me, it's when suffers for love of me.  It's the most glorious thing I can ever see, or feel or experience.  It's also the most terrifying.

Father, let me help you.  Father, let me pray for you.  Father, let me offer this suffering for love of you.  it's all any of us ever want, for someone to love us like that.  Yet it's also the thing I'm most terrified to ask for, receive or look at - someone suffering for love of me.

The 2nd Sunday of Lent we are rocketed from the desert floor of temptation to the glorious heights of Mt. Tabor.  Jesus in His human nature is transfigured by a divine light that reveals fully who He is.  It's way too much, way too bright and terrifying for our buddies Peter, James and John to look upon.  Mercifully, the scene quickly disappears before our friends die of fright.  Jesus returns to His normal disguise, and we remain confused as to what He is saying.

The transfiguration was meant to encourage, so that the apostles wouldn't lose heart on the hard road to Calvary. I won't call is a failed experiment, but the scene seems to terrorize just as much or more.  If I am already too terrified to look at Jesus beautifully transfigured on Mt. Tabor, how could my little faith bear to gaze on the disfigured, terrible, and yes more brightly glorious body of Jesus on Mt. Calvary?  

Today's scriptures force a conflict, and I hope you feel it, setting the transfiguration against the horrible preview of Calvary that is the proposed slaughter of Isaac many years prior on that very same hill.  If I am terrified of the transfiguration, there's no way I'll keep my eyes fixed on the cross.

Abraham and Isaac show us what absolute faith really looks like, and it's terrible.  Imagine now if you will our heavenly Father's first look at Jesus on the cross, on that same spot where Abraham first looked with horror that his only-begotten son Isaac would willingly suffer slaughter sheerly for love of him.  Imagine that our heavenly Father, though horrified at what He sees, cannot look away.

At Mt. Tabor there were words for how beautifully glorious the scene way - this is my beloved Son, listen to Him.  Mt. Calvary is too terribly glorious for words.  Imagine that.  The Father, simultaneously horrified and infinitely pleased, hardly knows what to say.  The glory of the cross demands silence.

St. Paul saw it.  Our Father looking forever at His only-begotten suffering sheerly for love of Him, is a Father whose heart has been transformed from justice to mercy.  He can only and forever be for us, never against.

St. John finally saw it.  Though terrified at Mt. Tabor and drowsy in the garden, he mustered the courage to show up and look a the disfigured yet more glorious face of Christ on the cross.  Mary Magdalen was also there, she from whom the Lord had cast out 7 fearful demons.  Because John and Mary did not look away, they saw the most glorious thing one can ever see.  They were thus the first witnesses to the Resurrection, the first to see with faith, and believe.

So what is the most glorious thing you will ever see?  To gaze at one who loves you is glorious.  To gaze at someone suffering for love of you is more glorious, and more terrifying.  Look anyway.  Look with faith.  Look always, and don't look away. For looking at the most glorious thing you will ever see will transfigure your eyes, transform your heart and transport you from death to life.

+mj