OMELIE / Omelie EN

16 mar 2025

16/03/2025 - 2nd Sunday of Lent - year C

16/03/2025 - 2^nd Sunday of Lent - year C

Reading 1 GEN 15, 5-12. 17-18 Psalm 26 Reading 2 PHIL 3, 17 - 4,1 Gospel LK 9, 28-36

Today's liturgy compares Abraham's experience with that of the three disciples of Jesus on the mountain. Abraham experiences being in the presence of God, from whom he receives the promise of a great number of descendants, and who establishes a covenant with him through the sacrifice of some animals.

The three disciples, during Jesus' prayer, also experience God's presence: they do not receive divine promises, but the confirmation of those promises, the certainty that in Jesus himself, their Master, the Father's whole plan of love and salvation for humanity is fulfilled. And this plan will be fulfilled through the sacrifice of the Lord himself, who offers his own life. This is precisely the subject of Jesus' conversation with Moses and Elijah.

Jesus went up the mountain, as Moses went up Mount Sinai and as Elijah went up mount Horeb. He went up there «to pray», that is, to meet the Father. His prayer is true, true immersion in the love and loving will of his God, and for this reason his face, indeed even his clothes, became luminous, source of truth, of joy, of splendour. For he who becomes part of the will of God becomes one with him. Only the Son can fully accept the Father's will with his own love: thus he becomes its full and perfect realisation.

The voice that comes out of the bright cloud that envelopes the three disciples, reaches them while they are sleepy, and makes them understand the mystery they are experiencing. Jesus is declared by God his Son, and therefore king over all peoples, as the second psalm makes us sing. This royal identity is typical of the Messiah, of the one who brings the divinity of the Father into the world in a concrete and visible manner. He is also the “beloved”, like the son of Abraham, who went up the mountain with his father,carrying the wood for his own sacrifice. The son of Abraham was replaced by the ram, because he was only the image of the Son of God; he, on the other hand, cannot be replaced by anything or anyone: he offers himself to give his own body and blood, the only sacrifice that can definitively realise the salvation with which God wants to love his creatures.

The fact that Jesus took three disciples with him makes us aware that he wants us to share both his prayer and his glory, but also his offering and his cross. The fact that he only wanted three disciples with him makes us realise that in the Church Jesus himself envisaged different roles and services for each one. It is the whole Church that lives and enjoys the love of the Father and shares the offering of Jesus, but in the Church each one does so according to his own calling. Each one in the Church, in different ways, lets shine out of his own person the splendour of that light that made Jesus' clothes and face unforgettable for the three apostles.

This is why the Apostle Paul gave himself and the behaviour of other Christians as examples, when he wrote to the faithful: “Join with others in being imitators of me, brothers and sisters, and observe those who thus conduct themselves according to the model you have in us”.

If only we all were able to say that! Indeed, we should all say so. We should live with the prayer of Jesus always alive in our hearts: then his light would shine on us too. Living with Jesus’ prayer in our hearts means constantly cultivating the desire and the resolute will to offer ourselves to the Father and be accepted by him as a sacrifice.

When we live in prayer, the light of Jesus will illuminate our face and make it lovable to our brothers and sisters. Prayer is for us the mountain on which we meet God: we offer ourselves and he acts, transforming us, making us a gift for the world, which constantly needs to know and enjoy his presence. He expects us to listen to Jesus, his beloved Son: that is why he makes his mysterious voice heard, coming from the cloud: “Listen to him”.

Jesus' words will reach us when our hearts are immersed in prayer, in the desire to belong to the Father. Then they will make us truly obedient, so much so that we will be similar to the obedient son, Isaac, and to him, the Son of God, holy and bright as the fire of every true sacrifice.