Last weekend, on the 1st Sunday of Lent, we heard of Jesus being in the desert for 40 days, where he prayed and fasted and was tempted by the Devil. We can see our 40 days of Lent as also being 40 days in the desert.
This 2nd weekend of Lent, we are always presented with the mystery of Jesus’ transfiguration on the mountaintop. All three of the synoptic Evangelists - Matthew, Mark, and Luke - portray the transfiguration in their Gospels. Of those three accounts, Luke is the only one who portrays Jesus praying, with the disciples falling asleep.
It is good to know the context of the transfiguration event. Jesus was setting out to go to Jerusalem and to the cross; he had just told his disciples that in Jerusalem he would be handed over to be put to death, but that on the third day, he would rise again. The disciples were anxious and trying to figure out what all of that meant. His closest disciples had spent three years with him helping him in his ministry, but Jesus knew that these upcoming events in Jerusalem would shake their faith. Jesus took three of his most intimate disciples, Peter, James and John, and went up onto a mountain to pray. We do not know the exact mountain, but, in general, mountains in Scripture are holy places where God had a special presence. Traditionally Mount Tabor is identified as the mountain in this event.
In Luke’s Gospel, prayer precedes the important event that takes place in Jesus' life – his baptism, his choosing of the apostles and sending them on a mission, and his passion. In the transfiguration, Luke states: “While (Jesus) was praying his face changed in appearance and his clothing became dazzling white.” Also, in Luke, whenever a character is at prayer, amazing things happen. For example, when Simeon and Anna are praying in the Temple, they behold the Christ child with the Holy Family, which we heard on the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord in early February. So prayer is an important prelude to anything significant happening for Luke. This is something we ourselves are called to keep in mind in this season of Lent. We are called in a special way to devote time to prayer during Lent, so that these holy days of preparation will be significant for us and so that our Easter event this year can be truly remarkable.
The member of the community of saints whom I thought about today in connection to the transfiguration is Dorothy Day. Born in 1897, Dorothy Day, as a young adult, was searching for something in life. This led her first to socialism and communism, then social activism. She started her professional life as a journalist. And it was a very worldly life indeed. But her search ultimately led her to the Catholic Church. Her journey as a Catholic led to the founding of the Catholic worker movement in collaboration with French Catholic social activist Peter Maurin, with the establishment of the original Catholic worker house in New York City in 1933 in the midst of the worldwide Great Depression. Today, there are more than 200 Catholic worker houses of hospitality around in the world in the US, Canada, Australia, and Europe. Day died in 1980 at the age of 83.
Dorothy Day wrote in her Catholic worker newspaper, that many young people come to visit the Catholic worker houses to live and work, but that they sometime disagree with Day’s stance on different issues, such as her pacifism, opposition to the death penalty, her opposition to the coercive power of big government. Some of the young people saw Day as an impractical idealist. Day said that her views were definitely impractical, but that Calvary was impractical as well. Day said that her Catholic worker movement was not just a community organization that fed the hungry, gave shelter and clothing to the homeless. She said the most important message of her Catholic worker movement was faith at work and prayer in action. She said that if a visitor to their Catholic house of hospitality doesn’t pay attention to our praying and what that means, then that person miss the whole point of things.
Dorothy Day’s message can seem very radical, to be way on the left of things. But her point of view may help us to reflect upon the important issues of our day, of the importance of welcoming our neighbor, of seeing Christ in the poor and the needy, of working for peace and justice. As all of you know, for me, serving as a missionary in a remote jungle, ministering to the homeless in a soup kitchen, visiting the prisoner each week at the prisons here in Mississippi - all of those experience have opened up a new world to me, a new way of looking at Jesus and his Gospel message and what it means to reach out to our neighbor. But at the end of the day, our prayer life and our faith and our relationship with Jesus need to be at the center of who we are as disciples of Christ. To Dorothy Day, her Catholic faith and her prayer life came first. Dorothy Day’s Catholic faith and relationship with Jesus transformed and transfigured her life, just as it transfigured Jesus on the mountaintop.
As we reflect upon the transfiguration today, may we be open to transformation during these holy days of Lent.
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