“This may not be my best day, but I know One who makes tomorrows better,” says the Rev. Daniel Kingsley, explaining how he hopes parishioners should leave the pews after hearing the homily on Sunday. “Sometimes, it's hope that gives people the motivation to see tomorrow.”
Daniel, the pastor of Saint Clare Church and the administrator of Saint Pius X Church in Rosedale, Queens, NY, is our featured guest on “Preach” for the Second Sunday in Lent, Year C. After preaching on the Transfiguration of Christ on Mount Tabor in Luke's Gospel, Daniel shares with host Ricardo da Silva, S.J., his belief that preachers are called to inspire their communities to see faith as something active—something that transforms and moves people to action. He emphasizes how important it is for us to live out our faith beyond the pews.
“May our witness to the Good News help bring healing and wholeness in everyone we encounter and every place we travel,” he says. “It would be tragic if our Sunday ritual were just a Sunday ritual.”
Scripture Readings for the Second Sunday of Lent
First Reading: Gen 15:5-12, 17-18
Responsorial Psalm: Ps 27:1, 7-8, 8-9, 13-14
Second Reading: Phil 3:17-4:1
Gospel: Lk 9:28b-36
You can find the full text of the readings here.
A Homily for the Second Sunday of Lent, by Fr. Daniel Kingsley
There are, in my estimation, five Gospels. Bear with me for one second. We have the four written by the evangelists Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. So, what is the fifth one you ask? Believe it or not, it is the very place where the drama of salvation unfolded, the Holy Land. Sadly, we think of it as a place of terrible strife, division, and warfare. We can think of the Holy Father Pope Francis’ repeated calls for peace and reconciliation between the peoples of Israel and Palestine. Nevertheless, we forget that God, breaking through time and eternity, quite literally visited His people on this oft contested stretch of land.
The author of Genesis, in our first reading, brings this point home when he recounts the forging of the covenant between God and the patriarch Abraham…then called Abram. It is not a binding contract written on parchment, but ratified in the blood of animals, namely various livestock and birds.
There is an infinite difference between a contract and a covenant. The former—a contract—is between equals, “I promise to do for another something like the exchange of goods or services, usually to fulfill my self-interest.” People enter into and break contracts every day. As a New Yorker, I have seen TOO many episodes of Judge Judy to know this to be true! I digress. The latter—a covenant—is much more profound. It involves the mutual binding of lives. It is an unequivocal, unbreakable pledge. Whenever a man says, “I do” to his bride in holy matrimony, and likewise a woman to her husband, this is not contract, but a covenant that lasts them until death do them part.
Abraham, by walking between the split, bloody remains of animals pledge not only himself, but his descendants into a bond of life and love with the Almighty. Hence, in the sixth chapter of Exodus we recall these powerful words of affection and kinship: “I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God.” Who better to enter into a covenant than the One Who can never be unfaithful to His eternal word?
“[The land] from the Wadi of Egypt to the Great River, the Euphrates” looms large in the story of God’s people, it is the scene of great promise, great heartache, great triumph, and yes, great tragedy. Perhaps, in a sense, the land is a metaphor for the human condition, the stage where the patriarchs and prophets, the holy men and women strive for God. Their relationship with God is tied up with a particular place, evoking the sense and feeling of home. Home being that place where we can always return and reconnect with our roots. It should not be lost on any of us the added tragedy that Abraham’s descendants—Christians, Jews, and Muslims—have shed each other’s blood on this stretch of land that we claim in common. This truth, among many others, became evident for me during my one and only pilgrimage to the Holy Land back in either 2013 or 2014, a year or so before priestly ordination.
My seminary classmates and I traveled to the very scene of today’s Gospel from St. Luke, Mount Tabor. Upon its height the Transfiguration took place. We were fortunate to have taken the trip by bus, whereas the Lord Jesus along with the Apostles Peter, James, and John, would have done so by either donkey or on foot. Our tour guide pointed out to us the Israeli-Syrian border. I almost shuttered thinking how close, physically, we were to the Syrian Civil War which at the time was still raging. Then again by our Lord’s time and even afterwards Mount Tabor had been the setting for several great military conflicts and conquests. Always the amateur historian I took all that in as we traveled upwards. And I am this was not lost on the three Apostles themselves as they made the same trek themselves over a thousand years earlier. Yet, our Lord was bringing them for something more than a history lesson.
As the evangelist Luke tells us, Jesus brought them there, first and foremost, to pray. He invites them—he invites us—into a certain intimacy with him. We cannot know the heart and mind of a friend, or a loved one, if we do not spend time with them. We may be surprised to discover something new. The same is true for God as prayer is that time spent with Him.
Though Peter, James, and John heard their Teacher’s stirring words and saw His powerful deeds, they needed to know that He was indisputably the Lord and Savior of the world, the one sent by the Eternal Father. Though Peter confesses this in St. Matthew’s Gospel, the famous “Who do you say that I am?” scene, he needs to know more fully, more boldly, as do James and John. So said, so done.
It was in prayer that Christ’s clothes became a dazzling white. Then appeared, in otherworldly glory, the lawgiver Moses and the prophet Elijah conversing with Jesus. The lesson, my dear brothers and sisters, is now theological. Moses who at the burning bush could not gaze about the sacred face lest he die is now talking face to face with the Great I Am. Elijah who preached the one true God to the Israelites now beholds Him in the flesh. It is fitting that Moses the embodiment of the Law, and Elijah the embodiment of the Prophets is now conversing with the culmination of the New Covenant in God’s Incarnate Son.
You and I would have fallen down in worship, if we did not first drop dead in mortal terror! Peter, whether in devotion or shock, says, “Master, it is good that we are here; let us make three tents, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” I think creaturely accommodations are the least of our concerns, right now. And the evangelist Luke, whether in a statement of fact or humor simply says, “But [Peter] did not know what he was saying.” And then as if the witness of the lawgiver and the prophet were not enough the voice of the Eternal Father bellows, “This is my chosen Son; listen to Him.” Case closed, period, full stop. Ladies and gentlemen, go home, there’s nothing more to be seen here. And like that the vision ceases, and “Jesus was found alone.”
Again, I would have either fallen down in worship or died in fright after such an experience. Oddly enough, Peter, James, and John went down the mountain “and did not tell anyone what they had seen.” The evangelist Mark, in his account of the Transfiguration, says the Lord ordered they tell no one. Either way that moment left an impression on them. Anxiety? Peace? Fright? Resolve? Who knows? Even though Jesus fully revealed Himself, glorified, and God the Father spoke, it was not for them to remain there.
Whenever mountains appear in the Scriptures, the divine is revealed so the privileged viewer is fortified for what is to come ahead, like Moses’ carrying of the tablet down Sinai’s height. To lead God’s people to the Promised Land. Down from Tabor, there’s still more for the Apostles, and us to do…proclaim the Good News! Remember Christ’s earthly ministry does not end here! The glimpse of His glorified body, in today’s Gospel, foreshadows the great day and victory of Easter.
We may not claim mountains in either the Holy Land, or other foreign locales, but we certainly do Sunday after Sunday when we approach this altar. We hear not the words “this is my beloved Son, listen to Him,” but rather “this is My Body, this is My Blood.” The elements of bread and wine become—are transfigured into—the very substance by which the New Covenant is forged, Christ’s very self offered once upon the Cross. When we receive the great gift of the Eucharist do we allow it, as the Apostle Paul wrote in our second reading, to “to change our lowly body to conform with His glorified body?”
It would be tragic if our Sunday ritual were just that Sunday ritual. And nothing we do here helps to bring others to the newness of life in Christ, to help others walk with God in covenant as Abraham once did in the land of old. Ultimately, may our witness to the Good News help bring healing and wholeness in everyone we encounter and every place we travel. And may we become that fifth Gospel the world needs to see in these trying times so they can believe God has truly visited His people.
