RISING TO THE TRANSCENDENT

A SERMON FOR THE 2ND SUNDAY IN LENT

The 2^nd Sunday in Lent is often called “Transfiguration Sunday” because of the Gospel we have just read.  What a far cry it is from last week.  If we were to give a name to last Sunday, it should probably be “Temptation Sunday,” as you’ll remember the Gospel described the three temptations of Christ.  From Temptation to Transfiguration seems like quite a leap, doesn’t it?  And yet there’s a certain flow here, a certain cause and effect, even, which we can use as a help in our own path to salvation.

Look at the third and last of the temptations of Christ in the wilderness last week: “Again,” the Gospel tells us, “the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain.”  And then in this week’s Gospel, “Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John, his brother, and bringeth them up into an high mountain apart.”  In each case, the prelude to the action, as it were, is the ascent of a high mountain—last week “an exceeding high mountain” and now this Sunday “an high mountain apart”. 

These are by no means the only two times in Holy Scripture that men ascend high mountains to receive some great revelation.  We have only to think of Moses receiving the Ten Commandments at the summit of Mount Sinai, of Elijah finding God on Mount Horeb, not in the fire, nor in the whirlwind, but in the “still small voice of calm.”  After the chastisement of mankind, Noah’s Ark came to rest on the summit of Mount Ararat, and for the redemption of mankind, Christ died on the summit of Mount Calvary.  Even in modern times, when St. Francis wanted to prepare himself for the Feast of St. Michael the Archangel, he went up to the heights of Mount Alvernia, and there he fasted forty days and forty nights, during which time he received our Lord’s stigmata in his own hands and feet and side.

One may wonder why we must first climb high before the reason for the climb is revealed.  Does it have something to do, perhaps, with the rarified atmosphere as we reach the heights far above sea level?  Is it that the air is thinner up there, so that our physiology is more susceptible to visions of heavenly things?  Or is it simply that on the mountain tops, we are “nearer, my God, to thee?”  Nearer to God, our Father “who art in heaven?”  But I don’t think either one of these explanations fits the bill.  Surely, God would not trivialize the great events that happened on these mountains, by restricting them to a specific altitude, whether altitude is meant to signify either their distance above sea level, or their distance below heaven! 

Let’s face it though, the great height they all have in common cannot be a coincidence.  There’s a reason, isn’t there, why, in order to be close to the Most High Omnipotent Good Lord, we must ourselves ascend to the heights.  Why we must leave behind the lower things of the earth so we can reach the higher things of heaven, so we can replace the material with the spiritual, the natural with the supernatural, the things of creation with the things of the Creator.  And so we climb above these lower things.  The mountains that our Lord climbed, and Moses and Elijah and St. Francis, all symbolize this rising above the things of this world into the higher world of the spirit, the higher world of God himself.

But there’s danger up there in the mountain tops.  The danger of having a better view of the world beneath us, with all its worldly distractions.  The Devil knew this, and last week he took advantage of it to take our Lord to the top of an exceeding high mountain.  There, he “sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them.”  From the heights of the spiritual we too can look down on the material things of this world and see “the glory of them”, but we must view this glory with spiritual eyes, realizing that its glory consists only of the fact that it is a creation of God.  Otherwise, it isn’t worth a hill of beans.  When we focus on God and the things of God, we can compare the things of this world to the perfection that is God, and we can see them for what they’re really worth—mere distractions from what is really important, temptations that take us away from God.

On the summit of this high mountain, Satan offers our Lord all these appealing distractions of earthly beauty, money, power, and pleasure; and he saith unto him, “All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.”  Here Satan reveals his ultimate temptation to which these material things will eventually lead all of us if we seek them alone.  The mountain top of spiritual perfection has this one last temptation, in that we can see everything that can be ours if we forsake God.  Satan took our Lord up to the mountain top, so that he could see it all and have it all, if only he would acknowledge Satan as God, and adore him. It’s a clever plan, “diabolically clever” as they say.  But as Christ was himself God, he knew very well who this imposter was, that this tempter was the fallen angel who had once before likened himself unto God and had been thrown out of heaven for his insolence.  Satan now found himself thrown out a second time as our Lord admonished him: “Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.”  His example for us is clear—we too must recognize the material things of this world for what they are, the path to destruction, the temptation that leads us to place the world, and the Lord of the World, Satan, before God.

This week, it is our Lord’s turn to take his three favorite disciples up a “high mountain apart”.  He does not take them there in order to show them all the kingdoms of the world and offering them to Peter, James and John.  He does not tempt them with earthly things.  He does not demand that they worship him.  He simply shows himself to be God, something that Satan, of course, could never do.  “His face shone as the sun and his raiment glowed, white as snow.” 

Yesterday was the feast of St. Thomas Aquinas, one of the smartest men who ever lived, a doctor of the Church.  The saint received a vision of Christ crucified, and heard a voice saying, “Thomas, thou hast written well of me.  What reward wilt thou that I give thee?”  And instead of asking for an even greater insight and deeper understanding of the things of God, St. Thomas Aquinas replied simply, “None other, Lord, but thyself.”  God offers us himself.  Between the devil’s offer last week of all the riches of the world, and our Lord’s offer today of himself, there lies a choice that we must make every single time we are tempted.  Shall we choose Creation, or the Creator?  Today we behold a glimpse of the face of God himself in all his glory.  It is the only reward our Blessed Lord offers us, but it is enough!