When I was a younger man, my mother, and father began to foster children from broken homes to give them a new start. One of the young children who came to live with them had been severely neglected and abused. She would flinch when someone would move their arm around them. Hide her face when there was yelling or loud noises. Her trust had dissipated in the winds of doubt and despair. It took a while before she began to trust again, but her smile was beautiful when she did. Her eyes would shine, and her laughter would tinkle throughout the house. She became our little sister.
The government eventually sent her back home with her parents, and unfortunately, they began to abuse her again. This time they poured hot coffee on her head to get her to “shut up.” Then because they had burnt her, they held her down in a bath of ice water so forcefully that they broke the bones in her arms. By the time they got her out of there, she seemed a shell of her former self. Pain and distrust again became a shroud that seeped into her life so forcefully that it disguised and hid the beauty of her identity.
Years later, she is a well-adjusted, beautiful young lady that makes the room shine when she enters it. She may not even remember me these days, she was so young then, but I hear about her from time to time and smile. Some would say that each time she went into these dark times, she had “changed.” The pain and darkness of this world had hidden her authentic self and camouflaged it. It took love, care, and protection from those who truly loved her to bring it back out.
When we look at today’s Gospel, we see Jesus begin to shine with a light so bright that it says, “His face shone like the sun.” We call this the Transfiguration. Jesus didn’t transform like some movie robot; rather, to be transfigured means to reveal and change appearance into the spiritual state. The same Jesus had been among them all this time. At this moment, He showed them the glory of His true self—the glory of God.
Sometimes we think of Lent as a difficult time. As a time when we make ourselves miserable. No meat Fridays. Fasting days. We are giving up sweets and snacks. It’s more than that. Through prayer and discipline, self-denial, and increased charity, we begin to chip away at the baggage and damage that the pains of this world have shrouded us in. Lent is when we break the shackles of sin through the Sacraments and the grace of the Holy Spirit, and the real us, the Jesus who lives in our hearts, can start to shine through into the world.
Like my little sister, we have weights on our backs that no one else can see. Jesus can. He knows the things you struggle to unload. He has shown us the path to getting rid of that baggage and how to place it at the foot of the cross. Lent is about going into the desert with Jesus so that we can become Holy. That the Saint God created us to be can begin to spread the joy of the Gospel through our homes, our Parish, and our world.
A homily for the Second Sunday in Lent, 3/5/2023