|
Sacred Scriptures/Liturgy- Commentary on Sunday's Readings |
He went up the mountain to
pray
Second Sunday of Lent
Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, OFMCap, Pontifical Household Preacher
www.zenit.org
Deuteronomy 26:4-10; Romans 10:8-13;
Luke 4:1-13
Genesis 15:5-12, 17-18; Philippians 3:17-4:1; Luke 9:28b-36
Sunday's Gospel narrates the Transfiguration. In his Gospel Luke
gives the reason why Jesus "went up the mountain" that day: He went
up "to pray."
It was prayer that made his raiment white as snow and his
countenance splendid like the sun. Following the program we
announced in our commentary for last Sunday, we would like to take
this episode as a point of departure for examining how prayer takes
up Christ's whole life and what this prayer tells us about the
profound identity of his person.
Someone has said: "Jesus is a Jewish man who does not regard himself
as identical with God. Indeed, one does not pray to God if one is
God." Leaving aside for a moment what Jesus thought about himself,
this claim does not take account of an elementary truth: Jesus is
also a man and it is as a man that he prays.
God, of course, could not have hunger or thirst either, or suffer,
but Jesus hungers and thirsts and suffers because he is human.
On the contrary, it is precisely Jesus' prayer that allows us to
consider the profound mystery of his person. It is a historically
attested fact that in prayer Jesus turns to God calling him "Abba,"
that is, dear father, my father, papa. This way of addressing God,
although not unknown before Jesus' time, is so characteristic of
Jesus that we are obliged to see it as evidence of a singular
relationship with the heavenly Father.
Let us listen to this prayer of Jesus reported by Matthew: "At that
time Jesus said in reply, 'I give praise to you, Father, Lord of
heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the
wise and the learned you have revealed them to mere children. Yes,
Father, such has been your gracious will. All things have been
handed over to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the
Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to
whom the Son wishes to reveal him'" (Matthew 11:26-27).
Between Father and Son there is, as we see, total reciprocity, "a
close, familiar relationship." In the parable of the murderous
tenants of the vineyard this singular relationship of father and son
that Jesus has with God again clearly emerges; it is a relationship
different from all the others who are called "servants" (cf. Mark
12:1-10).
At this point, however, an objection is made: Why then did Jesus
never openly give himself the title "Son of God" during his life,
but instead always spoke of himself as the "Son of man"? The reason
for this is the same as that for which Jesus never calls himself the
Messiah, and when others call him this name he is reticent, or even
forbids them to spread it around. Jesus acted in this way because
those titles were understood by the people in a very precise way
that did not correspond to the idea that Jesus had of his mission.
Many were called "Son of God": kings, prophets, great men. The
Messiah was understood to be the one sent by God who would lead a
military fight against Israel's enemies and rulers. It was in this
direction that the demon tried to push Jesus in the desert.
His own disciples did not understand this and continued to dream of
a destiny of glory and power. Jesus did not understand himself to be
this type of Messiah: "I did not come to be served," he said, "but
to serve." He did not come to take anyone's life away, but rather
"to give his life in ransom for many."
Christ first had to suffer and die before it was understood what
kind of Messiah he was. It is symptomatic that the only time that
Jesus proclaims himself Messiah is when he finds himself in chains
before the High Priest, about to be condemned to death, without any
other possibility of equivocations. "Are you the Messiah, the Son of
the Blessed God?" the High Priest asks him, and he answers: "I am!"
(Mark 14:61ff).
All the titles and categories with which men, friends and enemies,
try to saddle Jesus during his life appear narrow, insufficient. He
is a teacher, "but not like other teachers," because he teaches with
authority and in his own name. He is the son of David, but also
David's Lord; he is greater than a prophet, greater than Jonah,
greater than Solomon.
The question that the people posed, "Who on earth is he?" expresses
well the sentiment that surrounded him like a mystery, something
that could not be humanly explained.
The attempt of some scholars and critics to reduce Jesus to a normal
Jew of his time, who would not have in fact said or done anything
special, is in total contrast to the most certain historical data
that we have of him. Such views can only be understood as guided by
a prejudicial refusal to admit that something transcendent could
appear in human history. These reductive approaches to Jesus cannot
explain how such an ordinary being became -- as these same critics
say -- "the man who changed the world."
Let us now go back to the episode of the Transfiguration to draw
from it some practical teaching. Even the Transfiguration is a
mystery "for us," it hits close to home.
In the second reading St. Paul says: "The Lord Jesus transfigured
our miserable body, conforming it to his glorious body." Tabor is an
open window on our future; it assures us that the opacity of our
body will one day be transformed into light. But Tabor also tells us
something about the present. It highlights what our body already is,
beneath its miserable appearance: the temple of the Holy Spirit.
For the Bible the body is not an inessential element of human
beings; it is an integral part. Man does not have a body, he is a
body. The body was created directly by God, assumed by the Word in
the incarnation and sanctified by the Spirit in baptism.
The man of the Bible is enchanted by the splendor of the human body:
"You formed my inmost being; you knit me in my mother's womb. I
praise you, so wonderfully you made me" (Psalm 139). The body is
destined to share the same glory in eternity as the soul. "Body and
soul: either they will be two hands joined in eternal adoration or
two wrists bound together in eternal captivity" (Charles Péguy).
Christianity preaches the salvation of the body, not salvation from
the body, as the Manichean and Gnostic religions did in antiquity
and as some Eastern religions do today.
And what can we say to those who suffer? What can we say to those
who witness the deformation of their own bodies or those of loved
ones? The most consoling message of the Transfiguration is perhaps
for them. "He will transfigure our miserable body, conforming it to
his glorious body."
Bodies humiliated by sickness and death will be ransomed. Even Jesus
will be disfigured in the passion, but will rise with a glorious
body with which he will live for eternity and, faith tells us, with
which he will meet us after death.
This page is the work of the Servants of the Pierced Hearts of Jesus and
Mary
