A Covenantal Gaze: The Second Sunday of Lent 2025

                                                     A Covenantal Gaze:

The Second Sunday of Lent 2025 

March 16, 2025

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Genesis 15:5-18; Psalm 27; Philippians 3:17-4:1; Luke 9:28-36

 

God is always trying to let us know that God is around for us. In Genesis, God takes Abram outside and tells him to look up at the stars in the sky to know that God will always be present. Just look up to find signs of God’s presence everywhere, and yet God makes it personal and establishes a covenant with Abram. The covenant is made even more intimate in the person of Jesus when he appears with Moses and Elijah on that holy mountain. The whole covenant comes together and is fulfilled in Jesus. The Law, the Prophets, and the whole Hebrew tradition is now found in Jesus alone. The Transfiguration is the point in the ministry of Jesus when he can turn his gaze toward Jerusalem and present the nation with a choice – to accept or to reject the covenant.

 

Peter, James, and John knew that something fundamentally changed in the mission. They were given inner sight, though they were not yet able to comprehend the events. For them, discipleship was all or nothing. The face of Jesus changed before them, and God had spoken directly and plainly. This solemn moment revealed the depths of God’s vision, and they too became transformed by this knowledge. The mission took on a weightiness they could not yet grasp, for it was an infinite as looking up at the stars in the sky. It was beyond their imagination.

 

The Transfiguration is the beginning of the Passion. Jesus pivots from his itinerant preaching and heads up to Jerusalem, setting up a new action by calling Israel to account. God is revealing the deepening of the covenant – that Jesus of Nazareth is the holy One of God. God’s whole history with the Israelites has been reviewed and God is doing something pivotal in this moment. It tells us that God is going to keep arriving. Just as the future never arrives, God is still becoming. God is still becoming present and will keep arriving.

 

Whenever we feel we are devoid of hope and are troubled by distressing news and events, we must remember that God will keep arriving. The rest of the story is not yet told. God remained with Jesus during his darkest hour, and Jesus remains with us in our dark times, and he carries with him the wounds we gave him. If we are ever feeling distressed and unsettled, we might want to do what Abram did: go outdoors, look up at the sky, see all those stars, and simply breathe in the night air, knowing that God’s fidelity is mysterious and larger than we can imagine. Gazing upon God’s creation is gazing upon God’s very self, and it make reassure us of God’s abiding presence that covers all creation.

 

During the Transfiguration, God gazed upon Jesus and his face was changed. This is the moment to realize God is gazing upon you – uniquely. Accept that warm, tender validation of yourself. When you do, people may say, “Look how radiant you seem. You are certainly a beloved one of God.”

 

Scripture for Daily Mass

Monday: (Leviticus 19) The Lord gives Moses ten commandments that he inscribes on stone tablets. 

 

Tuesday: (Isaiah 55) God’s word will issue forth from his mouth and shall not return until it has fulfilled his will.

 

Wednesday: (Jonah 3) Jonah set out to Nineveh asking them to proclaim a fast and then repent. The king does repent and the Lord dropped his threat because they turned from evil.

 

Thursday: (Esther 3) Queen Esther appeals to God for help in converting the king’s heart for hatred of the enemy that threatens them.

Friday: (Ezekiel 18) If the wicked turns from sinfulness and keeps the Lord’s statutes, he will surely live. Likewise, if a virtuous man becomes wicked, he shall die. 

 

Saturday: (Deuteronomy 26) Moses tells the people to observe the Lord’s statutes and decrees with their whole heart and soul. The Lord will stand by you. 

 

Gospel: 

Monday: (Matthew 25) Jesus tells his disciples about the last judgment when the goats and sheep will be separated. The measuring stick is the mercy shown to the most vulnerable.

 

Tuesday: (Matthew 6) The disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray. He tells them not to pray like the pagans, who seek honor and glory, and then gives them the Lord’s prayer. 

 

Wednesday: (Luke 11) Jesus chastises the crowd that seeks a sign, but none will be given to them. Because of Jonah’s preaching, the king and people repented.

 

Thursday: (Matthew 7) Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened. The Father is generous, especially to those who love him.

 

Friday: (Matthew 5) Your righteousness must surpass the levels of the scribes and Pharisees in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Show righteousness by quickly settling disputes. 

 

Saturday: (Matthew 5) Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Heavenly Father. Be perfect as the Father is perfect.

 

Saints of the Week

 

March 9: Frances of Rome (1384-1440), was born into a wealthy Roman family and was married at age 13. She bore six children and when two died in infancy, she worked to bring the needs of the less fortunate to others. She took food to the poor, visited the sick, cared for the needy in their homes. When other women joined in her mission, they became Benedictine oblates. She founded a monastery for them after her husband's death. 

 

This Week in Jesuit History

 

• March 9, 1764. In France, all Jesuits who refused to abjure the Society were ordered by Parliament to leave the realm within a month. Out of 4,000 members only five priests, two scholastics, and eight brothers took the required oath; the others were driven into exile. 
• March 10, 1615. The martyrdom in Glasgow, Scotland, of St John Ogilvie. 
• Mar 11, 1848. In Naples, Italy, during the 1848 revolution, 114 Jesuits, after much suffering, were put into carts and driven ignominiously out of the city and the kingdom. 
• March 12, 1622. Pope Gregory XV canonized Sts Ignatius, Francis Xavier, Teresa of Avila, and Philip Neri. 
• March 13, 1568. John Segura and five companions set sail from Spain for Florida, a fertile field of martyrs. (Nine Jesuits were killed there between 1566 and 1571.) 
• March 14, 1535. Ignatius received his degree from the University of Paris. 
• March 15, 1632. The death of Diego Ruiz, a great theologian, who studied on his knees.