Jesus On Two Mountains Series

Second Sunday of Lent 2023 After St. Aelred

I don’t know if it is possible to hear the Gospel accounts–any of them–of the Transfiguration of Christ on Mt. Tabor without thinking of another elevation a few miles away. I mean the holy hill we call Mt. Calvary, where Jesus, the Son of Man and Son of God, died for us. In fact, in St. Luke’s account, probably written a generation later, Moses and Elijah are having a conversation with Jesus about His Passover–His death as the Lamb of God–right there on Tabor.

St. Aelred reminds us in his master work, Mirror of Love, that Isaiah said of the Messiah–He was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and like a lamb before the shearers he kept silent. But not exactly. As Jesus was being rudely nailed to the crossbeam, He cried out to His Father, “forgive them.” Aelred asks, “is any gentleness, any love, lacking in this prayer?”

Yet there was more. Aelred says, “it was not enough to pray for them. He wanted also to make excuses for them.” “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing. . .I have hidden my [divine] face from them, and they do not recognize my glory.” Thus we, too, must forgive those who injure us, even plot to do away with us, because we are no better than the Son of God, who forgave even as He was being murdered.

Look carefully at how Jesus was constantly focused on His telos, His end, His purpose in life. St. Luke tells us in his own way what Matthew relates about that. Jesus set His face resolutely toward Jerusalem, because it was in that holy city that He had to die for us. That was the Father’s will for Him, and He was determined to do the Father’s will.

Jesus learned about Israel’s and His own responsibility to follow God’s holy will from the stories He learned at His mother’s knee from earliest days. One of these stories was of how the seventy-five year old Abram and his wife heard the call of God to leave their country and become wandering cattle herders in distant Palestine. Based on a message and promised prosperity and fame, they obeyed and followed the call. The earth would be full of the steadfast love of the Lord, as the psalmist sang, when mankind would hear the word of God and obey that word.

St. Paul had learned all those lessons about Abraham and Sara, Isaac and Israel and Moses and Elijah, so when Jesus revealed Himself as Lord to Paul on the Damascus highway, everything fell into place for him. Over the next few months, as he made himself retreat with the OT into Arabia, through study and meditation and listening to the voice of Christ, he learned his mission and determined to follow it. Part of that–a big part–was learning how to suffer for the privilege of proclaiming and writing about Jesus the Messiah. That’s a lesson that all of us–every disciple of Jesus–must learn and apply in our lives. The goal is personal salvation and spreading the Gospel and grace of Jesus to the world. The price is mortifying ourselves, suffering rejection and in time, surrendering this life for eternal joy in the next.