THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH Her Doctrine and Morals Second Sunday in Lent 24 February 2013

The Sunday Sermon

Dear Friends,

Our Lord gives a glimpse of Heaven to three of His disciples in today’s Gospel. The disciples read or heard of the future kingdom and like so many others longed for this, but their conception of this kingdom was worldly and materialistic. So, when Jesus spoke to them of His upcoming crucifixion and death, they were more than a little disconcerted. These three, (Peter, James, and John) were taken up the mountain and given a glimpse of Heaven. God, and therefore Heaven, has been with them all this time, but was hidden from their eyes because they were still worldly. In order to truly experience this glory forever it is necessary that we die. Not just a physical death that all of God’s creatures must endure, but more importantly we must die to this world and the material attraction that it holds for us. 

The path to this eternal kingdom in Heaven that is so longed for is only to be obtained through sacrifice. The sacrifices of the Old Testament were not perfect and were a substitute for the sacrifice that God desires and requires. These sacrifices of grain and/or animals were accepted by God in place of the lives of sinful men. The only sacrifice that would be complete and perfect was the sacrifice of God made Man upon the Cross of Calvary. Yet, this sacrifice of Christ’s is not complete in us individually until we make a similar sacrifice of ourselves and unite it to His. It is in this idea that Jesus has invited His Apostles and us to drink of the chalice that He drank, and to carry and die upon our crosses as He did upon His. 

This thought of our physical death fills the worldly with fear and dread of that day, but for those who have already died to this world the death of the body holds no fear. For us to become one of the latter it is necessary that we follow Christ is denying ourselves, taking up our crosses, and dying to this world. This is frightening, unless or until we catch a glimpse of Heaven, as these three Apostles received. We have their testimony and this should be enough for us, but God in His mercy has given us over two-thousand years of the Church’s constant teaching along with the testimony of all Her saints. The problem with most of us is that as this testimony and revelation is set before us, we fall asleep as the Apostles have done. Christ woke them and permitted them to hear the Father speak; He likewise inspires His Church to stir us from our lethargy and behold Him in His Holy Sacrament. 

We mentioned above that the Apostles have seen Jesus and therefore have seen Heaven. They did not realize this at the time and so all too often when we behold the Holy Eucharist we fail to see God and so fail to see Heaven. After the Apostles lost Christ on Good Friday they hid and in fear died to this world as they mourned the loss of Jesus. In this state Jesus came to them after His Resurrection and once again they saw Him and found some relief. The complete realization only came to them on Pentecost. Then their eyes were opened and they realized that all that time they were in the presence of God and did not realize it. In our case, the Church is constantly reminding us that we must see with the eyes of faith that Jesus is truly present in the Holy Eucharist; and to see with the eyes of our soul, we must first kill the eyes of our bodies (the passions and pleasures of this world). Therefore, this season of Lent is extremely necessary for us to begin or perfect this process. 

As we mortify ourselves in Lenten penances we look forward to the celebration of the Resurrection. We know that Christ died before He rose so we too must die before we can rise. He who loses His life for My sake will save it. Our Lord sacrifices Himself anew in every Mass; He remains after the Sacrifice of the Mass in the tabernacle. Jesus Christ, True God and True Man, is present in our Churches! When we begin to see with the eyes of faith, we perceive that our Churches are truly another Mount Tabor. When we enter into our Churches we are truly entering into Heaven. We are given a glimpse of Heaven while we are here on earth. We should be struck and filled with awe as the Apostles were. We should be eager as St. Peter to remain there forever. When this grace is received it fills the soul with a profound and sacred silence. This grace is so sacred that it cannot be expressed in words. So we must re-enter the world and not speak of the grace and spiritual vision that we have been given. First, because the grace was for us and not for the world, and second, because the vision is not fulfilled or completed yet and will not be until it is permanent (after we complete our physical death to this world), and thirdly because this grace is sacred and is not to be exposed to profanation by those in the world who are unworthy.

The graces of God therefore are most often hidden by their recipients until the appropriate time. Their humility, faith, and profound love of God demand this of them, and they can truly do nothing else. The weak, often are filled with pride and vanity and boast of things that they have received and then lose all merit, or there are the frauds who boast of having received things that they have not. The profound realization of God’s presence in the Holy Eucharist and the taste of Heaven here on earth is given to us if we will follow Christ up the mountain in penances. The fullness of this vision and taste however, is reserved for us after we die completely to this life -- in the love of the cross, because it is the door to the eternal tabernacle of Heaven. Life begins in and with death.