From the Heart of the Shepherd

From the bulletin for The Second Sunday of Lent (2026 March 01)

Lord’s Day: A Deeper Dive

Sacred Scripture is meant to be read more like a poem than the news. Its content needs to be unpacked to be appreciated, otherwise its richness will be lost on us. 

Take the First Reading this Sunday: God commands Abram and obeys. Pretty straightforward, right? But when you dig in, questions arise. In the previous chapter of Genesis, we learn that Abram’s father Terah had already made designs to move to Canaan. He and his family had gotten as far as leaving their native Ur.  “But when they reached Haran, they settled there.” (Gen 11:31). Why did Terah mean to go to Canaan? Had the Lord spoken first to him? Why did he finish his days in Haran? Why now is Abram commanded to finish the “exodus”? 

Read further and more questions arise. Abram indeed moved with his family and all his many possessions to Canaan. But when he got there, “there was famine in the land” (Gen 12:10). So they continued on to Egypt. Why would God command Abram to immigrate to a land in which they would not be able to stay? Moreover, if God had commanded Abram to depart from his relatives and father’s house, why did he choose to bring with him his father’s grandson Lot and the wealth he inherited from his father? Did Abram think he needed to start making himself a “great nation,” rather than leave that promise’s fulfillment to God? 

Answers are not forthcoming. But the questions themselves lead to a richer engagement with the biblical text, which is suddenly not as straightforward as a lazy listener might think.

Today’s Gospel raises questions. Why did Jesus go up the mountain? Why take along only these three disciples? Why did Moses and Elijah appear? What did they converse about? What does Peter mean by offering to make “three tents”? How does a bright cloud cast a shadow? What is the significance of this taking place “six days after” Peter’s confession of faith and Jesus’ prediction of His Passion (cf. Mt 16:13-17:1)? And what, really, does it mean that Jesus was “transfigured”? 

In this case, Scripture offers some answers. In Luke’s recounting of the event, he tells us that Jesus “went up the mountain to pray.” Rather than using the word “transfigure” like Matthew (metemorphōthē in Greek), he simply says that “the appearance of [Jesus’] face changed” while he was praying (Lk 9:28-29). Moses and Elijah conversed with Jesus “about the exodus that He was going to accomplish in Jerusalem” (Lk 9:31). [Indicating what was  “accomplished!” in Jn 19:30!] Luke also includes the detail that not even Peter knew what he was saying when he blathered about the three tents… suggesting that his utterance was either something prophetic, or the result of human befuddlement in the presence of the divine. 

All the Evangelists connect this event with foretellings of Jesus’ Passion. In Matthew and Luke, the Transfiguration sits between two predictions of Jesus’ death and resurrection, and in Matthew and Mark the disciples are told not to speak of it “until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead” (Mt 17:9). Finally, in his second epistle, we have a firsthand account from St. Peter himself, who writes, “we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. He received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.’ We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the holy mountain” (2 Pt 1:16-18). This would seem to refer us back to Mount Sinai, the “holy mountain of God” in the Old Testament, to which both Moses and Elijah made “exoduses” and at which both encountered God and received from Him commands. 

I won’t spoil all the fun in putting these pieces together in your prayer. But it does seem that the Transfiguration reveals not only who Jesus truly is (the Father’s beloved Son), but what He has come to do: to fulfill a pattern of the “exodus,” i.e. excursion of deliverance, that God has always been calling His people to make, to bring them out of idolatry, to the “mountain” of encounter and communion, through the ordeal of obedience, suffering, and death, into the majestic glory of God’s presence. Listen to Him, indeed!

From the Heart of the Shepherd: The First Sunday of Lent