Homily for the Second Sunday of Lent (C)

As I’m sure most of you know, this month the city has commenced a yearlong celebration of Grand Central Terminal’s centennial anniversary.  There are all sorts of special events planned, and there have been a number of newspaper articles and television specials on the history of the city’s landmark station.

I have to confess that, despite being a native New Yorker, I learned a most remarkable fact from one of these articles about the station’s beloved ceiling mural … Perhaps I never knew this fact because the mural had remained covered for more than sixty years until a restoration was undertaken in 1998.

Anyway, Paul Cesar Helleu, a renowned French portrait artist of the Belle Epoque, visited New York in 1912 and was awarded the commission to design the ceiling decoration for Grand Central.  He conceived the ceiling mural we see again today: a blue-green night sky covered by the constellations of the zodiac.

But the remarkable fact I recently learned is that the constellations on the ceiling are all backwards!  Now there are several different theories about how this came to be, and the article I read went through them all one by one.  But I was blown away that the most likely scenario is that the mural is based on a medieval manuscript that visualized the sky, not as we see it from earth, but as it looks to God, from above the celestial sphere.

I thought of this fantastic story as I prayed with the readings for this second Sunday of Lent, because they, too, involve staring up into the beauty of the heavens; and at the same time they invite us to see things not as human beings do, but as God does.

In our first reading, from the Book of Genesis, “God takes Abram outside” and tells him to look up into the sky and ponder the radiance of all the stars, and to count them if he can.  God promises Abram that his descendants will be just as numerous as the stars, and our reading tells us that, “Abram put his faith in the Lord.” 

Let’s pause for a moment to recognize how remarkable that is.  Remember that when God makes this promise, Abram is seventy-five years old and he and his wife Sarai don’t have any children at all; and Abraham is one hundred years old when Sarah finally does give birth to their only son, Isaac.

So, we couldn’t exactly blame Abram if he had laughed at God’s promise and doubted that He was serious.  From a human perspective the thought of Abram having countless heirs is completely ludicrous.  And yet, “Abram put his faith in the Lord.”

Brothers and sisters, faith is trusting, not in how we see things, but in how God sees things.  Having faith isn’t believing in God’s promise as we understand it, or as we would choose to have it fulfilled … faith is trusting in the one who made the promise in the first place.

In our Gospel today, Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up the mountain to pray.  While there, the Apostles look up into the sky and see the transfigured Jesus shining more brightly than any star. God makes the Apostles a promise, just as He did for Abram.  “This is my beloved Son,” He tells them; and then He asks them to put their faith in Christ, saying, “Listen to Him.” 

Unlike our first reading, we’re not told right away that the Apostles do indeed put their faith in the Lord.  In fact, this encounter happened shortly after Peter told Jesus that he would never allow Him to be arrested and put to death.  Remember that Jesus then rebuked Peter saying: “get behind me Satan, you are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”

And now, on the mountaintop, the Apostles long to build three tents … in other words, they long to remain in the peace, and beauty, and calm of that moment of Divine transcendence. But Jesus takes them back down the mountain – down to Jerusalem, where He knows the Son of Man must be arrested, tortured, and killed.

To human eyes, this isn’t any way for the Messiah, the king of Israel to redeem His people.  The scandal of the cross challenged the Apostle’s faith that Jesus was indeed the beloved Son of God and the Messiah for whom they had been waiting and longing.

Just the same, when you and I encounter the cross, and experience some form of suffering, some loss, or some struggle with sin, we too can have a hard time believing in God’s promise; a hard time seeing things the way God sees them.

During the season of Lent, we spend a significant amount of our spiritual energy taking up the cross, examining our consciences, and confessing our weakness and sinfulness.  And yet, the ultimate point of our Lenten fast – like Jesus’ forty day fast in the desert – is not that we dwell on our miserable human weakness, but that we cast aside and overcome all the things that keep us from seeing ourselves, and others, the way God sees us.

And how is it that God sees us?  Well, the Apostles today hear God say that Jesus is His beloved Son, just as He announced at Jesus’ Baptism in the Jordan.  By virtue of our Baptism we too are the beloved sons and daughters of God!  Therefore, the transfiguration that the Apostles witness in today’s Gospel isn’t just about Jesus – it’s about us well.  As St. Paul told the Philippians in today’s second reading: “He will change our lowly body to conform with His glorified body.”

In other words, Jesus’ Transfiguration isn’t just proof of His Divine glory – it’s proof that we too are destined to share God’s Divine life forever in heaven!  The Transfiguration is not only a vision of how God sees Jesus, and thus how He really is – it’s how God sees us as well, and thus how we really are!

Some 750,000 people walk beneath the murals in Grand Central Station each and every day - each of them the beloved son or daughter of God - any one of them, at any given moment, carrying some cross and wondering if God is really there; if He really notices or cares.

I love the thought that even just a few of them might be reminded, looking up at those backward constellations, that God really does see us, and really does care ... but that how we humans see things isn’t as important as how God sees them.  

This Lent, may our prayer, fasting, and almsgiving train our eyes to see as God sees, and our hearts and minds to act as the beloved sons and daughters that we are.