Where time stands still: The gift of hope
Homily for the Second Sunday of Lent, 2025 (Year C)
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The holy season of Lent calls us to prepare our hearts and souls, by God’s grace, to celebrate the mysteries of Holy Week and the great Paschal Triduum of our Lord’s death and resurrection. This year, the Jubilee Year 2025, is one of those happy years in which virtually all Christians—Catholics, Protestants, and Eastern Orthodox and other Eastern churches, including those Eastern Churches who don’t follow the same calendar we do—will celebrate Jesus’ resurrection on the same day, April 20.
Easter won’t align this year with another related celebration: the Jewish Passover, the holy day for which Jesus went to Jerusalem to celebrate the Last Supper with his disciples before being arrested and crucified. Even here, there’s a point of contact: The eight-day Passover season begins this year on the evening of April 12th, but it ends on the evening of April 20. This reminds us that Jesus’ death and resurrection are our Passover, and as the sacrifice of the Passover lamb in Egypt was linked to the liberation of the Israelites from slavery to the Egyptians, so Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross and his resurrection at Passover time sets us free from slavery to sin and death.
And just as we’re now preparing in Lent to take part in the commemoration of the Paschal Triduum, so our Lord in today’s Gospel seeks to prepare Peter, James, and John for his actual passion and death. He’s been telling them it’s coming, but he knows they don’t get it; they aren’t remotely ready. So before they experience the appalling darkness of Good Friday, he gives them a foreshadowing of the glory of Easter in this extraordinary mountaintop experience that we call the Transfiguration.
Mountaintops are special places. When you look up at a mountain, you see a place where heaven and earth seem to meet. For thousands of years people have climbed mountains to encounter God, and many holy places, temples, and even churches today are built on hills or high points. Jerusalem, the holy city, where the Temple was in Jesus’ day, is built on a mountain. Moses himself, after leading the exodus from Egypt, brings the people to a mountain, called Horeb or Sinai, and goes up the mountain with three companions to talk with God for 40 days. While Moses is up there, the top of the mountain is covered with the glory-cloud of the Lord’s presence—and, when he comes down, Moses’ face is shining after speaking with God.
Peter, James, and John could hardly help recalling that story after Jesus, taking the three of them up a mountain to talk to God, starts shining like Moses on Mount Sinai, and even talking to Moses himself, along with Elijah. It’s no wonder they were afraid. Mark tells us they were afraid even before the cloud—the bright cloud, according to Matthew. Yet Peter in particular seems to think that this experience will continue for some time. Perhaps 40 days, like Moses on Mount Sinai. Peter may even want to prolong it. As Moses and Elijah are about to depart, Peter talks as if they’re just starting: “Master, it’s good that we’re here. Let’s make tents for you and Moses and Elijah.” So you’ll be more comfortable in the days ahead. Of course, as so often, Peter is wrong; he “did not know what he was saying.” Before he knows it, the moment is over. Moses and Elijah are gone, Jesus is no longer shining, and it’s time to go back down the mountain.
Have you ever had a moment in life where you seemed to touch the infinite? Perhaps an experience of joy or fulfillment so rare and overwhelming that it was almost frightening? Some people have experiences like that on mountaintops or at the ocean; for others, while listening to great music. It may happen at the birth of a child, or, sometimes, in prayer or at Mass. We want these moments never to end—and in a way they don’t. Time stands still at these moments, and they become part of who we are.
An extraordinary experience that occurs during prayer or at Mass can feel like turning a corner, like we’ve arrived at a new level in our spiritual lives. We walk away with our faces practically shining, and we think, “This is great! I’m going to do this every week, or every day!” But then lightning doesn’t strike twice—time doesn’t stand still again—and we wonder what went wrong. Maybe nothing went wrong. Maybe we were just setting up tents on a mountaintop where God never meant us to stay. Maybe that mountaintop experience was meant to strengthen us to come back down the mountain and get on with carrying our cross and following the Lord.
Jesus wants to give Peter, James, and John hope for the road ahead. They’re going to need it. We all need hope. We’re called to “journey together in hope,” as Pope Francis put it in his message for Lent 2025, the Jubilee Year of Hope. Hope can be in short supply. The world is full of terrors and heartache, grief and anxiety. Sometimes God seems remote—though he’s closer than we can imagine, as he does remind us, at least occasionally, in ways we can cling to when the road is darkest.
We come to Mass seeking light. Not every Mass is going to feel like a mountaintop experience; we don’t see the glory of God around us, like Peter, James, and John, except in images and symbols. Yet we do touch eternity here. Heaven and earth meet here, above all in the Blessed Sacrament, the heavenly presence of Jesus on earth.
Here we step outside the ordinary world, leaving behind earthly cares, worries, and desires; we lift up our hearts above mundane things, joining our voices with angels and archangels, and enter into the heavenly celebration and worship of God. Here, Here time stands still, if we open our heart, our will, our imagination, our spirit to the gift that God wants to give us. A gift we then take back down to the mountain, to face all that lies outside these walls strengthened by God’s gift. The gift of himself. The gift of hope.
Wonderful homily! I loved being able to watch you, and the whole church.