8 March 2020
Second Sunday of Lent
Of you my heart has spoken, Seek his face.
It is your face, O Lord, that I seek;
hide not your face from me. (Ps 27:8-9)
Our hearts, made by God and for God, are restless until they rest in Him, as St. Augustine says. Our ultimate rest in Him is what we hope to enter eternally in heaven. Yet, even now there is a peace that is offered to our hearts through our deepest desire for seeking and finding the Lord where He is to be found. How are we to find the Lord? By listening to His voice which calls and beckons us to Him. Abraham, our father in faith, does this, as we hear in the first reading. Though he is already advanced in years and replete with material comforts, there is a restlessness that such experience and possessions still has not assuaged. Only attending to the call of the Lord to leave the comfort of homeland and seek the Lord’s promises, only listening to the voice which comes from our true homeland offers Abraham some peace, even though the invitation will also involve many challenges, as we see in Abraham’s life. Yet, through them all, seeking the Lord in a strange land is far more satisfying than trying to be content with only himself in his hometown. The apostles, too, overcome by the glory of the Transfiguration of Christ, are given a call that remains with them: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to Him.” (Mt 17:5) Having their ears more and more attuned to the voice of Christ is what keeps the apostles close to the Lord, even as the shadow of the Passion begins to loom larger and larger before them.
How can we listen to the Lord? How are we to seek Him? In the second reading we hear St. Paul’s summary of Christ’s call to us: He saved us and called us to holiness of life. (2 Tim 1:9) All throughout this week, the challenging nature of that call is brought before us. As going to the Land of Promise was not easy for Abraham, as hearing about the coming Passion was not easy for the apostles, so too seeking holiness of life promises no ease for us. Yet, as Benedict XVI famously said to pilgrims in 2005 “The ways of the Lord are not easy, but we were not created for an easy life, but for great things, for goodness.” Let us listen to the Lord this week, and so receive proper directions for seeking Him, and entering into true rest.