LENT, TIME OF FAITHFUL JOURNEY WITH GOD.

February 28, 2021
Second Sunday of Lent - B.

Readings: Gn 22:1-2, 9a, 10-13, 15-18; Ps 116:10, 15, 16-17, 18-19; Rom 8:31b-34; Mk 9:2-10.

A Sicilian proverb asks, “What good is faith if you don't live by it?” And another Arabic proverb adds, “The strength of the heart comes from the soundness of the faith.”

Faith is what disposes man to listen to God and obey him. Without faith, man lives on his own, obeying the solo dictate and decision of his conscience. It is only with faith that we can decide to let go of our own and embrace something greater than us.

The Lenten journey takes all its meaning when we understand it as a pilgrimage in faith and obedience to God. And faith becomes the reason for us to pay a listening ear to God's will.

The liturgical readings of this 2nd Sunday of Lent in the year B are a call to root firmly our faith in God and Christ. The first reading opens this call with the emblematic character of Abraham known as our "father in faith". Abraham needed nothing more than faith to walk the road the Lord God showed him and obey to his will. And that is what the Lord asks also of every Christian. We read that God called Abraham and asked him to offer his only son, Isaac in sacrifice to him. When we try to read back how Isaac was conceived and how much that cost Abraham and his wife Sarah, it is only faith that can lead to obeying that divine order. Abraham, however, obeyed and was ready to offer the boy in sacrifice. We read, at the end of the passage that, because he did not deny offering his Isaac, God blessed him and made him Father of many.

Faith opens man to God's blessing. He who sets firmly his trust in God miss of nothing and God never forsake him. When a man agrees to sacrifice his little and only Isaac to God, He blesses him in return with more Isaac.

Abraham was the prefiguration of what God did for us with Christ. He offered him, his only Begotten Son in sacrifice for us. St. Paul presents it well in the second reading. We read that "God did not spare his own Son..." So, if he, God is with us, no one and nothing can be against us. He will always provide all that is good for us and will never ask what is beyond our capacity.

The God who is always with us, in the Gospel makes a call to us. He first introduces his Son to us and invites us to pay a listening ear to him, that is to say, to have faith in him and obey him. Through the transfiguration of Jesus on the Tabor and the divine order that followed, we are exhorted to see our Lenten journey as a journey of transfiguration and walking through faith. It is the best time for every Christian to be like Abraham our father in faith. We are called to be people who know how to listen faithfully to God.

The instruction is clear, "This is My Beloved Son in whom I am pleased, listen to him." We live in a world and in societies where many have lost not only the capacity to obey faithfully but also the aptitude of listening. We say to be a society of communication, but though we hear many things, very little do we listen. Our communications are made of monolog, a kind of 'one-man-show'. We talk and talk and talk, but we listen neither to ourselves nor to others. We live in noises and so many cacophonies that we end becoming deaf or aphonic.

This Lent sounds like a challenge to cultivate a listening attitude. It is before all to listen to God as Abraham did and so grow in his faith. It is a call also to listen, not to what leads us away from God, but to what brings us closer to him. Jesus, at the transfiguration, was in that close and intimate communication with his Father who gave the Law through Moses and sent the Prophets represented by Elijah. And the communication became more effective when the voice of the Father thundered from Heaven. Let us make ours this invitation today: listen to God with faith and obey him.

May our Lenten journey take us to live God's word and live by it. The Bible should thus, be our companion in this special time. May each of us fast of the noises of this world and social media, and listen to God who speaks to us in His word contained in the Holy Scriptures.