We are all called to the way of the cross

2nd Sunday of Lent, Year A
First Reading: Gen 12:1-4
Second Reading: 2 Tim 1:8b-10
Gospel Reading: Mt 17:1-9
By Rev. V.J. Hawkswell

This Sunday’s First Reading describes how God called Abram. By this call, says the Catechism of the Catholic Church, God began gathering his people into his one Church.

The Gospel Reading describes how Jesus chose Peter, James, and John and “was transfigured before them.” This event, just six days after Peter had recognized Jesus as the Son of God and Jesus had chosen Peter as the rock on which he would build his Church, “confirms Peter’s confession,” says the Catechism.

Thus Abram and Peter were called and chosen for pivotal roles in God’s saving plan. Are we envious, or are we thankful that we ourselves are not chosen and called in this way? Is it a blessing or a curse to be chosen?

The truth is that God has chosen us; he does choose us and calls us “with a holy calling,” as St. Paul says in the Second Reading. The Catechism confirms that we are all, no matter our state of life, “called to holiness,” to “the fullness of Christian life and to the perfection of charity.” As Jesus said, “You must be made perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

Holiness means “ever more intimate union with Christ,” the Catechism explains. We enter it through the sacraments. In Christ’s Mystical Body, we enter into the intimate union of the Holy Trinity, and in the Holy Trinity we find the happiness for which God made us.

However, the Catechism stresses, “the way of perfection passes by way of the cross. There is no holiness without renunciation and spiritual battle.”

Renunciation is precisely the business of Lent. Through self-denial, we cultivate detachment from this world in order to become more firmly attached to heaven.

“Many people today—even some Christians—misunderstand Christian self-denial,” says Scott Hahn in his book Lord, Have Mercy. “They try to dismiss it as psychologically sick, world-hating, dour, joyless, and masochistic.”

There are two misunderstandings here, he says.

First, Jesus himself said, “If a man wishes to come after Me, he must deny his very self, take up his cross, and begin to follow in My footsteps.” Self-denial “is not optional”; there is no “alternative, self-indulgent way of salvation.”

Second, self-denial is not “a denial of the goodness of the world. Christians sacrifice the best of things not because they think the world is evil and must be put to death, but because they know the world is very good—so good that it can distract us from what’s far better.” We are tempted to enjoy its good and pleasant pastimes rather than going to confession or Mass or visiting our grandmother in the nursing home.

Even sin is not usually a choice of evil over good, but a preference for a lesser good over a greater good. It involves “an unhealthy attachment” to God’s creation, leading us to choose created goods in preference to their Creator, who is goodness itself. We must be purified from this “unhealthy attachment” before we can enter heaven: either here on earth, or after death in the state called purgatory.

The Church helps us cultivate the habit of detachment by commanding us to assume penances such as giving up meat on Fridays. Penance can also be voluntary: prayer, offerings, works of mercy, service of neighbour, or sacrifices. However, the best penance is “the patient acceptance of the cross we must bear,” the Catechism says; that is, the penance God sends us.

In the Transfiguration, two figures appeared, talking with Jesus: Moses (representing the Law) and Elijah (representing the prophets). St. Luke says that they were discussing “his passage, which he was about to fulfill in Jerusalem.”

This Sunday’s Preface explains that Jesus wanted to teach his apostles “through the Law and the prophets” that he had “first to suffer and so come to the glory of his resurrection.”

Father Hawkswell is again teaching The Catholic Faith in Plain English with new insights, in print and YouTube form at beholdvancouver.org/catholic-faith-course. He is also teaching the course in person on Sundays (2–4 p.m. at the John Paul II Pastoral Centre, 4885 Saint John Paul II Way, 33rd Avenue and Willow Street, Vancouver) and Mondays (10 a.m.–noon in St. Anthony’s Church Hall, 2347 Inglewood Avenue, West Vancouver). The title of next week’s talk is The First Three Commandments.

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