SUNDAY, 2nd Sunday of Lent (A) Mt 17:1-9
One of the characteristics of the modern world is overcoming. The words progress, development, innovation, transformation, evolution, have a connotation of irreversible change. This is contributed to by advances in science, techniques, impressive discoveries, exploration of the universe, deepening within the human being…
Youth movements, intellectuals, thinkers, revolutionary systems also encourage this desire for change. A more just system of society is sought, new forms are experimented with to respond to current problems, a global, integral culture is created, this world is transformed into a new world; the utopia of achieving another possible world, more habitable for all.
Hope breaks when day by day we experience the reality that prevents and makes it impossible to achieve the longed-for desire for improvement, for change for the better. Established systems based on power, money, oppression, discrimination, and violence of all kinds swallow up the noblest concerns, the best wishes. This always causes disillusionment, skepticism, and what is worse, the acceptance that the world cannot be any other way.
This second Sunday of Lent suggests the idea that in life, it is only possible to transfigure if we are capable of discovering the transforming Presence of Jesus in ourselves on the path we are living, the ascent to the mountain, a symbol of the Divine and not losing hope in a better present-future that awaits us. It is the ascent of consciousness, of inner knowledge, to a deeper and profound level, beyond the external signs with which this story is narrated in the three synoptics.
It is written following the theophanies of the OT with the elements common to all of them: mountain, face, and radiant garments, luminous cloud, voice that is heard. It is not a historical account. It is likely a post-Paschal narrative that looks back to the earthly life of Jesus in order to communicate who Jesus was, what the disciples had experienced after his death and what had given them Life.
The narrative expresses the divine presence in Jesus with a language that everyone could understand. What is of God in him, in each one, is precisely the authentic humanity, being bread and becoming bread for others; total self-giving. The divine, the essential of every person, is invisible and cannot be perceived by the senses. It is the DNA of their Being.
The voice coming from on high overwhelms the disciples: ‘Listen to Him‘. Jesus, presence of God, today, among men and women: ‘ascends’ with you so that you may be witness to the encounter with God, ‘approaches’, ‘touches us’, ‘raises us up’, ‘tells us: do not be afraid’. In his baptism, and now, here, happens the essential fact of his life: he is experienced as Beloved Son. Have you stopped to think what it really means for you to be a Beloved Son/Daughter? Do we listen to it? How to live today in that way?
‘Listen to Him!‘ Not to Moses, nor to Elijah, nor to Peter. Does the Church listen to Him?
There are no excuses. The Catholic Church is afraid to listen to Jesus. A fear that is paralyzing the project of the Kingdom of God in its ecclesial visibility in its four fundamental tasks: the diaconate carried out in the sign of service; the koinonía lived in the sign of communion; the kerigma proclaimed in the sign of the Word and the liturgy celebrated in the sign of celebrations.
Where there is fear, there is no faithfulness to Jesus who, among other things, said: “No one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the wineskins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the skins are ruined; but new wine must go into new wineskins” (Mt 9:17; Mk 2:22; Lk 5:37-38).
In the Summary regarding the study of the Female Diaconate made public on 4.12.25, the female diaconate is rejected. What shameful argument have they put forward? *Diakonia* is service, love-charity, promotion, education, liberation, closeness. All called to live it every day. Without making exceptions of people.
What does the Church understand by *Koinonía* which is: communion, community, brotherhood, unity, shared responsibility, communication? Women have been practicing it since the origins. How long will the dismissal of women in the Church, the non-recognition of our rights, continue? Tradition cannot be a barrier to exclude us.
Who proclaims the Kerigma which is: word, announcement, evangelization, catechesis, preaching, homily in the Church? Women and men from the origins of Christianity have proclaimed it even risking their own lives. We remember some fundamental quotes:
1 Cor 3,16-23: “Do you not know that you are temples of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?”
1 Pe 2,9: “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people acquired by God to announce the wonders of Him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”
Gal 3,26-29: “All of you are children of God through faith in Christ Jesus. All who have been incorporated into Christ through baptism have clothed yourselves in Christ. There is no distinction anymore between Jew and Gentile, slave and free, male and female, because you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are all children of Abraham, then you are heirs of the promise.
Is there anything more to explain? Aren’t we baptized and anointed by the same Holy Spirit? Can’t we preach, speak our word as baptized people? Don’t we possess the royal priesthood of the faithful?
The liturgy is: Eucharist, sacraments, celebrations, feast, prayer, memory. The breaking of bread in the primitive church was the celebration that kept the memory of Jesus. All gave thanks to God, blessed the bread and wine, and shared it among all. “I am referring to Jesus of Nazareth, anointed by God with the power of the Holy Spirit, who went about doing good and healing those afflicted by the devil; for God was with him” (Acts 10:34-38). From there, it passed to celebrations where one person proclaims the word, consecrates, and the others listen passively.
We have transformed the Eucharist, which is memory, feast, creativity, novelty, radical equality, and subversion of the model inaugurated by Jesus, into an unequal, boring rite, where young people look at our faith with total indifference because it is expressed in an obsolete language, where almost no one vibrates with emotion for what is done or said.
The Church is afraid of the freedom of believers. They are uneasy that the people of God reclaim the word or that lay people, exercising their shared responsibility, pose questions they do not know how to answer or do not want to share. There is also suspicion of religious people who, faithful to the prophetic charism they have received from God, seek other ways to celebrate and live the faith.
Do we fear hearing what the Spirit stirs up in the church? Are we not invited to give testimony of the Spirit of Jesus with boldness, courage, and consistency?
Jesus is still alive in the midst of his Church. As God’s people, we believe that he continues to tell us: “Rise up. Do not be afraid.”
Pope Francis reflected on “the nature of the Church,” which is not “a closed fortress,” but “a tent” capable of “expanding to receive everyone”: it is a Church on the way, “a Church with doors always open.”
The Church is “on the way out” or it is not Church, and is “called to always be the open house of the Father.” So, if someone wants to follow a motion of the Spirit and approaches seeking God, “they will not find the coldness of closed doors.” It is a “people’s Church of God that makes everyone brothers and sisters: an immense fraternal community, which takes sides in favor of the victims and calls by name the perpetrators of injustices.”
It is the Spirit, Francis added, who in fact “helps to overcome closures and tensions, and works in hearts so that they achieve unity in truth and in goodness, so that they reach unity.”
“Jesus did not establish the conditions to be a bishop or presbyter. Let us not forget that the concrete origin of the ministries is in the Church and not in Jesus (Juan A. Estrada).
*I ask the Lord to strengthen in us and in all Christians, especially in the bishops and presbyters, the desire and responsibility for communion, dialogue, and encounter with all brothers and sisters, without exception, to manifest the fruitfulness of the Church, called to be a happy mother of many children.*
We are transformed life in which all of us are involved.
Shalom!
Mª Luisa Paret
English version translated with AI