Second Sunday of Lent
Readings: GENESIS 15:5–12, 17–18, PSALM 26(27):1, 7–9, 13–14, PHILIPPIANS 3:17–4:1, LUKE 9:28–36
16 March 2025
Gospel Reflection: Climbing to contemplatio
The Transfiguration tells us everything we need to know about contemplative prayer. Every Christian is capable of becoming a contemplative, but most of us don’t get there in this life because we’re not prepared to climb the mountain of sacrifice and obedience. The way to contemplative prayer demands discipline and detachment. Most of us are haphazard in our prayer. We make a good effort for a few days, or even a few weeks, but we soon drop off. We permit the cares of life to weigh us down. We’re too easily discouraged and distracted.
The few who really persevere with prayer—who pray in season and out of season, indifferent to desolation—eventually reach the summit. The view at the top changes everything. They take in an amazing panorama, and they contemplate Jesus in his glory. Contemplatio is a gift freely given by God. It is not the fruit of human effort, nor a reward for human effort. But we are incapable of receiving the gift God gives us without expending human effort. “Peter and his companions were heavy with sleep” (Lk 9:32). We, too, will be exhausted if and when the Lord reveals his glory to us.
Contemplatio is a gift freely given by God. It is not the fruit of human effort, nor a reward for human effort. But we are incapable of receiving the gift God gives us without expending human effort.
The Gospel gives the impression that the transfiguration alters Jesus: “The aspect of his face was changed” (Lk 9:27). But commentators who have reached the summit of contemplative prayer locate the change elsewhere. St Maximus the Confessor suggests the apostles’ senses were transfigured. St Gregory Palamas writes that the apostles’ understanding was illuminated. In the transfiguration, Jesus showed himself as he really is, and as he always was, The transfiguration doesn’t lift a veil covering Jesus, it lifts the veils covering the apostles.
Contemplative prayer changes one’s view of the world. Where others see dimly or not at all, the contemplative recognises Jesus in events and in people. It doesn’t compare to the face-to-face vision of God we will attain in heaven, but it is still something we should seek fervently. Just as he invited Peter, James and John, Jesus invites each one of us to climb the summit. Mount Tabor is a lonely place, removed from the world’s hustle and bustle. The prerequisites of contemplatio are not just discipline and detachment, but also interior silence. Jesus asks us to find a few minutes of blessed solitude every day. External stillness helps foster internal recollection.
In this pursuit of contemplatio, some people are called to leave the world, but contemplative prayer is not exclusive to monasteries and convents. Peter is eager to stay on the mountain, but Jesus leads them back to the plain—to their regular life. We can aspire to be contemplatives in the world: amidst the noise and activity of work and family. We do not isolate ourselves. We can immerse ourselves in God while also throwing ourselves into serving our neighbour.
The ascent to contemplatio requires continual metanoia.
Contemplatives attract others to Christ by exuding the peace of Christ—a peace the world cannot give. That’s the Lord’s parting gift to us (Jn 14:27). When we attain it, everything takes on a different hue. But to unwrap this gift—to really benefit from it—we need to foster interior silence and pray every day as circumstances permit, which in turn demands discipline, and detachment, and patience. Patience might be the most important thing. We must be patient with ourselves. The climb is arduous; we’ll often slip and fall. We begin again. And after that? We begin again. The ascent to contemplatio requires continual metanoia.
Fr John Corrigan
Spiritual Direction: You can become all flame
This is such a beautiful account from the life of Jesus. It tells us that there is always more than we can see; there is always more that we can be; there is always more to understand. God is limitless. We so often try to make God fit into our own definition and understanding of what and who he should be, when in fact there is so much more to him. There is also so much more to us.
The disciples had no idea that Jesus was actually capable of sitting down and having a conversation with Moses and Elijah. They had no idea that they were actually capable of seeing Moses and Elijah! I bet you don’t think that about yourself, either, and yet it is true—you are more than capable of seeing God and the wonders of God. We just have to train our eyes and hearts.
There is a lovely story from the lives of the Desert Fathers and Mothers. These were people who knew there was more to life, and went out into the deserts of Egypt to find God. Don’t be fooled into thinking that one has to go to a remote desert to find God; our own lives are desert enough in the suburbs of our cities! It’s the intention of the heart that matters.
Anyway, the story goes that Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph. He said to him, “So I keep my little rule of life, I pray, I give alms, and I try and help my neighbour. What more should I do?”
Had we been Abba Lot, we could have said, “So I am in the local prayer group, I have joined the St Vincent de Paul Society, I go to Adoration every Friday, I am a daily Mass goer, I really try to speak well of people, and I read the Scriptures. What more can I do?” Abba Joseph in reply lifted his arms and stretched out his hands, and his fingers became like ten lamps of fire. “If you want to,” he said, “You can become all flame.” He might as well have said, “If you want to, you can become all transfiguration.”
The fire of God is spreading among you, and you will take it home with you.
How can we do this? Our Gospel story today gives us an idea. Jesus was in holy conversation with Moses and Elijah. How kind of the Father to send them to Jesus, it must have given him a real boost and an affirmation of his mission! How often he does the same with us, only we do not always recognise the Elijah’s and Moses’ in our lives. They speak to us of deeper things, they leave us better than they found us, and they tell us there is more to life than what we can see. We human beings were never meant to live in isolation. We are one with everything and every person that lives. “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a piece of the main,” wrote John Donne.
Some of you are meeting right now in a group. You are sharing one another’s faith and insights, which may differ from your own. The fire of God is spreading among you, and you will take it home with you. You are becoming all flame—transfiguration is happening. The mystic, Teilhard de Chardin SJ wrote: “Someday, after we have mastered the winds, the waves and gravity, we shall harness for God energies of love. Then for the second time in the history of the world, we will have discovered fire.”
Mother Hilda Scott OSB
Artist Spotlight
The Transfiguration of Christ (c. 1515–1516) II Pordenone (AKA Giovanni Antonio Pordenone) (1484–1539). Tempera on Panel 93cm x 64cm. Pinacoteca di Brera Milan, Italy. Public Domain.
Christ’s trial of last Sunday is followed by today’s triumph. It is a lesson for us—agony followed by ecstasy. Peter, James and John would witness the agony in the garden, just as we will face tragedies in our lives. At Christ’s urging, they climb Mount Tabor “to pray” (Lk 9:28). Now, this does not happen until Christ first predicts his passion. The true interpretation can only be discovered through prayer. When dealing with life, we are dealing with mystery.
With Peter, James and John, we have different reactions to the revelation of Christ in our lives. James, on the left of the painting, seems “floored”. John, on the right, is shielding himself from the glory of the event—perhaps he felt unworthy in the truest sense of the word. Yet, it will be he who, after the Resurrection, will become the evangelist of Christ’s divinity. Peter alone gazes at the vision, hoping it will not end. Peter is so much like us. We so often feel comfortable at prayer, but there is a world outside that waits to be comforted.
Giovanni Antonio de’ Sacchis, better known as Il Pordenone after his birthplace, was born in 1484. It is said that his first notable commission came from a grocer in his hometown who challenged him to prove his claim of being able to paint a picture in the same amount of time it took a priest to celebrate Mass. Unfortunately, much of II Pordenone’s work was lost when the Doge’s Palace in Venice was largely destroyed by fires in 1574 and 1577.
His life was as restless as his art. He married twice, and was accused in court of hiring assassins to kill his brother so as to avoid sharing their inheritance. It is said he had some influence on both Titian and Tintoretto. He remains a significant figure in the history of Italian Renaissance art.
Monsignor Graham Schmitzer
Fr John Corrigan is an assistant priest in the Diocese of Ballarat. He currently ministers in the parish of Sunraysia, centred on Mildura in the far north of Victoria, although he is also known in other parts for his “Blog of a Country Priest,” and for regular appearances on Network Ten and Foxtel’s Mass For You At Home.
Mother Hilda Scott OSB is the former abbess of the Benedictine Sisters at Jamberoo Abbey, NSW. Before becoming abbess, she served as prioress, novice mistress, and vocation director, and engaged in spiritual direction, retreat giving, and talks at the Abbey Retreat Cottages. She gained wider recognition through the ABC TV documentary, The Abbey. Before 1990, she was in a different religious order, teaching, working with youth and children, and doing pastoral work in parishes. Just before joining Jamberoo, she lived in a caravan park among the most disadvantaged in society.
Monsignor Graham Schmitzer is the retired parish priest of Immaculate Conception Parish in Unanderra, NSW. He was ordained in 1969 and has served in many parishes in the Diocese of Wollongong. He was also chancellor and secretary to Bishop William Murray for 13 years. He grew up in Port Macquarie and was educated by the Sisters of St Joseph of Lochinvar. For two years he worked for the Department of Attorney General and Justice before entering St Columba’s College, Springwood, in 1962. Mgr Graham loves travelling and has visited many of the major art galleries in Europe.
With thanks to the Diocese of Wollongong, who have supplied this reflection from their publication, METANOIA – Lenten Program 2025. Reproduced with permission.
