THIS IS MY SON. LISTEN TO HIM

II SUNDAY OF LENT - Lk 9:28-36

The history of salvation, as the Bible presents it, started with Abraham. Indeed, with Abraham, we find a new type of religious experience, in which the relationship with God is based on faith. That’s why Abraham is considered the father of all those who walk by faith.

What is most basic in faith is the relationship with God, a relationship of friendship and love, based on trust and total confidence in God.

God takes the initiative. He comes, interacts and intervenes. And his intervention produces trust; it is the beginning of a friendship. God made friends with Abraham. 

Like so many people today, Abraham was a man on the move. He had accompanied his father from Ur in what is present day Iraq, moving to Haran and from there, answering God’s call, he went to live in the land of Canaan.

Being always on the move, it was easier for him to understand his relationship with God as a journey, the journey of his life in which God is his companion, giving meaning and presenting a goal for that journey.

God’s intervention started with a call, and that call was accompanied of a promise. Abraham answered the call and, in an act of faith, he believed the promise and put his trust on the one who was making the promise. God accepted Abraham’s faith as an act of righteousness. Like Abraham, we are justified by faith.

However, faith does not abolish the quest and the search. In the journey of faith, we advance through unknown paths, guided only by our trust in the Lord. Even though we trust, we interrogate ourselves, and ask questions to the Lord. And Abraham asked: How am I going to know? (Gn 15:8). Faith does not stop us from the search to understand; in fact, that search has always been part of the journey of faith. In an effort to understand, we ask all kinds of questions, even though we cannot find the answer, at least not a definitive answer. If we read the book of Job, we find plenty of questions being put before God by the suffering Job. In the end, he did not get an answer that excludes any other question. It was the same with Abraham. God did not give him a straight answer. Instead, he made a promise to Abraham and sealed that promise with a covenant, by which he committed himself to fulfil that promise. That was enough for Abraham. 

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In the Gospel, we find an experience of God, which is only possible in faith and in prayer. With him, he took his closest disciples: Peter, John and James.

While in prayer, the glory of God made itself present, a glory that can be only fully made manifest in Jesus Christ. In prayer, the disciples entered into contemplation and God made himself present to them.

Throughout the Bible, the mountain plays an important role in God’s manifestations. There we come close to heaven, and all the senses of our soul become much more alert and open to the presence and influence of the Spirit of God. And this experience of the glory of God is mediated through Jesus, being at the same time an experience of the glory of the Son of God, Jesus Christ.

While going through this experience of God’s love, all fulfilling, the disciples lost track of time and space, and they were so immersed in God, that they desired nothing else, but to go on, making it an everlasting experience.

Jesus’ transfiguration on the mountain is an affirmation that he is the Way - the only way to the Father, and so the only way to life and truth. The Father confirmed it, as he had done at the baptism:

This is my Son, the Chosen One. Listen to him. (Lk 9:35)