Homily for 2nd Sunday of Lent

Homily

2nd Sunday of Lent

5th March 2023

Our focus today is on the transfiguration of Jesus on Mount Tabor. No-one knows when this festival first took place, but it has been celebrated in Jerusalem since the 7th century. The feast had been celebrated throughout most of the Byzantine Empire over the following two centuries.

Mount Tabor can be found close to the Sea of Galilee being roughly eleven miles away. Surprisingly, Mount Tabor is just six feet taller that Slieve Gullion, around about 18 hundred feet, so the view would be similar for someone standing on top of Slieve Gullion and looking towards Dundalk Bay, as it would be standing on top of Mount Tabor to look towards the Sea of Galilee. Only a bit warmer, and perhaps sunnier. Though the views from Slieve Gullion on a clear day are awe inspiring.

I have been up Slieve Gullion many times, often with my camera. My wife often tells me off for not simply enjoy the view without peering down the barrel of a lens with an image framed in a rectangle. One eye closed and the other one mostly restricted to a small shape in the centre with everything else black. In the days of the horse drawn cart, you would have said I was blinkered.

In many ways, today, we no longer look into a view finder because our cameras are our mobile phones, but everything else beyond the 5 centimetre by 10 centimetre frame may as well not be there because most of our lives are absorbed by the stills, texts or videos that are displayed there.

A friend of mine recently sent me an article with photograph of a crowd of people behind a barrier at an event. All but one person held up their phones, capturing images. All but one saw the whole even through a narrow lens. The one without the camera, the caption said, had really experienced the event fully, through sight, sound and feeling because they were fully present in the moment, simply being there. Not worrying about having something for the future to look back on as a simple memory. They just wanted to soak up the experience using their own, in-built senses.

Jesus had taken three of his friends, Peter, James, and John up to the top of Mount Tabor. While they were all alone Jesus’s whole being was completely transformed into something most beautiful and spiritual, his face emitting so much light he shone like the sun and his clothes became as bright as white light. Beside Jesus suddenly stood Moses and Elijah talking with him. Peter was amazed to be there saying ‘it is wonderful for us to be here’. Then his mind, like so many of us got distracted and he started to think about the future. In his head he was thinking through what he would need to build three tents in honour of each of these holy men.