Reflection for the Second Sunday of Lent
This year for our Lenten reflections, we will focus on the entrance antiphons for each of the Sundays of Lent. These antiphons belong to the Church’s liturgical heritage and are proper to the Mass to which they belong, setting the tone of the liturgical celebration. Even if your parish does not sing them, they can be fruitfully meditated on before or after the Mass.
Entrance Antiphon for the Second Sunday of Lent
Of you my heart has spoken: seek His face. It is your face, O Lord, that I seek. Hide not your face from me.
V. The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear?
(Psalm 27:8-9, 1)
Perhaps after a full week of Lent, we’ve been given the grace to struggle successfully or to feel the weight of sin or human frailty. Maybe the latter will come with another week of fasting and penance. Maybe we didn’t need Lent to fill our heart with trouble: we want to understand why we or others are going through difficulties, through suffering, with no seeming purpose. We need only to open the newspaper before a headline moves us to inwardly cry, “God! Why?”
God! Where is your face? Your truth? Your power?
If we try to imagine almighty God as a human being, perhaps an old man with a beard, to ask him this question, we could accidentally slip into heresy — God, after all, has no literal face, although certain monks in John Cassian’s time simply could not conceive of God without a human face (see Cassian’s Tenth Conference). Certainly, without being heretics, artists attempted to depict the Creator in this way, but we need not conceive of God visually to demand answers when the heart moves us. We quite often confine God into human bounds, thinking God thinks as we do and has our limited conceptions and biases of justice and mercy. But God is infinite and is Love, and Justice, and Mercy. How then do we seek his face, seek to understand something so beyond ourselves? Perhaps we wish God would speak to us out of the whirlwind as he spoke to Job so we too would have no further questions. God does more than speak to us out of the whirlwind—he shows his face in his Sacred Humanity.
We can encounter this Holy Face in the Gospels. Today’s Gospel reading presents Matthew’s account of the Transfiguration. To place ourselves in the scene, we need to remember that the Transfiguration was preceded by an exhausting climb up a mountain with Peter, James, and John. Jesus probably didn’t say, “Look guys, I want you to undertake this arduous ascent so that you can see me in my glory and have enough strength to face the upcoming trials.” He might have just said, “Come walk with me. You might want to bring a skin of wine”. Or maybe he didn’t even tell them to come, the three apostles who saw him leave very early in the morning just followed him until he turned around and said, “Yes, accompany me.”
The three disciples had been fishermen and were also hardened from their travels that their new ministries had led them on, but the mountain they were climbing was quite tall. Did they wish they’d stayed with the other disciples as they lugged for breath up the scraggly slope? Maybe James wanted to strangle his younger brother who was fit enough to climb without losing wind and provide a steady stream of questions and conversation with Jesus, who patiently listened and answered until John was either tired or content enough to be silent or perhaps aware enough that Jesus was talking to His Father and it would be wise to try to pray as well.
Over time, the silence of the disciples became a little tense. Why were they going up the mountain? Surely Jesus didn’t mean to go all the way to the top? Yet another hour later it became clear that they would continue until they reached the top, which might be another few hours. What would have been on the disciples’ minds? Perhaps questioning what were they doing wasting time on a hike and worrying about all the people who needed healing? Perhaps they trusted Jesus enough at that point and were happy to have the day off ministry just to be with him. Jesus looked determined enough that no one questioned the path or the pace, though they did move more slowly when it was clear that someone needed to catch his breath. Their tired bodies ached when they reached the top and, exhausted, the disciples found the most comfortable looking patches of ground to stretch out their worn limbs.
The change in light roused them from the sleep that they had very quickly given into. In front of them stood the most beautiful, most human, most perfect man with shining garments speaking to two other men, one who curiously had stone tablets? Moses? And Elijah? But by far the most impressive figure was this man in the middle, whose troubled majestic countenance seemed to take comfort in the words the others spoke. The man’s glory was such that the disciples forgot their exhaustion, questions and complaints they’d stored from the harsh climb, as well as their selfish ambitions to establish a new kingdom and the threats and danger they’d been in on their way to Jerusalem that had cast a cloud of fear over the company What else could have been better than dwelling in this glory? Realizing that the glorious person in the middle was Jesus, the disciples were filled with awe, and, as was typical when he was overcome with emotion, Peter felt the need to speak. With undisguised desire and awe, he blurts, “Lord, it is good that we are here”. Then the Father’s voice filled them with such fear in the realization of their littleness and nothingness that they fell to the ground. As if stunned, they lay still. No longer shining like the sun, Jesus had to touch them to encourage them even to raise their eyes.
As is typical, the journey back down the mountain seemed to take a quarter of the time it had taken to go up. The image of the transfigured face of Jesus filled them with such longing for that glory. Their minds could not quite understand how face of Jesus as they saw him now, as others saw him, as the smiling carpenter, as the compassionate healer, as the frustrated rabbi, was the same face that was transfigured on the mountain.
Perhaps at that point the disciples didn’t understand that seeing Our Lord’s transfigured face was more than a reward for a hard day’s climb up the mountain that would help them see the divinity in their teacher who was the most human a human could be. Indeed, since they didn’t understand as Jesus cautioned them to not tell of the event until he had died and risen again, they could not understand how seeing his glorified face was to prepare them for when it would be covered by bruises, spittle, blood, and sweat. No faces could be externally more different than that glorious visage and the bruised one which gazed with sorrow on Peter as the cock crowed or that of the marred face that looked down on John from the cross.
However, at no point did Jesus cease to be God. Perhaps we are going through a situation and see only the bloody suffering of the cross. The glory and overwhelming beauty of His Face is hidden from us. Then we say with the psalmist, “Of you my heart has spoken: seek His face. It is your face, O Lord, that I seek. Hide not your face from me.” Lord, give me your understanding to see the glory when all I see is the cross. Lord, you chose to suffer and be obedient! Lord, help me to trust that this cross is necessary and leads to your glory.
Finally, in the theme of the National Eucharistic Revival, we can also think of the face of Jesus hidden in the Eucharist. As in the hymn Adoro te devote, “In Cruce latebat sola Deitas, At hic latet simul et Humanitas.” On the Cross, Jesus’ divinity lay hidden; in the Eucharist, his humanity is hidden too. However, we acknowledge both in both! Whether we feel like we are climbing Mt. Tabor or Mt. Calvary, whether we are trying to see the glory hidden on the cross or under the appearance of bread, we ask for faith and courage to seek His Face!