Our People

Homily for Second Sunday of Lent

Our Lady Star of the Sea Church, Watson’s Bay

By Most Rev. Anthony Fisher OP
Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney
4/3/2007

In “Give up giving up” (Daily Telegraph 28/03/07) Anglican presbyter Gordon Cheng recently criticized Cardinal George Pell for recommending fasting in Lent. At bottom the Reverend’s complaint was that this is typical of Catholic self-justification by works, whereas true Christians will let Jesus do the justifying. “Fasting to get closer to God is a bit like flapping your wings to go higher when you’re sitting in the plane,” Rev. Cheng wrote. “The only result will be that people seeing you doing it will think you look like a goose.” Before we know it we’ll be like those weirdoes who nail themselves to crosses.

“I’m with the marketers,” the Minister explained, those who prefer us to buy up on chocolate Easter bunnies big time and start eating up early so we’ll eat – and buy – more. For Lent what we should all give up is giving things up, we should fast from fasting, and do whatever we enjoy…

No doubt the Reverend was aiming to be provocative, even humorous. But I wonder if he didn’t touch on a raw nerve for many Catholics today. After all, isn’t all the dour purple stuff of Lent a bit morbid? Isn’t self-denial a bit old-fashioned for the children of the consumer age? Isn’t all the theatre of ashes, fish on Fridays and forty days without chocolate rather trivial?

Well let’s look at today’s Gospel passage (Luke 9:28-36). It comes immediately after the story of Jesus asking his disciples who they think he is. Peter answers with the Church’s first creed: “You are the Christ!” Jesus responds with a prophesy of his Passion, Death and Resurrection and a teaching that: “If anyone wants to be follower of mine, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow me. If you want to save your life you must be willing to give it up; and whoever loses his life for my sake, will save it.”

So it seems that Cardinal Pell and the Catholics are not alone in sounding a bit morbid at times! Jesus, for one, never bought into the contemporary supermarket spirituality. He was inclined to ‘old-fashioned’ talk about self-denial and even gave his disciples instructions on how and when to fast (Mk 2:18-21; 9:29; Mt 6:16-18; Lk 18:9-14), as well as doing it a good bit himself (Mt 4:2). Whatever of that, Jesus goes on to explore with his disciples the mystery of his own identity and the identity of every Christian, the mysterious connection between life and death, suffering and hope, feasting and fasting, Cross and Resurrection.

Surely his most dramatic exploration of this before his Passion was his Transfiguration, the story of which Luke tells us next in his Gospel. Jesus goes up a mountain to pray with the same three friends he will take to pray with him at his Agony in the Garden on the night before he dies. The connection is unmistakable in this account: for Luke even has disciples “heavy with sleep” which seems a most unlikely reaction to seeing their mate and Master go nuclear. It is, of course, a premonition of their grogginess in the Garden on the night of his arrest.

Jesus now gives them a glimpse of his glory to prepare them for the agony ahead. So it is that the Church each year retells the story of the Transfiguration in Lent, so that we too might glimpse his Resurrection before we join him on his Way of the Cross. The crucial point here is: it’s the same people who must witness both life and death, hope and fear, feasting and fasting, the Cross and the Resurrection. There is no avoiding one side of each coin and taking only the other. There are no short cuts to Easter, no skipping the purple to get to the gold.

Who do we say he is? Peter said he is the Christ, which is a pretty good answer. God the Father now speaks from the cloud and answers the question even more fully: “This is my Son, the Chosen One”. And now Jesus gives his own answer, not in words, but by allowing his divine power and glory to shine forth, demonstrating that he did not become less God by becoming human.

Yet the Christ must suffer and the premonitions are all around us whether the children of the consumer economy like it or not. Not just in the sleepy lads who will join him in the Garden and then desert him, “leaving him all alone” as Christ is left in our Gospel passage today. Look also at Moses and Elijah, standing one each side of him as he stands with his arms wide open: does this prefigure the two thieves who will be crucified with him, one on left and one on right?

Listen to the conversation they are having with him. Only Luke tells us what it is all about: they are speaking about his ‘passing’. The Greek word here is his exodus, his Passover, his sacrifice by which he would Pass-over to the Father. They are talking about the mystery of his passage through death to resurrection, by which he liberates captives and brings them eternal life. So Moses and Elijah confirm Jesus’ own prediction of his Passion and Death and so therefore his call to each of us to deny ourselves, take up our crosses daily, and follow him to glory.

Peter and the boys could, of course, make no sense of all this at this stage. They gibber away and then fall silent. They have had a vision not just of Jesus’ glorification but of their own, if only they are willing to join him on his way. They have heard a promise of that day of our hopes and dreams, when every atom of earthly existence, every human person, everyone who has suffered, all we have loved and lost, will be suffused with the light of God’s presence. Having seen and heard all this, they now return with him down the mountain to their everyday life. Now Jesus takes them through Lent to Easter. He calls them, again and again, to join him on his Way of the Cross, the only way to heaven.

Ever since St Paul warned the early Christians – as we read in today’s second reading – about turning foods into their gods and denying the reality of the Cross (Phil 3:17-4:1), Christians in every generation have fasted (Acts 13:1-3; 14:23). We fast especially in Lent – traditionally for forty days, just as Jesus fasted for forty days in the desert before he took up his public ministry. Maybe even in the consumer age it is still worth engaging in the unworldly practices of self-denial, works of mercy and prayer – making the retreat before Easter which Christians have always made. For a few weeks, at least, we might give less to ourselves so we can give more to God and to others.