Second Sunday of Lent
Sunday, March 1, 2026
St. James Cathedral

Watch this homily! (begins at 33:10)

Each year on the Second Sunday of Lent, the Church gives us the story of the Transfiguration of Jesus. This glimpse of the glory-to-come is meant to strengthen us for the journey, just as it was meant to strengthen Peter, James and John on their journey of discipleship.
 
We have been called to do something challenging during Lent that can lead us to a closer relationship with Jesus and with each other. We have been called to leave old ways behind, ways that have kept us rooted in the safe and the familiar, and have prevented us from drawing closer to the Lord.
 
Prayer, fasting and almsgiving are the traditional disciplines that can provide the framework for engaging practical practices that can help us leave behind the safe and familiar ways of moving through the days, weeks, months, and years of our life, and embrace something that will lead us closer to the Lord and prepare us to celebrate the great Easter feast.
 
But even these disciplines can get in the way of really answering the call to change so that we can draw closer to the Lord. If we have fallen into a rote habit of giving up certain things during Lent, without a real sacrifice of the old, safe and familiar behavior that keeps us a bit distant from God, then we really have not challenged ourselves the way this season invites us.
 
By the time Peter, James and John went up the mountain that day with Jesus, they had certainly left behind the safe and familiar - their family and friends and their livelihoods. And immediately before this passage Jesus had told them that eventually they must go up to Jerusalem with him where he would be rejected and killed, and be raised. 
 
So this glimpse of the glory-to-come certainly encouraged them, so much so that Peter wants to make provisions to stay awhile. But that voice from heaven also frightened them. Jesus is revealed as one who went far beyond what they could possibly imagine. They had really moved beyond the safe and familiar. Jesus reassures them with a gentle touch and his words, “Rise and do not be afraid.”
 
But that glimpse of glory and Jesus’ reassuring words are not going to touch us very much if we really haven’t left anything behind during our journey through these days of Lent. Our catechumens, now the Elect, can be icons for us of what it looks like to leave the safe and familiar behind and move into a new way of being in relationship with God and with one another.
 
Like Abram they have listened to the Lord as he calls them to go forth to a land that God will show them. They have found that land, here, among us. And they look to us to show them the way to deeper conversion. And in their seeking, they call us to be more intentional about our turning to the Lord.
 
I also think of the millions of people who have come to our country over the centuries, leaving their homeland, as painful as it was to do so, to go to a land that God would show them. Many of our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents did just that. In the middle of the nineteenth century the Irish Potato Famine caused a massive exodus from Ireland and people fled to the United States to escape starvation and disease.
 
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, millions of Italians immigrated to the United States to escape violence, social chaos and widespread poverty. My grandparents were among these immigrants.
 
Whether consciously or not, these immigrants were called by God to “Go forth from the land of their kinsfolk and from their father’s house to a land that the Lord would show them.
 
And that story has been repeated over the decades in our country with Chinese, Filipinos, Vietnamese, Germans, Poles, and so many others.
 
These people, like our Hispanic and Latino brothers and sisters today, were leaving behind all that rooted them, all that was familiar, except their faith in God. That faith, in the face of incredible challenges, they brought with them and it remains strong.
 
Catechumens and immigrants can be living signs for us of the kind of “leaving behind” we are called to during our Lenten journey. They can remind us of our call to let go, even just a little bit, of the safe and familiar patterns that may have allowed us to drift a bit in our relationship with God and God’s people. They can show us that it is possible to do what Abram did long ago, and put our faith in God and go as the Lord directs us.
There is no one-way for us to do that. What I need to do to let go of the safe and familiar and trust God more in my life is going to be different from what you need to do. But one thing is sure, if we don’t do something a little risky in our relationship with God this Lent, we will not enjoy the fullness of Easter that God wants us to have.
 
So, let us use our catechumens and our immigrant friends and relatives as examples of doing something challenging this Lent that moves us beyond giving up sweets. May whatever form our prayer, our fasting and our almsgiving takes this Lent, may these disciplines help us to move beyond the safe and familiar and to take the risk, as Peter, James and John did, to follow Jesus on the way.
 
If we can commit to that goal this Lent, then the glimpse of the glory-to-come that the Transfiguration provides can truly sustain us as we hear those words of Jesus, spoken to each one of us, “Rise and do not be afraid.”

Father Gary F. Lazzeroni