Let My Face Shine with Your Glory, Lord
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We begin Week 2 of our Sunday Lenten Challenge with this opening prayer:
Trust And Believe
Lord,
I believe you want to give me the grace to go deeper in prayer this Lent. Help me to be present to you so that I’ll intimately pray these next 15 minutes with my heart fully open and willing to receive that grace. Please help me open my heart and pray with more intensity. I want to be able to visualize myself with you so I can feel your presence more intimately in my life this Lent. Lord, give me the grace I need as I strive to complete these 6 days of Sunday Lenten meditations. I am choosing to take up my cross and humbly follow you all the way to Calvary and I want to do it with my whole heart.
AMEN.
How His Glory Reveals His Mercy
Let’s contemplate the mercy of God this Lent. What does it mean to see Christ’s glory, even for a moment? Why would he reveal himself so gently, so lovingly, to ordinary, frightened men before asking them to walk with him toward Calvary? Let’s meditate on these things in the presence of Christ and offer ourselves to Him in prayer.
Prayer to the Holy Spirit
Holy Spirit,
I believe you are truly here and present to me right now. I desire to be present to you.
Thank you for being so faithful to me, even in my darkest moments. Help me recognize your voice and give me the grace to obey it.
You are faithful to me even when I am not. Please do not let me take your covenant of love for granted. Do not let me forget the price Jesus has paid for my soul.
Every time I sin and repent I experience your faithful covenant. Thank you for always forgiving me. I am grateful to you for mercifully sustaining me through every trial in my life. Please give me gratitude for all you have done for me. Help me be charitable to others in gratitude for your loving mercy.
Breathe on me as I spend these next 15 minutes fixated on today’s Mass readings. Holy Spirit, help me pray with humility, honesty, love and affection. I want to grow in virtue and holiness.
Thank you, Holy Spirit, for every consolation, desolation, time of silence, difficult trial, and temptation of the evil one. I understand that you love me and that everything in my life happens by God’s holy will, whether it be divine providence or God’s permissive will due to my sin and negligence.
Please humble me as I walk with Jesus toward Jerusalem. Help me prove my faithfulness and do so with great love in my heart.
AMEN.
Say Nothing Just Take Him In
Spend 1-3 minutes in silence gazing at the Lord with love and gratitude, in a prayer of silent contemplation.
Make a Movie in Your Mind
You are part of a caravan that has left the ancient Sumerian city of Ur, a major metropolitan city, one of the world’s first major cities. You’ve been asked to travel with your people. Everything on this 2 month journey has been hard. The people in Ur pay homage to the gods by offering sacrifices to them in their dwelling places, huge temples that most are forbidden to enter. Instead, like you, most citizens gather in the outside courtyard to pray in the port city. But here there are no Ziggurats. It is night, and the sky is filled with an expanse of stars from horizon to horizon, lighting up the night in beautiful array. There is a fragrant scent of wood smoke coming from a fire nearby and it draws your attention toward the silhouette of a man. You see him falling prostrate on the ground near this fire. He appears to be praying, and this strikes you as strange because he is not looking up to the moon god, Nanna. You walk closer to him to see who it is and hear what he is saying…
The Promises of A Merciful God
Genesis 15:5-12,17-18
He took him outside and said: Look up at the sky and count the stars, if you can. Just so, he added, will your descendants be. Abram put his faith in the LORD, who attributed it to him as an act of righteousness. He then said to him: I am the LORD who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land as a possession.
“Lord GOD,” he asked, “how will I know that I will possess it?”
He answered him: Bring me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old female goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon. He brought him all these, split them in two, and placed each half opposite the other; but the birds he did not cut up. Birds of prey swooped down on the carcasses, but Abram scared them away.
As the sun was about to set, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and a great, dark dread descended upon him. When the sun had set and it was dark, there appeared a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch, which passed between those pieces.
On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying: To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the Great River, the Euphrates.
Let us take a moment to reflect on the message in the first reading.
It took great faith for Abram to trust in God’s providence and leave his homeland. In his mercy, God gave Abram a sign, so that he would believe that the words spoken to him were true.
But notice, Abram took action long before God gave him confirmation.
We see in the passage where Abram says, “Lord GOD, how will I know that I will possess it?”
The Lord responded by asking for a sacrifice. And it took Abram at least a whole entire day to make that sacrifice, because we see that the “sun was about to set” when Abram fell asleep in exhaustion. It was after this that the Lord Spoke to Him again and made a covenant.
The story of the divine flaming torch and smoking pot were a manifestation of heavenly light, and this is a beautiful foreshadowing of the same glorious light that shone through Christ’s countenance at the Transfiguration.
We see at the end of this passage that the LORD made a covenant with Abram. Soon we will see that in the Transfiguration, Christ will show us that he has come to make a New Covenant.
Be Completely Real
Is there something in your life right now that you feel the Lord is asking you to do? Have you made any effort to follow through? Has he asked you to take another step?
Can you see how your response to God’s call is necessary? In His mercy, God will always give you the grace needed to do His will, just like we saw in this story of Abram.
Let us continue our mental prayer with today’s Gospel:
Visualize Christ
You feel the dry heat of late September as you climb Mount Tabor. The grass along the trail is brittle and dusty. Your leather sandals have been worn soft by miles of travel and your feet are covered in dust. With every step, loose stones click beneath your feet. As you approach the isolated dome of the mountain, a cool autumn breeze offers relief from the heat.
As you ascend, the panorama unfolding around you takes your breath away. Standing alone above the plain, Mount Tabor grants you an extraordinary view of the land. To the north rise the rugged, terraced hills of Galilee. Looking south, the golden blanket of the Jezreel Valley stretches out toward the dark, solemn ridge of Mount Gilboa. To the west, the long crest of Mount Carmel reaches toward the distant blue mist of the Great Sea. You step into the shade of a cluster of gnarled Tabor oaks and wild terebinth trees. You decide to stay and rest. You choose a spot near thorny shrubs. The smell of wild sage fills your senses as you lay down under the shade of the trees for a short nap. A short time later you are roused by the sound of a small party of men arriving at the summit…
into the Desert to Pray
Luke 9:28b-36
He took Peter, John, and James and went up the mountain to pray. While he was praying his face changed in appearance and his clothing became dazzling white. And behold, two men were conversing with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his exodus that he was going to accomplish in Jerusalem.
Peter and his companions had been overcome by sleep, but becoming fully awake, they saw his glory and the two men standing with him. As they were about to part from him, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good that we are here; let us make three tents, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”
But he did not know what he was saying. While he was still speaking, a cloud came and cast a shadow over them, and they became frightened when they entered the cloud.
Then from the cloud came a voice that said, “This is my chosen Son; listen to him.”
After the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. They fell silent and did not at that time tell anyone what they had seen.
The glory Peter, James, and John glimpsed on Tabor was never meant to stay locked in that one radiant moment. It was mercy reaching forward in time.
In Genesis 15, The LORD strengthens Abram with the otherworldly smoking pot and flaming torch. In the transfiguration, Jesus strengthens his friends before their faith would be tested at the foot of the Cross. Just as the LORD strengthened Abram before his people would be tested, Jesus does the same with his three disciples. Later, in their darkest hour, they would remember what they had seen and know that the mercy, love, and glory of God will prevail.
And Paul tells us this same mercy reaches forward to you: the lowly, weary body you carry through your own Lenten desert is destined for that same glory (Phil 3:21). The mountain wasn’t only for three frightened apostles two thousand years ago. It was mercy’s rehearsal for the resurrection glory still waiting for you.
Are You Listening?
Do you truly trust in the mercy of God and in his promises? The Lord always gives us the grace we need for the challenges that lie ahead in our lives. Are you in the middle of a challenge? Can you recall any signs of God’s glory coming to comfort you before your current trial?
Paul warns us that many conduct themselves as enemies of the cross of Christ, their minds occupied with earthly things, their god their own stomach (Phil 3:17-19). But he reminds us that our citizenship is in heaven, and that we eagerly await a Savior from there (Phil 3:20). The mountaintop is a glimpse of that citizenship — a reminder that you were not made for this valley alone.
Ask yourself honestly: what earthly thing still occupies too much of my mind and heart? What is keeping my eyes fixed on the ground when Christ is asking me to lift them toward glory?
Take a few moments to thank God for his faithfulness. Remember his many blessings and promises and glorify him. Your moment of resurrection is coming. God has promised this.
Jesus, thank you for the mercy of showing your glory to strengthen weak and fearful hearts like mine. Help me to keep my eyes fixed on heaven, and not on the passing things of this world that so easily distract me from you. Give me the grace to trust in your promises, even when I cannot yet see where they lead. Transform me, Lord, as you transformed yourself before your disciples, and let my life reflect your glory to everyone I meet. AMEN.