Episodes
Sunday Mar 08, 2020
Homily for the 2nd Sunday of Lent
Sunday Mar 08, 2020
Sunday Mar 08, 2020
A very learned and holy rabbi traveled throughout the world preaching and teaching. The rabbi was welcomed wherever he went -except in one small town in Eastern Europe, which he visited shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The people wanted nothing to do with him; they were cold and distant -they closed the door, literally and metaphorically, in his face.
All except for one man. This one man was welcoming, kind, open and accepting. The man and the rabbi became fast friends.
As he was about to leave the town, the rabbi asked his new friend the question that had been burning inside. He said, "There is something I need to know. I understand the people of this town. I realize why they want nothing to do with a rabbi from the West. They have been devastated by the Holocaust; they have lived for fifty years under the [oppression] of Communism. I understand their anger. What I don't understand is you! Why are you so loving, why are you so different?”
The man smiled. "I am an old man,” he said, “and [I] have lived in this town my entire life. One night during the First World War, a rumor swept through the town that the Cossacks were coming, and they would loot and steal and destroy our town. So, all the parents from the whole town gathered up all the children and brought us to the rabbi's house.”
He explained that it was the dead of winter. All the town's children were scattered throughout the rabbi's house, sleeping on the floor in his kitchen, in his living room, in his study. All night long the rabbi paced, watching over the children as they slept. The small boy was curled up in a small corner of the rabbi's study. It was so bitter cold that he could not sleep. The rabbi slipped his coat off his shoulders, and laid it over him and said, “Good night.”
The old man concluded saying, "You know, it has been seventy-five years since the rabbi spread his coat on me, but it still keeps me warm."
The figure of Christ on Mount Tabor calls us to the Lenten work of transfiguration – to transform the coldness, sadness, and despair around us into the love, compassion, and hope of Christ.
The simplest act of kindness -like giving our coat to warm a cold, scared child can be a dazzling act of transfiguration.
St. Catherine of Siena tells us that we are called to be the hands, the feet and the voice of the LORD in our world. In answering that call, we become agents of transfiguration in our world, bringing God’s peace, love and faith in His saving power to all those we meet.+
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