2nd Sunday of Lent, Cycle B

I've spoken before about my first mountaintop experience. For me, it was a tangible and comforting embrace like a good parent when a child has done something wrong. I think our best response is to make sure the child feels our love and, thereby, is given the courage to go on in the face of their imperfections.

That first experience, when I was about 15, lasted for quite a while in my consciousness. Later in life, I discovered that I had to work at maintaining an awareness of God’s presence. I had to climb the mountain, so to speak, over and over again. I don’t always do that so well.

Many people have aids to climbing the mountain, be it devotions, theological reflection, meditation/contemplation practices and the like. I affirm them all. Do whatever works for you but do something.

Many people experience human life as emptiness. This can come after achieving what we had set out to achieve in our youth or after our failure to achieve it. That emptiness, I would say is because of the lack of awareness of God’s presence in our lives and the deep feeling of loneliness it engenders.

This Gospel presents a pathway to avoiding that loneliness: 1. Step out of our day-to-day routine to periodically climb the mountain. 2. Open ourselves to the presence of God and the excitement and “lifegivingness"which that experience brings. 3. Descend the mountain and return to our everyday lives. and, 4. Hold, in our hearts, the spiritual question raised by our experience.

Abraham Heschel describes the Sabbath as such an experience, “a ‘sanctuary in time’ and a foretaste of the world to come.” (Marcus, J. (2009). Mark 8–16: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (Vol. 27A, p. 631). New Haven; London: Yale University Press.)

For Christians, our sanctuary in time and foretaste of the world to come is our Sunday observance.

Try to consciously open yourself to the mountaintop experience that the Mass can be in your life, let that be your expectation as you prepare for Mass. Then try to spend the rest of the day in a reflective attitude, whether that be with family and friends or in private. Try not to reenter the business of you life until you have to begin preparing for the next day.

During the week, try to look forward to your next sanctuary in time and foretaste of the world to come, your mountaintop experience.