Friends, welcome to Word on Fire Catholic Ministries. Word on Fire is an apostolate dedicated to the mission of evangelization, using media both old and new to share the faith on every continent and to facilitate an encounter with Christ and His Church. The efforts of Word on Fire engage the culture and bring the transformative power of God's Word where it is most needed. Today, we invite you to join Bishop Robert Barron as he preaches the gospel and shares the warmth and light of Christ with each one of us. Peace be with you. We come to this second Sunday of Lent, and the readings are always rich during Lent because we're getting back to spiritual basics. The Church wants us to really reflect on some of these elemental truths in the spiritual life. And this is a good example. I want to start with the first reading, which is from the book of Genesis, and it's talking about Abraham. And everybody, whatever the Bible talks about Abraham, our ears should perk up. Our eyes should get more focused because he's our father in faith. He's the one through whom the rescue operation commences. Whatever we have of faith, in a way, is just imitating what Abraham had. So we pay special attention. Well, listen now to what the Lord said. The Lord said to Abram, that's what they're calling him here before the name was changed, go forth from the land of your kinsfolk and from your father's house to a land that I will show you, and then I'll make you a great nation, right? And all the communities of the earth shall find their blessing in you. Well, can I suggest to you, this is at the heart of the spiritual life. Now, why? Well, as Augustine said, and I often quote him here, sin is the state of being curvatus in se, which means caved in upon oneself. Sin is always like a black hole that draws everything, including my own powers, kind of inward. God has made us to go out from the self, to experience the splendor of reality. The more I let go of myself and my prerogatives, the less I try to grasp and hang on to things, the more alive I become. That's a basic biblical principle. And I suggest, therefore, salvation has a lot to do with adventure. I don't want to sound trivial in saying that, but it's true, I think, that there's something adventurous about the saints, something safe and protected about those who don't want to walk the path that God gives them. That's the challenge. You know, you can see it in all the great hero's journeys stories. The Lord of the Rings maybe is the best example because the hobbits, think of Bilbo in the first one and Frodo in the second. They begin in their little quaint hobbiton, and they're in their little hobbit holes, and they're very safe and cozy in the fireplace and doilies on the furniture, and everything's very blandly domestic. And the story gets going when they're called on adventure to go out from that cozy, warm domesticity and take on a dangerous journey away from the self Again I think you see in all those great stories that the hero identity is found in this letting go Star Wars, the same thing, right? Luke Skywalker has to leave the cozy house where he is with his aunt and uncle. Then the adventure begins. Well, the same is true, I think, in the order of salvation. Something about letting go, leaving home, not clinging to safety. I've often said this. I've been saying it a lot when I talk to young people because, gosh, our culture is preoccupied with the question of safety. I get it. We all want to be safe. No one enters their day just courting danger at every turn. However, when my entire psyche is predicated upon being safe, I will never be alive. I'll never become the person I'm meant to be. I got to break out of this little cocoon and come to the person I'm meant to be. Well, that's Abraham. Come on, Abraham, get up. Leave your father's house and your family and what you're familiar with and go on an adventure. mind you, to a land that I will show you. See, it's not Abraham in command of his own life. It's Abraham willing to surrender to the summons of God. That's when you come alive. Well, whenever I think about this, I go back over the course of my own life and notice all these times when I heard a similar sort of summons, Moments when I stepped out of cozy domesticity, what I knew, what I was familiar with, where I felt safe, and was called on an adventure. Look, it goes right back to, I remember it very vividly. It was many years ago, of course, first grade, when I left home and I'm in the corridors of this school building. And who are these people? What am I doing here? And feeling just kind of lost and disoriented. Well, of course, I'd left behind. I had started off on an adventure. Gosh, I remember changing schools when I was in fourth grade. Our family moved back to Chicago area, and I had to leave all the friends I had. I was now familiar with that school, but I had to leave that one behind. I remember in fourth grade, just kind of wandering around the playground during recess. I didn't know anybody. It was brand new to me. Painful, yeah. Safe? Not really. But it was the commencement of an adventure. Heck, I remember my first day in high school, same thing. By eighth grade, I'd become so accustomed to that school. I was a basketball player. I was a well-known figure in the school, lots of friends. And then suddenly, I'm in this new high school, and the same thing. Who are these people? Where am I? What am I doing here? Of course, I was attracted to going back to the way it was, but there is no going back. No, no, you keep moving forward out of safe spaces into adventure. You know, maybe the most dramatic example of this in my life came some years after that when I was sent to Paris for my doctoral studies. So I was, what, about 28 or 29 years old, and I been ordained a priest and I was working in my parish and loved it and loved the people there And I was a healthy happy priest And then okay I sent on an adventure Go to Europe, which I'd always dreamed about. Go to Paris, which is a city I always had a great affection for, and leave everything you know. I remember arriving in Paris and talking about feeling lost. Here I was in this foreign city I'd never been to before. I arrive at the house, the Redemptor's house in Paris, and everyone's speaking French, and I didn't know a soul. I remember the first night very well, sitting on the bed in my room, and I could hear down in the courtyard that they were having dinner and all this kind of festive laughter. I thought, what am I doing here? How did this happen to me? Well, gosh, now, fast forward many years after that. I'm in Chicago. I'm rector of Mundelein Seminary. It's a job I loved. Knew everybody. Everyone knew me. I was very comfortable in that job. Loved it. My Word on Fire ministry in Chicago, surrounded by friends and family. You know, life is good. And then a call comes from the Apostolic Nuncio. The Holy Father has appointed you auxiliary bishop of Los Angeles. I thought, Los Angeles? How did that happen? Okay, I was summoned again out of cozy domesticity, a world that I knew very well, out of a safe space into an adventure. How many times when I got to L.A. and then Santa Barbara, where I lived, and how many times in that first year did I say, where am I? What happened to me? Who are these people? But again, that's how it works. You're called forth from yourself into an adventure. And then, of course, it happened, what, six years after that, another phone call comes from another apostolic nuncio. The Holy Father has appointed you Bishop of Winona, Rochester. And so, here I am right now in a studio in Rochester, Minnesota. And again, when I arrived here, same thing. How did this happen? Where am I? Well, it's what the Lord does with us, I think. It's what he does. The life of holiness is a life of adventure, of an opening to the new possibility, to the adventure of the real. It's avoiding this move, caving in around yourself, hanging on to what you've got, staying in your familiar safe space. No, no, no, that's not it. Time for adventure. Okay, all of that, everybody, is a preparation for our gospel, which is the great story of the transfiguration. Jesus leads his three most intimate disciples, Peter, James, and John, up the mountain. And then it says he was transfigured before them. Well, the word there in Greek, metamorphothē, morpē means form, meta means beyond. I think metamorphosis, the way the caterpillar becomes the butterfly, it begins in this very narrow, cocooned space, and then bursting forth. This metamorphosis happens. That's what we're talking about here. What had been relatively hidden in the life of Jesus, namely his divinity, is now allowed for this brief moment to shine forth And so we hear that his face became dazzlingly white and his clothes He's manifesting his divine nature. And then we hear that he's conversing with Moses and Elijah. Well, how do you converse with people who lived hundreds of years before you? unless, listen, you've moved out of the normal dimensional system of space and time. You've moved to a higher pitch of existence. In that heavenly place, that luminous, transfigured place, Jesus is able to speak across space and time to Moses and Elijah. And then the voice, this is my beloved son, listen to him, the voice of God the Father himself. What's revealed, everybody, is the way of being to which Jesus is calling all of us. Thomas Aquinas said this, that the purpose of the transfiguration was to show to the apostles, even now, as they're making their way through the difficulties and drudgeries of this life and the struggles of it. Even now, to give them a sense of the glory to come. That's the world on high to which you are called. Giving them the courage, listen now, to let go. Not to cling to this body in this world. Sure, we love this world. It's the world that we know. The people around us, the things around us, we're used to this world. Yeah, but all throughout life, and all examples I gave, all throughout life we're being summoned beyond, beyond, beyond. Let go. More. Now let go of that. More. Now let go of that. There's more. Can we sense now, everybody? All of that was but a preparation for this final transition to which we are called. Let go of your father's house. Let go of your hometown, meaning the hometown of this world. Let go and trust in God who's calling us to be transfigured. Don't we say that in heaven we will participate in the spiritualized body of Jesus? We will become like unto him, transfigured in glory. How do we read our lives? Maybe as a long series of rehearsals for this great letting go, which amounts to rebirth. It amounts to the final realization of our salvation in heaven. And God bless you. Thank you for listening to this week's homily from Bishop Robert Barron. For more resources from Bishop Barron, please visit wordonfire.org. Thank you.
