By DEACON JAMES H. TONER
In the Novus Ordo Mass for the Second Sunday of Lent, priests may choose either of two selections from St. Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians (3:17-4:1, or 3:20 to 4:1). It seems a minor matter. After all, should the priest choose the second alternative, he merely omits three sentences from the reading. Moreover, few, if any, people in the pews will know the difference. The Gospel for the day — concerning Our Lord’s Transfiguration — is taken from Luke (9:28b-36) and the first reading — concerned with the establishment of the Covenant with Abram — is taken from Genesis (15:5-12, 17-18).
The Ordo (a publication citing the Church’s daily Masses) tells us that this is the “theme” of the readings: “The transfiguration of Jesus prefigures the transformation in glory to which we are called by our sharing in the paschal mystery — the dying and rising of Jesus,” which is brought out in St. Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians.
Why, then, would any priest “bother” with the evidently discordant three sentences which precede 3:20, clashing, it seems, with the “theme” of the day?
From the New American Bible (3:17-3:19):
“Join with others in being imitators of me, brothers, and observe those who thus conduct themselves according to the model you have in us. For many, as I have often told you and now tell you even in tears, conduct themselves as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction. Their God is their stomach; their glory is in their ‘shame.’ Their minds are occupied with earthly things.”
The Good News Bible, Catholic Study Edition, is even more unsparing:
“Keep on imitating me, my brothers. Pay attention to those who follow the right example that we have set for you. I have told you this many times before, and now I repeat it with tears: there are many whose lives make them enemies of Christ’s death on the cross. They are going to end up in hell, because their god is their bodily desires. They are proud of what they should be ashamed of, and they think only of things that belong to this world.”
This Pauline passage is admonitory, or parenetic, preaching. It is a warning that there are, indeed, enemies of Christ and of His Church; that we must, therefore, find and follow only our Lord and those who authoritatively and scrupulously preach His Gospel; that fear of the Lord is a great virtue; that there are eternal consequences to what we think, and do, and say; that the prescriptions of the natural order must be informed by transcendent Truth, which we are to confirm and to which we are to conform.
Additionally, this frequently omitted short passage complements the Genesis account of splitting animals and arranging them to be walked through as a sanguinary reminder that, if the contracting parties failed to carry out their sacred promises, they would be calling down upon themselves the fate of the dead animals (cf. Jer. 34:18-20).
The decision of the priest or of the “parish liturgy team” (Parce nobis) to “shorten” the Pauline passage is a kind of euphemistic editing which is grievously mistaken.
“Their preaching deceived you by never exposing your sin. They made you think you did not need to repent,” we read in Lamentations (2:14).
Malachi warns priests: “Your teaching has led many to do wrong. You have broken the covenant I made with you” (2:8). And we know the outcome of our breaking the covenant.
The great glory of the Transfiguration conveys the divine Revelation that “This is my chosen Son; listen to Him” (Luke 9:35; Matt. 17:5). That there are consequences of not listening to Him, learning from Him, and failing to follow His lead (as in Mark 16:16 and John 3:18); that we may choose our own diabolical destiny by repudiating His truth; that we may seek to build our own benighted vision of Heaven here on Earth, divinizing ourselves instead of worshiping God; and that we may “strike the tent” (represented by the Cloud, or the Shekinah [Luke 9:34]) of God’s Mercy whenever we venerate the idols of the day rather than the eternal Master — all these warnings are peremptorily dismissed when we “conduct ourselves as enemies of the cross.”
Is it because we find such warnings to be “unpleasant”? Is it because we find no entertainment in them? Is it because we do not want to confront (or to admit) our sins, omissions, and negligences? Is it because, as a rule, modern preaching is implicitly presumptuous because it holds that God is “all about mercy, and not at all about ‘justice’”?)
Which of these reasons, or others, drives the need to eliminate from consideration parenetic passages of Scripture? A few paragraphs in Philippians before we are taught that there are enemies of the cross of Christ, St. Paul urges us to “work out your salvation with fear and trembling” (2:12). Such “fear and trembling,” by the way, is a manner of expressing great reverence and awe for God (Psalm 2:11, Isaiah 19:16, Exodus 15:16).
We fallen creatures may not like it, but our own transfiguration (salvation) directly depends upon our moral thoughts and actions. As St. Augustine warned us: “God created us without us: but [H]e did not will to save us without us” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 1847). If we do not say to God, “Thy will be done,” then, in His time, He will say to us, “thy will be done” (see 1 Cor. 6:9, Rev. 21:8). That should inspire fear and trembling.
But if God is a mere Feuerbachian projection of man, then why all the fear and all the awe? We have anthropomorphized God. We have reduced God to a kind of big brother. We have immanentized God. Now we owe him (note the lower case h), well, something, but not too much to be worried about.
In fact, God wants everything from us (cf. Col. 2:6-10), so that we can and will be transfigured. The eternal covenant demands no less. One is reminded of the great hymn by Isaac Watts (1674-1748), When I Survey the Wondrous Cross: “Were all the realm of nature mine/ That were a present far too small;/ Love so amazing, so divine/ Demands my soul, my life, my all.” That is what we do not want to hear, for if we give God everything, then where are the room and the time for hoarding the idols of power and pleasure and profit that are now my yearning and my heart’s desire?
The Traditional Latin Mass for the Second Sunday of Lent also teaches us about the Transfiguration (Matt. 17:1-9), and, in the day’s Epistle, it makes very clear the intimate connection between our moral choices and our being finally and fully configured to God (1 Thess. 4:1-7). St. Paul here teaches that “even as you have learned from us how you ought to walk and to please God — as indeed you are walking — we beseech and exhort you in the Lord Jesus to make even greater progress. For you know what precepts I have given you by the Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God, your sanctification [and] that you abstain from immorality.”
And the Postcommunion Prayer: “We humbly beseech Thee [note capital t], O almighty God, that we whom Thou hast strengthened with Thy sacraments may henceforth serve Thee in worthiness of life. Through our Lord.” Isn’t that the principal goal of our Lenten prayers and sacrifices?
The sacred adjuration — “Listen to Him” — leading to our Lord’s invitation, challenge, and command “Follow Me” — are of a piece. St. Paul knew that and taught that. We pare down or omit parenesis, warnings, and admonitions at our spiritual peril. Perhaps next Lent, in the Novus Ordo Mass, should God in His great grace give us more time, we will hear all of the reading selection from St. Paul on this Sunday.
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