Meditation Of His Beatitude Patriarch Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa: II Sunday Of Lent, B

Below you can find the meditation of His Beatitude Patriarch Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa on the II Sunday of Lent, B, Sunday 22 February 2024.

Mark 9:2-10

Today's Gospel passage invites us to take an important step in our Lenten journey.

Last Sunday, the story of the temptations brought light into lives, revealing that the Word of the Father desires to come down to knead with our everyday choices.

Today, the same light shines on the face of Jesus, revealing part of the mystery of God for us to know as much as we can.

The account of the Transfiguration (Mark 9:2-10) takes us back to the beginning of our faith journey, to what makes it possible.

And that is, to the fact that we can believe by the simple fact that God reveals himself, that he makes himself known, that he shows us his Face.

For immemorial time, in salvation history, God has been walking with his people and revealing himself through his works and his Word. He is not a God who runs things from afar, who prefers to remain in the shadows, but He is someone who loves to make Himself known, and for this reason He enters the history with a way and a Face, which asks to be known.

In addition, sometimes along the way, there are privileged moments when he calls someone to the background, usually on a mountain, and gives him a deeper and more intimate experience of His presence.

Then, for immemorial time, God has been revealing himself, making himself known, and Jesus is not different from the Father.

He goes up a mountain, together with three of His disciples (Mark 9:2), and there He makes Himself known in all His beauty and splendor as the Son.

In fact, it is not He who reveals Himself, but it is the Father who reveals Jesus to us (Mk 9:7). For all along Jesus' life, it is clear that Jesus did not come to tell us so much about Himself as about His Father, about the beauty of being the beloved Son.

And so the Father does not reveal himself either, but he reveals the Son to us, desiring us to know him, to welcome him as a brother in our lives.

So Lent comes to tell us this: God, who always reveals himself, wants to do so in a new way, in a definitive way. And this revelation will be Easter, where the Son will reveal the Father by trusting Him totally, and the Father will reveal the Son by giving Him back his life and resurrecting Him.

It is no accident, then, that on the mount of transfiguration are Moses and Elijah.

In salvation history Moses and Elijah are the two greatest witnesses that God revealsed Himself through.

They, too, went up a mountain one day and came to know God more closely (Ex 19.33.34; 1Kings19); and they began to understand precisely something that has a close connection with Jesus' Passover.

On the mountain, Moses came to know that God's name is mercy, that he is slow to anger, that he forgives the guilt of his people, that he does not destroy them when the people fall into temptation and turn away from God.

Moses has known that God reveals himself basically for one purpose, which is always to save us.

On the mountain, Elijah after a long flight, knew that God reveals himself in meekness: not in the great signs of power and force, but in the humble silence of a breeze, a breath…


This Meditation was originally published on the website of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem. Please click here to read the full text.