The Second Sunday of Lent

Welcome, young history buffs and curious minds, to My Daily Saint, the podcast that digs deep into the incredible lives of the saints, those remarkable people who shaped history and continue to inspire us today. Forget dusty old portraits and boring stories. Today, imagine that you've been walking for what feels like hours, pushing yourself up a steep, rocky incline. You are surrounded by the dust and heat of the Middle East. You aren't alone, though. You are with your two best friends, and you are following a teacher unlike any other.

You finally reach the summit of Mount Tabor. The air is thinner here. You gasp for breath, expecting to just sit down and rest. But then, the atmosphere shifts. The dust settles. The exhaustion vanishes. Suddenly, the teacher you've been following, the man you thought you knew, changes right before your eyes. His face, it starts to shine.

Not just a glow, but an intensity that forces you to shield your eyes. It is shining like the sun. His clothes, dusty from the hike just moments ago, transform. They become white, as white as pure light. You look to your left and right. Two ancient figures are suddenly standing there. You recognize them from the old stories. It is Moses, the lawgiver, and Elijah, the prophet. And they aren't just standing there. They are talking with him. In this moment, on this high mountain, everything you thought you knew about reality is blown wide open.

This is the story of one of the most mysterious and dramatic events in the Bible, the Transfiguration. So, let's unpack what happened up there on Mount Tabor. We hear this story specifically on the second Sunday of Lent. That might seem weird to you. Usually, the church celebrates the Feast of the Transfiguration in August, so why are we talking about it now, in the middle of Lent, while we are preparing for Easter?

It's because this explosion of light is preparation. It's preparation for what is coming in Scripture, and it is preparation for your own life's journey. Before the disciples could handle the darkness of the cross, they needed to see the glory of the resurrection revealed on that mountain.

But there is a trap we need to talk about, a trap that many of us fall into during Lent. We all know the three marks of Lent, prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. Imagine your soul is a house. When you fast, when you give something up, you are sweeping that house clean. You are kicking out the bad habits. But what happens if you leave the house empty?

There is a terrifying warning in the Gospel of Matthew about this. It describes an unclean spirit that gets kicked out of a person. The spirit wanders through waterless places seeking rest, but it can't find any. It's lonely. It's angry. So, it decides to go back to its old home. And what does it find? It finds the house empty, swept, and put in order. Because it is empty, the spirit doesn't just come back. It goes and finds seven other spirits more evil than himself, and they all move in.

The last state of that man becomes worse than the first. This is the danger of a waterless Lent. If you just give up candy, but you don't replace that candy with God, you just have an empty soul. And an empty soul is a playground for temptation. You might find yourself cranky, bitter, or falling into even worse habits because you are spiritually starving. So, how do we stop the seven evil spirits from moving in? How do we fill the empty space? The Apostle Saint Paul gives us the ultimate strategy.

He tells us to pray always. While fasting and almsgiving are important, none is so important as prayer. You are currently about two-fifths of the way through your 40 days of fasting. If you are feeling that emptiness, if you are feeling grumpy or tired of your Lenten promise, today is the day to switch gears. It means calling on the Lord Jesus throughout your day. It means walking to the bus stop and saying, Jesus, walk with me. It means sitting in a math test and saying, Holy Spirit, help me focus.

It means taking that empty house you've swept clean and inviting the king to live in it. The story of the apostles' climb up Mount Tabor reminds us that Jesus ascended the mountain to pray. He removed himself from the noise.

Identify the one thing you gave up for Lent, or the one bad habit you were trying to break. Every time you feel the urge to do that thing, immediately replace it with a 10-second prayer. Call on the Lord Jesus. Fill that empty space with His light, just like the light that shone from His face during the Transfiguration. Don't let your soul be a waterless place. Turn it into a mountain of light. Thank you for joining us on My Daily Saint. We look forward to sharing another incredible story of faith and courage with you tomorrow.