If you don’t know that you’re a sinner, you miss out on the best part. That’s where we started Lent last Sunday, with the recognition that we need a healthy sense of sin to experience the magnitude of God’s mercy. Today, we see another motivation without which sinfulness and mercy don’t make sense: the greatness of the promise for those who repent of sin in the Resurrection and in Heaven.

          We are on the way to Jerusalem, not for a casual visit, but for the great events of Holy Week, for the Passion and Death of Christ. Today’s Gospel fits perfectly in the chronology of where we are in the liturgical year. On the way, Christ stops and invites the inner circle of His Apostles up Mt. Tabor to experience His Transfiguration, this glimpse of the glory with which He will be filled at His Resurrection, as a promise and source of hope.

          Thus, we began Mass singing, “My heart declared to you: Your countenance have I sought; I shall ever seek your countenance, O Lord; do not turn your face from me.” Last Sunday, on the first Sunday of Lent, God spoke to the repentant sinner in the introit, promising to forgive our sins. Today, reconciled to God, we call out with our desire for Him. Our Lenten journey is about seeking the face of Christ, whom we long to behold in Heaven. We begin with the end in mind! The desire for Heaven must frame and motivate everything we do this Lent.

          Lent reminds us that this life is not the goal. Your penances discipline your desire for the pleasures of this life, and move you to yearn for the next, all while uniting them to the Cross that, together with the Resurrection, is the bridge from this world to that one.

          Considered rationally, what sin could possibly be worth losing Heaven? It’s ludicrous, really. And surely, you’ve been there, wondering, “What was I thinking?” We forget the empty pit that sin leaves in our stomachs, we forget the glory of the promise to those who persevere in grace, and we need to be shaken awake.

          Human beings are immortal. Even “the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day” – if she makes it to Heaven – “be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship,” just like our Lord transfigured before the Apostles. But if not, she would be, “a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal” (C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory).

          Faced with this great choice, you must cultivate in yourself a desire – no, a yearning – for that goal held out to us today by the Lord, for Heaven. How can you do that? First, by disabusing yourself of the wrong notions that all of us have about the next life.

          Here is one: YOLO, “you only live once.” Wrong! You live twice, and the second time is forever. The preface for funeral Masses reminds us that, for believers, “life is changed, not ended.” The quality of that second life is going to be determined by the way you live the first one. The next time someone tells you YOLO, or “you only live once,” beg to differ. It’s true that you only live once here, but there is much more to come.

          Another one: “You can’t take it with you.” Wrong, you can take it with you, but only the things that really matter. You can take the people you love with you, you can take forgiveness with you, you can take Jesus Himself with you. Once you’re there, nothing else will matter.

          Heaven is an eternal celebration of Christ’s victory over sin and death. The Scriptures tell us about an ancient duel between good and evil, between Christ and Satan. For thousands of years from the Fall until the Cross, Satan held sway over the earth. But then Christ was born, and Satan struck back, entering the heart of King Herod and moving him to slaughter all the infants of Bethlehem. But Jesus escaped with Mary and Joseph to Egypt, and now, at this pivotal point in His public ministry as He prepares to go up to Jerusalem, He is preparing for the final strike of the battle that is about to take place, beyond any epic proportions ever seen.

          The Fathers of the Church see the Cross as a trap that Christ set for Satan, encouraging the Devil to overplay his hand, to execute the only person he had no right to kill – God Himself. Up to that point, sin reigned in the world, and all men and women were under its power. But Christ changes that. By His death and resurrection everything is different. His victory in this epic, age-old battle between good and evil ensures that we can have life. This is why St. Paul exclaims in today’s epistle that Christ has “destroyed death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.” That is the essential difference between the Christian worldview and the Eastern idea of ying and yang that sees light and darkness being held in a balance together. There is no balance between light and darkness. The side of goodness, the side of Christ, is overwhelmingly victorious, and that victory is promised to you.

          But what about here and now? Paul again tells us: “He saved us and called us to a holy life, not according to our works but according to his own design and the grace bestowed on us in Christ Jesus before time began.” Our sins can frustrate the accomplishment of this design in the sense that they can keep us from the eternity in Heaven that God desires for us. But it is not because of our good works that God chose us in the first place, from all eternity. Since before time began, He has been desiring that you will be re-born in His Son, Jesus Christ, and thus become part of His life, living a holy life here, and a glorious life in Heaven.

          Sometimes we make that irrational choice against holiness, against Heaven, because we’re afraid of Heaven even more than we’re afraid of Hell. Wait, really? Yes, every time we sin, it’s because we’re more afraid of Heaven than of Hell. How could that be?

“If we let Christ enter fully into our lives, if we open ourselves totally to him, are we not afraid that He might take something away from us? Are we not perhaps afraid to give up something significant, something unique, something that makes life so beautiful? … [But] no! If we let Christ into our lives, we lose nothing, absolutely nothing of what makes life free, beautiful and great.” If you want to have that yearning for Heaven that makes holiness possible, “Do not be afraid of Christ! He takes nothing [worth having] away, and he gives you everything.”

          “Beloved: Bear your share of hardship for the gospel with the strength that comes from God.” You are not a mere mortal, you do not only live once, and you can take with you everything that truly matters, when at the end of every struggle, in every moment of temptation and doubt, you, like Peter, James, and John after the Lord’s transfiguration, you raise your eyes and see “no one else but Jesus alone.”

The Rev. Royce V. Gregerson

Parish Church of Our Lady of Good Hope, Fort Wayne

II Sunday of Lent, A.D. MMXXVI