Stay the Course: 2nd Sunday of Lent and Purgatory 

 

Stay the Course: 2nd Sunday of Lent 

Today’s mass readings encourage us to “stay the course,” as the old saying goes. Something good is waiting for us at the other end. Consider our first reading, for example, from the Book of Genesis:

The LORD said to Abram:
“Go forth from the land of your kinsfolk
and from your father’s house to a land that I will show you.

“I will make of you a great nation,
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
so that you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you
and curse those who curse you.
All the communities of the earth
shall find blessing in you.”

Abram went as the LORD directed him. (Genesis 12: 1-4a)

Abram at this point is just a man and his wife. He didn’t even have any children, as of yet. His father Terah had previously set out with Abram and with his nephew Lot from Ur of the Chaldeans, in what is now Iraq. Terah’s intent was to go to Canaan, but for whatever reason he stopped in the city of Haran in northern Mesopotamia and stayed there. The passage above comes after the death of Terah. God calls upon Abram to face the hardships of the journey into an unknown land. A journey that his father had been unable, or unwilling, to undergo. His only incentive is God’s promise that in some unseen future his descendants will be “a great nation.”

 On the Far Side 

In our second reading St. Paul likewise encourages Timothy to rely on God’s promise to carry him through present suffering:

Bear your share of hardship for the gospel
with the strength that comes from God. (2 Timothy 1:8b-9a)

Finally, our Gospel reading from Matthew recounts the Transfiguration (Matthew 17:1-9). Peter, John, and James see a vision of Christ in Glory, but it’s just a preview of what is to come. It’s gone in a moment, but the apostles have seen what lies on the far side of the hard road of Christ’s suffering and crucifixion. If they can stay the course.

 Patterns of the Next World 

The Church offers these reading on the 2nd Sunday of Lent for several reasons. One of the distinctive features of the Catholic Vision is that we see the patterns of the next world reflected in this one.  The Season of Lent, like the Season of Advent, provides a good example.  We understand that we are prone to sin, that we must undergo a period of preparation before we can experience the joy of Easter.  

And so we undergo various penitential practices, including (but not limited to) the sacrament of Confession and the “giving up” of various things. We seek both to acknowledge and repent of our sins, and also to turn away from attachment to worldly things so that we can turn instead to God. We can see today’s readings as encouragement to stay the course, to persevere. This applies not only to the disciplines of the next few weeks. It also applies more broadly to the course of our entire life.

 Stay the Course 

The logic of these Lenten practices also applies in the next life, in Purgatory.  The word Purgatorium means a place of cleansing. The Catholic belief is that Purgatory is both a completion of temporal punishment (penance), and as the Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us, “purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven,” for  those “who die in God’s grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified” (CCC 1030). That purification is sometimes described in terms of removal of our remaining attachment to sin. As are the penitential disciplines of Lent.  

While it’s best to do whatever we can to avoid or lessen our time in Purgatory, it’s a good bet that many of us will experience it. Maybe most of us. That’s something to keep in mind as we go through Lent here in this world. If it’s appropriate to purify ourselves in preparation for the Feast of Easter, how much more so for the Eternal Supper of Lamb in the New Jerusalem? That’s good to remember as we undergo the penitential disciplines of our Little Purgatory this Lent.

Featured image top of page: Transfiguration by Alexandr Ivanov, 1824.