Monthly Archives: March 2025

Reflecting on Luke 9: 28b-36

Lord, it is good for us to be here. Not on Mount Tabor—an exceedingly scary mountain during the muddy season, by the way—but here, in our own cities, and in our own skin.  The Mount of Transfiguration is the perfect place to visit every year on the second Sunday of Lent. It’s good for us to remember Jesus, transfigured in Light, and his heavenly companions, Moses and Elijah.

It’s also good to consider those most intimate of his male disciples, Peter, James, and John, whom he often singled out to accompany him on transformative events. They saw him raise Jairus’ daughter (Mark 5: 37-43) from death to life. That soul-shattering experience must have transfigured them in ways not recorded in the gospels. And it was those three again who were with him in the Garden, during his agonized prayer, and when the soldiers came to arrest him (Mk. 14:33).

With the flash of the soldier’s swords, did they remember the flash of Light on Tabor? Did they see Jesus transfigured then, as he was led away? Or was it they who were transfigured, not at that terrifying moment, but a mere three days later, when the transfigured women—forever changed and forever remembered as the first witnesses of the resurrection—came running from the Empty Tomb?

It’s good for us to be HERE, with all our stuff. We need transfiguring so badly. We need our laziness transfigured into a fiery energy for good. We need our unhealthy habits transfigured into light-filled  habits of returning phone calls, checking in on lonely neighbors, and returning to warm engagement with our families.

It’s finally Lent. Let your LIGHT shine.

What changes are you already making this Lent?

Kathy McGovern ©2025

Reflecting on Luke 4: 1-13

When Jesus defeats Satan in the desert, Mark, at his usual breakneck speed, tells the whole Temptation story in one sentence. Matthew ends the story with, “And then Satan left him.” John doesn’t tell it at all, although there are some parallels in his gospel, particularly when Jesus is tempted to make bread in the wilderness (6:26).

But it’s Luke who ends his narrative with that intriguing last sentence, “he departed from him for a time” (4:13). Ah. Isn’t that always the way? Is there anyone who has “conquered” an addiction problem who would say that they have never been tempted again, that they don’t walk one day at a time, deeply grateful for every moment of freedom?

I wonder if Jesus knew, in the desert, that even though he had just vanquished the Enemy, he wouldn’t go away forever, but would lay in wait for three years? Then, like a ravenous lion, he would reappear, “entering into Judas Iscariot “ (22:3), who turned Jesus over to the chief priests (22:4).

And thus, it began. Next, Jesus told Simon Peter at the Last Supper that Satan had asked to sift him like wheat” (22:31). We know that Peter did not withstand that challenge, but denied Jesus three times in Caiaphas’s courtyard (22:55-62).

But don’t miss this: that’s not the end of Peter’s story. Jesus comforts him at the Last Supper, promising him that he has prayed for him, that he will not fail forever, and that, afterward, he will strengthen the Twelve.

Imagine Jesus saying that to you today. I have prayed for you, that you have the strength to begin again. O Jesus, who vanquished our Enemy, pray for us.

Readers, please choose an unknown person in this reading audience to pray for this Lent.

Kathy McGovern ©2025

Reflecting on Sirach 27: 4-7

There’s a lot to think about in the readings this weekend regarding what we reveal when we start talking. Since our words betray what’s really going on in our hearts, it’s enough to make us all take a vow of silence! I suppose the safest way to talk is to stop after every word and carefully consider your next syllable, but think how tedious an actual conversation would be if both speakers were too terrified to speak.

So, like the fruit of a tree, people’s words disclose what’s really going on in their minds, and we’re advised not to evaluate people until we hear what they say. But, really, isn’t the only way to really know someone is by observing his or her actions?

I think of those two sons in the gospel parable of Matthew 21: 28-32. The father asks both sons to go work in the vineyard. The first says, “No! I’m not going,” but goes, and the second says, “Sure, I’ll go,” and he never does. “Words! Words! Words,” sang Eliza Doolittle. “Show me!”

Our acts flow from our being, from who we are. In his poem “As Kingfishers Catch Fire,” Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote, “The just person justices.”  We might say, “Hurt people hurt, healed people heal.”

But time gives us the opportunity to become more of who we want to be, and the son who ended up not going out into the vineyard might very well have gladly gone out a few years later. The Church, says a cardinal in the film Conclave, is not only what we did yesterday, but what we’ll do tomorrow.

Please, God, give me time to be the person I’ll be tomorrow.

Who do you most hope to be tomorrow?

Kathy McGovern ©2025