Modern audiences are usually horrified by the account of the sacrifice of Isaac. How could, the objection goes, God be so cruel as to command Abraham to sacrifice his son, even just as a test of his willingness, even without requiring to go through with the sacrifice itself? But our objections are rooted in our own cultural setting. We need to see the situation from Abraham's perspective.
Child sacrifice was a common practice among the pagan religions at the time of Abraham. Many parents would offer the lives of their children in exchange for material blessings. For Abraham, the command to sacrifice Isaac would not have been shocking or unusual. The surprise would have been the command to stop the sacrifice. God was teaching Abraham that he did not need to perform such an evil act to curry favor with him. Quite the contrary.
God does not want us to sacrifice the lives of others in order to receive his grace. However, God does want us to make one major sacrifice. He wants us to sacrifice ourselves in love for others. Our fulfillment as human beings is to accept God's infinite love for us. We can only fully do so, moreover, if we become channels of God's love for other people. Sacrificing ourselves in love for others is, in fact, the most Christ-like thing we can do.
Christ is God incarnate who became one of us and came among us to give his life for us, so that we may have eternal life. While God the Father does not want us to sacrifice our own children, as the Canaanites did, he is willing, as the verse, John 3:14, so famously says, to sacrifice his own beloved son, Christ, who is one with him in his divine nature. The sacrifice of Christ is God's own sacrifice of himself for us, the outpouring of his life for us, so that we may experience the complete fulfillment of his life eternally.
In the account of the Transfiguration, found in this Sunday's Gospel passage, Christ reveals his glory, the glory we are to partake of without end. The Transfiguration is an example of theophany, when the divinity of Christ is revealed in the Scriptures. We see a theophany preceding every major moment in the life of Christ - his conception, his birth, his transition from childhood to adulthood, and the beginning of his public ministry.
The theophany of the Transfiguration also precedes a major moment in his life - his final journey to Jerusalem. Peter wants to stay in that moment, in the glory revealed by the Transfiguration. Nothing else matters. Everything else fades away as he experiences the resplendent glory of God.
But they cannot stay in that glory yet. Christ needs to go to Jerusalem and be crucified. Then Peter and all but one of the Apostles will in time be martyred for their faith, and John, who is not martyred, will suffer greatly too. Only after the Way of Cross will come the glory of the Resurrection, the glory revealed by the theophany of the Transfiguration.
The same is true for us as well. Before we can enter into the glory if Heaven, we too have to journey to Jerusalem. We have to experience the Cross through our own self-sacrifice of love. Only then do we reach the glory of the Transfiguration. Only then do we find true, eternal life. As I like to say, the gate of Heaven is in the shape of the Cross.
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The readings for the Second Suday of Lent, Cycle B, are:
Gn 22:1-2, 9a, 10-13, 15-18
Ps 116:10, 15, 16-17, 18-19
Rom 8:31b-34
Mk 9:2-10
The full text can be found at the USCCB website.
Photo Credit: Mosaic in the Church of the Transfiguration on Mt. Tabor in the Holy Land By Zoltan Abraham (c) 2016.