The Mass readings for the second Sunday of Lent this year include, as always, one of the Genesis accounts of God's promises to Abraham, and one of the Gospel accounts of the Transfiguration of the Lord. What does God's call to Abraham (or Abram, as he is first named) and promise to make of him a great nation (to which all people will be related through faith) have to do with the Transfiguration?

Who is the people that is chosen in Abraham? Certainly, it is Israel, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Certainly also, it is the Church, prefigured by Israel, the fulfillment of Israel. But we should recall that the Church on earth - "the Church militant" - is not the entirety of the Church. There is also the Church in purgatory - "the Church suffering" - and the Church in heaven - "the Church triumphant." And it is only the Church in heaven that will be eternal. All who are members of the Church forever will be members of the Church in heaven.

We might add also that the Church triumphant as it exists today - that is, made up of the separated souls of those who have died in the state of grace and who then, if necessary, have undergone purification of the effects of their sins - will not last eternally. We look forward to the resurrection of the dead. At the end of time, when earth and also purgatory are no more, the resurrection will take place, and God's holy ones will live eternally, body as well as soul, in heaven.

It is death and also resurrection, then, that fully brings into being the people God chooses in and promises to Abraham. This brings us back to the Transfiguration. In the Transfiguration, Jesus manifests the risen glory that he will win for himself and for us. It is by entering, through union with Jesus' death and resurrection, into this glory that we will enter perfectly into membership in God's chosen people.

Of course, while we are continuing, for four more weeks, our observance of this season of Lent, we should focus especially on the death that must occur before resurrection can occur. Even while we are hearing of the glorious Transfiguration, we should be mindful of Jesus' words afterward to the three Apostles who were with him: "Do not tell the vision to anyone until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead." We should not simply forget the glory of Easter, the glory of our own resurrection. But we should, for now, think especially of what Jesus must undergo first - and what we must continue to undergo first.

Our need to undergo death is prefigured in the story of Abraham, who first is called to leave his family home to travel to a new land. And we are reminded more explicitly of the need to pass through suffering and death by our second reading. St. Paul exhorts us: "Bear your share of hardship for the gospel with the strength that comes from God." Jesus has called us for the "life and immortality" that he has won for us. But we must pass through hardship, even death.

During Lent, we should grow in our union with the suffering and death of the Lord Jesus. We should think and pray about his death. We should be united with his death through acts of penance (which, of course, presupposes contrition for, and conversion from, our sins). Only through death will we come to the resurrection. Only through death will we enter perfectly into God's chosen people. Only through death will we find the great blessing that God promised of old.

May the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of Sorrows, intercede for us as we seek to observe this holy and penitential season faithfully and arrive together perfectly into God's glory.