Our spiritual journey

My sermon for last Sunday, 2nd Sunday in Lent, Year A:

You could say that the readings today are about three journeys: Abraham's, Christ's, and ours.

The first reading describes an ancient and mysterious event: God's call to Abraham to uproot himself, to leave his old country and his old way of life behind and to set off for a new country and a new life under God's direction.

Abraham's journey wasn't something he himself decided to embark on. The initiative and the summons came from God and Abraham responded. God's approach to Abraham was the first act of God making his character and his will known to the human race. It was the beginning of a process that would last for centuries and culminate in the life and mission of Christ, the ultimate revelation of God in human history.

In the gospel reading there's another journey taking place. On one level Jesus and his disciples are travelling to Jerusalem for the Passover. But on another level, as Jesus has been trying to explain to his disciples before this incident of his transfiguration on the mountain, this is his journey towards Calvary, towards his death and resurrection - the fulfilment of his mission.

The transfiguration is an important incident not only because it illustrates Jesus' real identity - the fact that he's God and not just a human being - but because it also illustrates the end-point of his journey: his return to God the Father. This strange luminous state that overwhelms Christ has always been seen as an anticipation of the glorified state that he took on when he appeared to his followers after his Resurrection.

The image of a journey is a common image of the spiritual life of every Christian and every seeker after spiritual truth. The life of every Christian is a very specific kind of journey, a pilgrimage, with a very definite purpose, direction and destination: to be united with God, now and in eternity.

If there's any parallel between our Christian journey and Abraham's, it's the fact that God takes the initiative in our case just as much as in Abraham's. When we reflect a little, we realise that the Christian journey is less about us finding God and more about God approaching us, revealing himself and drawing us into his life. Saint Augustine talked about this in his Confessions: as he looked back on his life Augustine realised that after all his spiritual wandering and immoral living, he didn't come to God, God came to him - and rescued him. And that's part of the experience of every Christian believer, even if, often, our pilgrimage towards God isn't as colourful and dramatic as Augustine's was.

Then if there's any parallel between our spiritual journey and Christ's, it's that we're also destined for "transfiguration", for resurrection and glory.

Human life doesn't begin and end within the limits of this world. Even the efforts we make to lead lives of Christian love and holiness don't have their ultimate reference-point withn our present life - something which can be easy to lose sight of when we put a lot of emphasis, as we tend to do today, on campigning against poverty and injustice and so on.

It's right that Christians should oppose poverty and injustice but it's worth reminding ourselves from time to time that God's Kingdom is never fully realised in this world. We're destined for eternity, and all the acts of practical compassion and love towards those who are suffering - feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, giving shelter to the homeless - are important in terms of our future life with God, and not only in terms of our life here and now.

The theme of journey is especially apt today because, as we all know, today at Mass we have a short ceremony in which Alex is going to be received into the full communion of the Church. He'll be confirmed and he'll receive Christ's Body and Blood in the Eucharist for the first time.

I don't want to put words into Alex's mouth or speak on behalf of anyone who is preparing to become a Catholic soon. But the moment of coming into the Church formally and receiving Christ's life through those sacraments is surely a great step forward in anyone's journey of faith.

We live at a time when many members of the Church aren't men and women who were born into Catholic families and raised as Catholics; they're people who are drawn to Christ, to the Gospel and to the Church through the events of their adult life. And when that happens, I think this motif of a journey in which we're conscious of God's initiative in seeking us out and drawing us into his life, is especially relevant.

So let's pray for Alex as a new member of the Body of Christ and of the parish of St Josephs, welcome him, support him and maybe take the opportunity to think about our own journey of faith in the light of the readings we've got for this Sunday's Mass.