TEXT: Second Sunday of Lent, March 1, 2026
March 1, 2026 Father De Celles Homily
2nd Sunday of Lent
March 1, 2026
Homily by Fr. John De Celles
St. Raymond of Peñafort Catholic Church
Springfield, VA
Every year, on the Second Sunday of Lent,
we read the Gospel story of the Transfiguration of the Lord,
using a three-year rotation:
one year from St. Matthew, the next from St. Mark,
the next from St. Luke, and then back to St. Matthew again.
Many times, priests will focus their homilies on
how Jesus did this to strengthen Peter, James and John,
so that when they saw Jesus arrested, scourged and crucified
—and even buried—
they would have a special reason to hope and believe
that Jesus was no ordinary man and that God would not abandon Him.
I know I have preached that—it’s a very important aspect of this story.
But I think there’s another aspect of this we might focus on today.
Think of this: Scripture tells us,
“His face shone like the sun and his clothes became white as light.”
It’s as if Jesus finally, if even for a moment, reveals to Himself as He truly is,
at least as He is in His inner self, in His soul.
St. Thomas Aquinas tells us the glory that Jesus shows outwardly
in His body, in the transfiguration,
is a revelation of what has been going on inwardly since His incarnation:
His human soul has always been glorious, united as it is to His Divinity.
He says that when Jesus dies,
and His mortal body is transformed to the risen body,
that risen body is made naturally capable of revealing His glory constantly.
But Thomas says the mortal human body is not naturally capable
of externally revealing the internal glory of Jesus’ soul.
So, the Transfiguration is truly a miracle—a one-time gift—
that Jesus performs to reveal who He really is to Peter, James and John.
Now think of this: In baptism, we believe, as Christians,
that by the sanctifying grace of Jesus, we are united to Christ,
and the Divine Father, Son and Holy Spirit come to dwell in our souls.
It’s an amazing thing to think about,
a mystery that we sort of understand, but not completely,
that Jesus reveals to us as absolutely true.
And so, because we are united to Jesus, to the Son of God,
after our Baptism, the Father can look down on each one of us
and say the words that forced Peter, James and John
to fall prostrate on the ground:
“[You are] my beloved Son, my beloved Daughter,
with whom I am well pleased…”
So, the newly baptized Christian’s soul looks an awful lot like Christ’s soul
as He was transfigured before His three Apostles.
Imagine that. The soul of the newly baptized,
in some way, shares in the glory of Jesus’ soul
—spiritually shining “like the sun” and “white as light.”
The problem, though, is it doesn’t stay that way.
As we get older and move on in life,
things happen to dull that shining light of our soul.
We get distracted from the fact that we share in Jesus’ sonship,
and we forget about the Trinity dwelling in our souls.
So, we sin.
Our lesser, or venial, sins dim the bright light of divine glory in our souls
like soot dims the light of an oil or candle lamp.
And mortal sin extinguishes it altogether.
What a terrible thing. What a tragedy.
Our soul goes from being as bright as the sun
to being as dark as the deepest well.
But then we remember Jesus on Mount Tabor at the Transfiguration.
And we remember the Cross and Resurrection
Jesus was preparing Peter, James and John for.
And we remember, that by the grace of His Cross, He who rose from the dead,
can raise our spiritually deadened souls to be once again like His in glory.
He gave us not only the sacrament of Baptism,
but also the sacrament of rebirth and healing,
the sacrament of Penance or Confession,
so that when we dim, or even extinguish, the light by our foolish sins,
He can once again fill us with His sanctifying grace,
like the bridegroom pouring new oil into the foolish virgins’ empty lamps,
so that His glory may shine in us once again.
And thanks be to God, He also gave us the sacrament of the Eucharist,
the sacrament that renews and strengthens that glory,
like food fed to the starving to revivify life,
or like coal heaped on fading embers to rekindle the blazing fire.
And thanks be to God, He has inspired His Church for two millennia to
spend the forty days before our Feast of the Cross and Resurrection
doing penances, and by those penances work with His grace to stoke that light.
So, with the penance of sacrifices we control our selfish and sinful desires
that work to smother the fire of God’s love.
And by the penance of almsgiving and charity,
we sort of open the flue to let in God’s grace to kindle His love in our souls.
And by our penance of prayer, we stop and take time
to turn toward the light of Christ and draw closer to it.
So that, by Easter we may shine as bright as the Resurrected Jesus.
____
When we faithful Christians die in the state of sanctifying grace,
we will rise again, and our bodies will be changed,
spiritualized and glorified.
In 1st Corinthians, St. Paul writes about the body in “the resurrection of the dead”:
“It is sown weak; it is raised powerful.
It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body…”
And St. John writes in his first epistle,
“Beloved, we are God’s children now,
and what we will be has not yet appeared;
but we know that when he appears we shall be like him…”
We shall be like Jesus, who shines like the sun at the transfiguration
and on His throne now in heaven.
So, Jesus tells us elsewhere in Matthew’s Gospel,
“The righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.”
But that’s our glorified resurrected bodies.
Some might ask, “Well Father, if all that’s true,
and if the transfiguration is a revelation of Jesus’s glorious soul,
when our souls are united to Him, living in the state of grace,
why don’t Christians bodies shine now?”
Well, on the one hand, as I said before, citing Aquinas,
it’s not natural for our mortal human body to do that;
only the resurrected body will naturally show the glory of God.
It would take a miracle for our bodies to be transfigured,
just as it took a miracle for Jesus’ body in today’s story to be transfigured.
On the other hand,
there are lots of accounts of saints who did, in fact,
experience miracles similar to the transfiguration.
Eyewitness accounts tell how on various occasions
some mysterious light shown around or from the face of certain saints like
St. Claire of Assisi, St. Theresa of Avila, St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Robert Bellarmine, St. Joseph Cupertino, St. Marin de Porres, St. Francis de Sales, and St. Alphonsus Liguori.
And consider how one day St. John Vianney, the Cure of Ars,
was hearing confessions in a lamp-less confessional in a dark chapel,
but when he opened the door to his confessional,
eyewitnesses saw him sitting in a bright light.
Or consider how after receiving Holy Communion, St. Catherine of Siena
would sometimes go into ecstasy
and her face would literally “send [out] bright rays of light.”
Or consider our own St. Raymond of Peñafort,
how on one occasion when offering Holy Mass,
witnesses reported,
“A globe of fire covered his head and shoulders,
like a glorious [halo “aureole”],
from the Consecration to the Communion of the Mass.”
____
The Transfiguration strengthened Peter, James and John
so that they could endure and survive the ordeal and turmoil
of Jesus’ Crucifixion and three days in the tomb,
and to recognize that this Jesus was no ordinary man,
but the true Son of God,
filled with the power of God.
It also strengthens us,
reminding us of the grace Jesus won for us on the Cross,
poured out on us in Baptism and Confession,
and renewed in us in the Eucharist.
It reminds us of how glorious and perfect we can be with that grace
and how sin extinguishes the life and light of Christ within us.
And it also reminds us of what Lent can do for us,
through our penitential acts of charity, prayer, and sacrifice
and through the eager and devout use of the sacraments.
Now, as we enter more deeply into the mysteries of this Holy Mass,
as the Lord reveals Himself to us in the Most Holy Eucharist,
let us recognize that beyond the veil of bread and wine
is hidden the true body of our loving savior.
His body, at once, bloody and broken on the Cross
and glorious and brilliant in his resurrection.
And let us recognize what our sins have done
not only to His beautiful countenance, but also to the beauty of our souls.
And let us, by the grace of this Most Blessed Sacrament,
strive to make our souls “shine like the sun” and “become white as light,”
so that our Father in heaven will say to us,
“You too, are my beloved son, my beloved daughter,
with whom I am well pleased.”