We are familiar with the idea that Lent is a season of  penance and sacrifice. Through acts of penance we  acknowledge our sins, express our sorrow and join our  actions with the redemptive work of Christ—we even take  on acts of penance for others, to help them find forgiveness  and restoration in Christ. Similarly, we place our own  sacrifices in union with our Lord and his Passion, for the  salvation and good of others. We give up meat on Fridays,  pray the Stations of the Cross, take on spiritual reading, fill  up rice bowls with spare change, and do a host of other  things in order to take us into the desert with our Lord. It is  also a season of revelation.  Think of how Lent begins. As Jesus is baptized, as voice  is heard: This is my Beloved Son, in whom I am well  pleased. And then, he proceeds to head into the desert to  fast for forty days and forty nights. It seems odd that God  would proclaim the arrival of His Son and then  immediately drive him into the desert in seclusion and away  from all people. But the desert, fasting and temptations are  meant to tell us who His son is and what he came into the  world to accomplish.

This Sunday, we read from the Transfiguration of the Lord, and again hear the voice coming from the cloud: This  is my beloved Son, listen to him. At the end of these forty  days, we come to the Lord’s Passion. This is the reason for  his birth and coming; the fulfillment of all of his promises  and culmination of all his work. There is no greater  revelation of the love of God, than the Passion, death and  resurrection of his son. Lent is designed, from beginning to  end, to lead us to Christ and the work that he came to  accomplish: freedom from the bondage of sin, the  redemption of man, and restoration of union with God. In  another way, we can say that it is not only about the  revelation of the Son of God, but through him who is both  fully human and fully divine, it is the revelation of the  perfection of humanity. In the Resurrection, we are  perfected. Lent shows us the way to perfection because it is  the way that Christ took and called us to take with him.  It is the revelation of the greatness that God has  designed for us. In a world that struggles to discover what  greatness is and fights over who is the GOAT (Greatest of  all Time), Christ shines a different light. Greatness is not  achieved in athletic skill, amassing of wealth, cleverness of  technological invention or in winning polls and elections.

For greatness, look to the infertility of Abraham; Moses who  was raised by the King who enslaved his own people; Elijah  who had to flee for his life. If you want to know what  greatness is and how to become great: Lent is this season  when our God first calls and guides us in how to follow His Son…Listen to Him