Second Sunday of Lent Homily: Remembering the Mountaintop in Difficult Times
Readings and Virtual Homily for March 1, 2026, Second Sunday of Lent; Five Retreats in Three Weeks; San Gabriel Barrels On Ahead; March Schedule (First Two Weeks)
Readings for this Sunday:
Genesis 12:1-4
Psalm 33:4-5, 18-20, 22
2 Timothy 1:8-10
Matthew 17:1-9
Dear Friends and Family,
The Transfiguration is this Sunday's Gospel passage. Matthew's account of the Transfiguration runs a close parallel to Luke's. Jesus ascends a lofty hill (if it is the mountain we think it is, it is about the same height as Mount Diablo) with his three closest disciples, who experience a stunning vision. Matthew describes it
(Jesus') face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as light. Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus (vss. 2-3).
Luke adds that they were talking with Jesus about his upcoming "exodus" which he "was going to accomplish in Jerusalem" (Luke 9:31).
Tradition holds that the Transfiguration occurred about forty days before the Crucifixion. This is one reason why this Gospel passage occurs near the start of Lent. We may with some degree of confidence assume that the vision was granted the three apostles to help them hold on in faith in the face of the events of Good Friday. Jesus appears with Moses and Elijah, representing the law and the prophets; Jesus being the fulfillment of both.
Whether the apostles managed, under the shock, the weight and the horror of the Crucifixion, to recall the Transfiguration and hope for something yet to be revealed, even as Jesus lay in the tomb, is a matter of much speculation. The vision dazzled and inspired them, but the brutal reality of Jesus' death was what they were dealing with, from Good Friday afternoon until sometime mid-day or later that first Easter Sunday.
We can take our lead for this reflection, however, in the fact of the vision, an experience which happened on a mountaintop, and draw a parallel to our own faith journeys. God will give us moments of transcendence -- however they might come -- to help us hold on in faith, when the crucifixions hit. Mountaintop experiences can and do reinforce our faith, our hope, our confidence that God has our backs, when we find ourselves making our way in the wasteland.
An easy example of this dynamic from my own life occurred while I was a seminarian, wrapping up my residential year at St. Charles Borromeo Parish in Sacramento. (The parish had been founded by my uncle, who had died three years before I was assigned to it.) I had an amazing year there, as the resident seminarian. For the first time I lived in a rectory, a rectory that felt like a second home to me seeing that my uncle had lived there for 34 years. I kept something like a priest's schedule; had the full experience of the wide range of ministry opportunities in a large and active parish. I met up with many old family friends, parishioners who had been close to my uncle; but I also made many new acquaintances at St. Charles and a few of them were to become lifelong friends. The year at St. Charles was a long-term "mountaintop" experience for me that told me I was going to love being a priest.
This experience was invaluable in the two years which followed. I took a year out of the seminary program after completing the year at St. Charles to, among other things, get my thesis written for my master's degree in philosophy at the Dominican School at Berkeley's Graduate Theological Union. It was only meant to be one year out, and I did get the thesis written. But so much went wrong for me otherwise that year that I was forced to take a second year out, and work a job in the Marysville parish (my boyhood parish, where I had been youth minister for years before leaving for the seminary).
During these two years, there were times when I might have wondered if I was going to get back to the seminary. It was a set of difficulties amounting to a near-crisis, and it caused the Vocations Office in Sacramento to so lose faith in me that they dropped me as a candidate for ordination -- though I was just two years short of the goal, at that point. Demoralizing as much of my situation was, those two years, I held onto the vibrant memories of the joy, the wonder, the sense of engagement and accomplishment that had accompanied me in my residency year at St. Charles. I "returned to the mountaintop," in other words, in my thoughts, many times while making my way through an uncharted and wholly unexpected set of difficulties; difficulties lasting, as I say, two full years.
A chief result of that "time in the desert" was that I transferred my candidacy to Oakland. It was, evidently, all along God's will that I should become a priest for the East Bay rather than for the Sacramento Valley. Meanwhile, I held onto hope, remembering the wonderful year, the ten-month mountaintop experience that had been my residency year at my uncle's parish in Sacramento. If we can "recall the mountaintop" when we find ourselves in the wasteland, our journey through the wasteland will be smoother, lighter and graced with a peace that we might otherwise lose sight of.
It's only ten days into the Lenten season and already I have (well, I will have had) three retreats since Ash Wednesday. The first was last Saturday at CCOP -- the Women of Faith ministry, still fairly new and clearly thriving, had me give a daylong retreat on the Psalms in Lent. This is a theme I have covered in several formats -- for other retreats, for Shalom World Television as an eight-part Lenten series, at San Gabriel Media as a YouTube series (completed but yet to be aired). It was great to be in Pleasanton last Saturday, from the retreat's nine AM start right through to the Vigil Mass, which I celebrated as a sort of wrap-up of the retreat. Though I say Mass monthly at Elizabeth Seton, I had not said a regular Sunday Mass at St. Augustine in more than a decade. It felt like coming home; I had said my first Pleasanton Mass as a brand new priest at St. Augustine, almost twenty years ago. The day was made perfect by a dinner date with several good friends at Haps. Talk about mountaintop experiences!
Then, as mentioned, as I am writing this, I am at San Damiano, on a three-day Kairos Retreat with 57 members of O'Dowd's Class of 2027. The Kairos protocol is that seniors, who made the retreat last year, give the retreat for the juniors; the seniors give the talks, lead the small groups, and so on. So we have a dozen members of the Class of 2026 here as well.
By the time you are reading this, I will be at St. Clare Retreat Center in Soquel, giving a women's Lenten retreat, the theme being the Female Saints of the Passion. This again, is a retreat I have given several times over the years, and we are planning a Lenten YT series as well, at San Gabriel. Meanwhile, the priest slated to give a women's Lenten retreat at St. Clare next weekend had to back out and the sisters asked if there were any chance I could take the weekend. They assured me I could simply duplicate this weekend's retreat as, after all, it would be a different group of retreatants. After checking with Fr. Jesus (pastor at St. Clement) I was able to accept the request, and that retreat, followed by another Kairos the next week, makes five retreats in three weeks; my Lent is off to a reLENTless start (lol).
My schedule the past eighteen months has been steadily picking up, in terms of extra-curricular ministry -- that is, ministry beyond the high school and beyond the parish. This winter, going back to the holidays, it is feeling like the sort of schedule I kept prior to COVID. Talks, retreats, special events, extra Masses (beyond the high school or St. Clement) and so on. All good. It leaves me less time for writing, or for new video work at San Gabriel, but there will be plenty of time for both of these over spring break and during the summer. Meanwhile, I am enjoying the picked-up pace. I only work as much as I do because I love my work, after all.
On the subject of San Gabriel Media, we a week or two back shot past 800,000 subscribers worldwide; we are gaining 3-4000 a day. Some people, at least, evidently find our offerings engaging and worthwhile. At the same time, and at the risk of sounding like a broken record, 800,000 subscribers has us still on the taxi-way. I'll say we have reached the runway when we hit one million. We will only be in the air at some number well above that. Our ambitions at San Gabriel are not small. This is the Gospel. Jesus told us to preach it to all nations (Matthew 28 and Luke 24). At San Gabriel Media, we aim to do precisely that.
Gonna sign off here. Take good care. God bless.
My best wishes for serenity and grace as we really move into Lent -- my favorite season of the year.
Love,
Fr. Brawn
Schedule for the First Half of March:
Sunday, March 1
630 PM (English)
Sunday, March 8
630 PM (English)
Saturday, March 14
5 PM (English)
Sunday, March 15
8 AM (English)
CATHOLIC COMMUNITY OF PLEASANTON, Seton Campus
11 AM (English)
Daily Masses (All 8 AM, All English)
Mon., Mar. 2
Mon., Mar. 9
Sat., Mar. 14
Mon., Mar. 16
Sat., Mar. 21
Mon., Mar. 23
Sat., Mar. 28
Mon., Mar. 30