The season of Lent invites us to embark on a spiritual journey to last for forty days that hopefully will end up in a better place for our spiritual lives.  But beyond Lent we are all in a greater journey, for our salvation.  If we are alive, we are in this journey.  There is a term in Latin that is called “exitus-reditus” which means we come from God, and we are to return to God.  So we are then in a journey toward eternity.  In this journey as we saw last week there will be temptations, the devil will try to deviate the route. However, there are more things that can happen as we see in today’s readings. 
     First, the Lord calls us out of the land of our birth like Abraham.  This is a metaphor to show us that we are called to get out of our comfort zone and go where the Lord leads us.   In this journey of life, there will be blessings bestow on us along the way just like Abraham.  He became a source of blessing himself.  As Abraham was blessed because he was willing to leave his father’s house, so too we will be blessed when we accept the call of God to serve in his Church.  Abraham as it mentions at the end of the reading, did what the Lord directed him to do.  How many  headaches would we save ourselves, if only we listen to the direction from God? There are many contradicting directions the world gives, just stick to the course shown by God.  In this journey of faith not everything will be a blessing, not everything will be flowers and roses to use an expression.  There are also going to be hardships as we see in the second reading when St. Paul mentions the share of the hardship for the Gospel. In this journey there will moments of blessing, but also moments of trial.  However, God will give strength from on high, so those trials can help us in our path to holiness, and the life of holiness will lead us to immortality.  Finally, in this path there will moments, perhaps one in life, perhaps a couple where the presence of God will be so intense, his manifestation so powerful, his light so bright that we would want to stay with such experience for a prolong time because it would so good.  This experience is given for a purpose to reaffirm our faith and for us to continue walking the path of God until the end. It is given so that we rise from our conformities and  follow the path of the cross. It is about making us less afraid of life, and for us to raise our eyes and keep them on the goal of eternity.  This is what some would call the “ah-hah” moment when we realize the purpose of our lives is to return to God, and we will make the best out of this journey.  In this journey of life, we will experience many things: blessings and trials, and a few moments of transfiguration but hopefully all of these will help us to complete the journey, and one day hear the same words addressed to Jesus for us “This is my beloved Son [daughter], with whom I am well pleased; welcome home!”