Sunday Reflection with Canon Robin Gibbons: March 1st 2026

Transfiguration Louvre ML145

Second Sunday of Lent

Saint David of Wales whose feast is normally kept on March 1st shares with us a pithy saying: 'Gwnewch y pethau bychain' : in English 'Do the little things'! If we are puzzled at this phrase its only because it has a stark and direct simplicity, but also a graciousness which make important those small and considerate things we do for others. It might at first seem at odds with the desire to achieve greater things for the glory of God, but it's not, for it enhances what we do by placing these things, yet again, within that virtue of humility, so loved by Christ.

The longer phrase of which this saying is a part, comes from a sermon David preached before his death on March 1st, 589AD, this helps flesh out his little way of humility for us: 'Be joyful and keep your faith and your creed. Do the little things that you have seen me do and heard about. I will walk the path that our fathers have trod before us.'

It seems totally appropriate to bring this wisdom of the father David into our reflection at this point in time, given that as I write the US bombing of Iran and massive security concerns about conflict in the Gulf and elsewhere gives rise to global concern. What are we to do? What does Christ the Word give us on this second Sunday in Lent?

Already we have before us the wisdom of David of Wales, urging us to stick to our daily life and be considerate, be diligent, walking the Lenten path of our Christian observance in a spirit of joyful and loving service. But David's intercession is also important for we have need of the prayers of our companions in the Kingdom, if we are to keep the faith that they too once professed and profess the creed that underlines our own belief and hope. For if we walk the Gospel way of our fathers and mothers it is never alone, for they and the Christ walk alongside us. This is hope based in need and trust, but lived out in our ordinary lives by the grace and loving gift of our good Lord Jesus, very much as our second reading from 2 Timothy puts it so well:

'He saved us and called us to a holy life,
not according to our works
but according to his own design
and the grace bestowed on us in Christ Jesus before time began,
but now made manifest
through the appearance of our saviour Christ Jesus,
who destroyed death and brought life and immortality
to light through the gospel'.(2 Tim 1:8-10)

Here we have our hope, but also the humility of our contrite Lenten hearts, that in doing well the little things, the Lord will work with and through us. As a real focus of encouragement and for our silent prayer, Matthew in our Gospel gives us that wonderful encounter with Jesus on the mountain, where he and three of the disciples saw the cloud of unknowing which hid the Most High whose voice they heard, just as Moses did at Sinai, but in this case a voice of relationship and encounter whose words revealed the Son, Jesus the Christ. It is an important gospel text for Great Lent, for the Transfiguration was an encounter that changed things. It was one of those few events directly witnessed and attested to by those three disciples as recounted in 2 Peter, 'We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the holy mountain'(2 Peter 1:18) Though we are aware of the Risen Lord, of the foundational importance of the resurrection nevertheless the Transfiguration is also very much a part of our discipleship, 'walking the way of our fathers and mothers' by faith. Why?

Perhaps I can best illustrate the importance of the Transfiguration by a comparison. On the feast of the Transfiguration, August 6th 1945, the USA dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima -what followed was incalculable destruction and death. One description of the Gospel Transfiguration tells of the bright light of the revealed, divine, Jesus, and all accounts the voice of the Father from the cloud , but in contrast there at Hiroshima was, no voice of revelation, only the burning light, mushroom cloud and noise of destruction those voices of the dying and injured. The dropping of the A Bomb did not open out a time of transparency hope or peace, rather a new age of uncertainty for the human race.

The then President of the USA, Harry Truman, in announcing the use of the A bomb said: 'But under present circumstances it is not intended to divulge the technical processes of production or all the military applications, pending further examination of possible methods of protecting us and the rest of the world from the danger of sudden destruction'. (Transcript of the Presidents Announcement August 6th 1945) Words which have come back to haunt us, becoming words of concealment and subterfuge. Contrast this with the brilliance of the Light that comes from God, seen and perceived on the Holy Mountain, here our own destiny is revealed openly by the Father's words and a vision of life understood as constructive, renewed, and transformed by Christ. For he who is our brother and friend, calls us to share in the glory that is his glimpsed on the holy mountain! I have used the wonderful revelation of the American monk, Thomas Merton as a piece of Lectio for us, who glimpsed and understood the bright sun, not of an atomic bomb, but as of the transfigured Christ whose love is for all!

This Lent, at this moment in time, may we return to the humility of St David's words and do the little things well, that our prayer in the small things may transfigure the pain and problems of this planet, but also helped by David's intercession, of those witnesses on the holy mountain, of Thomas Merton and all our fathers and mothers in faith.

Most High and Holy One in heaven,

your Son Jesus Christ was transfigured in glory

before chosen witnesses upon the holy mountain,

and spoke of the exodus he would accomplish at Jerusalem:

give us the strength to hear his voice and to bear our cross

that in the world to come we may see him as he is;

who is alive and reigns with you,

in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

one God, now and for ever.

On this day, and on the feast of the great Saint David, patron of Wales:

'Dydd Gwyl Dewi Hapus, or Happy Saint David's Day!'

LECTIO

Revelation of Thomas Merton OCSO March 18 1958

"In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the centre of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world. . . .

This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud. . . . I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realise what we all are. And if only everybody could realise this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.

Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God's eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed. . . . But this cannot be seen, only believed and 'understood' by a peculiar gift."

- Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

For the feast of Saint David ( from the Office of Readings)

From a Life of St David by Rhygyferch

The holy Father David prescribed an austere system of monastic observance, requiring every monk to toil daily at manual labour and to lead a common life. So with unflagging zeal they work with hand and foot, they put the yoke to their own shoulders, and in their own holy hands, they bear the tools for labour in the fields. So by their own strength they procure every necessity for the community, while refusing possessions and detesting riches. They make no use of oxen for ploughing. Everyone is rich to himself and to the brethren, every man is his own ox.

When the field work is done they return to the enclosure of the monastery, to pass their time till evening at reading, writing, or in prayer. Then when the signal is heard for evening prayer everyone leaves what he is at and in silence, without any idle conversation, they make their way to church. When, with heart and voice attuned, they have completed the psalmody, they remain on their knees until stars appearing in the heaven bring day to its close; yet when all have gone, the father remains there alone making his own private prayer for the well-being of the church.

Shedding daily abundance of tears, offering daily his sweet-scented sacrifice of praise, aglow with an intensity of love, he consecrated with pure hands the fitting oblation of the Lord's body, and so, at the conclusion of the morning offices, attaining alone to the converse of angels. Then the whole day was spent undaunted and untired, in teaching, praying, on his knees, caring for the brethren, and for orphans and children, and widows, and everyone in need, for the weak and the sick, for travellers and in feeding many. The rest of this stern way of life would be profitable to imitate, but the shortness of this account forbids our entering upon it, but in every way his life was ordered in imitation of the monks of Egypt.'