Some of you might remember my story of how I was brought into the U.S. as a child and the struggle with adjusting my immigration status. I’m still working through the process and dreaming of the moment where I can apply for U.S. citizenship. To be identified as a citizen of the United States is a coveted privilege many of us dreams of.

While Paul is in prison, he writes to the Philippians that their citizenship is in heaven. He writes this as a Roman citizen. Paul had what many dreamed of as the ultimate privilege in the ancient world; to be identified a citizen of the Roman Empire. But after his conversion, having received a new identity in Christ, he now sees his Roman citizenship insignificant in comparison.

Even though the Roman Empire dominated much of the known world in its day, Paul did not see it as grand as people made it out to be. In his letter to the Romans, he laments how the culture had reduced the human person to mere physical material existence, something he repeats in the letter to the Philippians we hear today. He says he is even brought to tears thinks about how many conduct themselves as enemies of the cross of Christ… and instead of seeking glory in God, they became ashamed of the gospel and busied themselves with material things.

That is what sin does, it reduces the human person to the mere materialistic to the point where we do not recognize that we are created in the image of God capable of reflecting the glory of God. When I only see myself as material, I will feel inadequate, never enough, which Paul describes as a sense of shame, and if I am a person of faith but focus on the material, it is only a matter of time before I realize I do not live up to what it means to bare God’s image, making me resentful and ashamed. That is when the glory of God itself becomes shameful, and because we don’t like to feel ashamed, we embrace our sin as our glory – shameless. Faith becomes an embarrassment, something to hide, and public sin becomes the norm, what is celebrated.

That is a risk we also face today. The age of science has forced us to think of ourselves primarily as material. With the popularization of Darwinian evolution and Mendel’s discovery of genetics, we often speak of identity and the human person at a material level, as mere genetic code.

Get a fresh new look at your story! Discover your Identity with 23 and Me or Ancestry DNA! Some people want to affirm their identity based on their DNA. All they have to do is send a saliva sample by mail to a lab that can map out their genetic makeup. (Then I discover I am 1% Irish and St. Patrick’s Day takes on a whole new meaning).

Others want to affirm their identity at the psychological level. They take an online personality test to finally understand who they are and what they are supposed to focus on in life.

Others try to find affirmation of their identity through technology, through receiving constant attention, likes, and positive opinions and affirmations from others through social media. This too is another form of reducing ourselves to the material. The American Psychiatric Association has added Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD) as a new category of mental illness.

These things are helpful, and they have their place, but they are secondary when it comes to identity. As Christians, we are spiritual first, material second. Our mission is to continue to grow in our identity as children of God which saves us from falling back to a mere material existence.

This has been God’s mission from the beginning which started with Abraham. Yahweh establishes a covenant with Abraham by doing something unheard of; God himself swears an oath of fidelity to Abraham. We are supposed to be the ones swearing fidelity to God, not God to us. It was strange so Abraham asked, “how will that happen?”

To make things even weirder, God commands animal sacrifice so Abraham grabs a goat, a ram, turtledoves and a pigeon, splits them in half and is then terrified when he sees fire passing through the split carcasses. In fact, it was so shocking that poor Abraham he goes into a trance. But what is the symbolism here? The animal carcasses represent the material. The fire represents the spirit. Meaning, the promise God makes is to reveal the spiritual identity of the material, the beginning of the history of salvation. God came to reveal the spirit in us.

Salvation continues with God calling Moses who lived during the time of the great Egyptian empire which had distorted human identity. Moses is called to reveal the state of humanity – you had the Pharo trying to be god one end, and people enslaved on the other. So, God intervenes. First he calls the Pharos to conversion but his heart is too hardened. So then he calls the enslaved people towards freedom, and those that listen to him he takes out of Egypt, establishing with them a covenant and gives them a new identity as his chosen ones, the ones tasked with the mission to restore the identity of all humanit. They were not able to maintain this focus for very long and kept going back to seeking material things time and time again.

Then there came a time under the reign of King Ahab that they almost lost their identity and therefore covenant all together. They were being pressured to worship and offer sacrifice to the false god Baal, but doing so would have been a violation of the first commandment and a complete abandonment of the covenant. But remember that God swore an oath of fidelity to Abraham, he could not let this happen, so he chooses the prophet Elijah to intervene and make them realize of the false identity they were beginning to embrace, and call them back to being God’s chosen ones.

And so now we turn to the gospel of Luke who describes the transfiguration as Jesus appearing with Moses and Elijah. Luke is clearly making a connection: just as God had to intervene during the height of the Egyptian empire by calling Moses, just as God had to intervene during the height of the reign of King Ahab by calling Elijah, now God is intervening once and for all in the height of the Roman empire by sending Jesus, Gods chosen Son. When God intervenes, false identities are revealed, and the course of our lives change.

What did this intervention mean to Peter, John and James? First, they knew the significance of Moses and Elijah, they knew they had changed the course of history, so seeing Jesus with them meant something was about to happen… not only were their lives about to change but so would human history. Second, they knew that Moses and Elijah where the only ones who had seen the presence of God and had lived, everyone else had died, so imagine how afraid they were to be struct dead right there on the spot. They were amazed, confused and terrified at the same time.  You can sense that in Peter’s nervous reaction “hey, ummm… master? Yeah… not scared at all, in fact this is totally normal, let’s uh… let’s just hang out here for a while, in fact let me just make each of you a tent so you can rest a bit, hopefully keep you covered and contained, less chance we are struct dead.”

This final intervention began with Jesus’ baptism where the voice of God is first heard, revealing his mission. Remember that Jesus did not need to baptize but chose to do so in order to enter our sin. As Paul put it: he who knew no sin was made to be sin so that we might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor 5:21). That same voice is heard here in the transfiguration just before the journey to the cross. Here God is once again making his oath of fidelity known, that he will be with us even onto death.

This intervention will be complete in the death and resurrection of Jesus. Jesus allows himself to be killed to reveal through the cross just how far the disciples and all humanity had deviated from the image of God. The world put their shame and rejection of God on full display on the cross, preferring political power over spiritual power. The cross reveals what we become when we stray from God’s covenant. But then comes the resurrection. There, the image of God is restored in us, giving us a new identity and power that is not of this world, the power of forgiveness, non-violence and love.

God’s oath of fidelity is for us and to live in the new covenant is to continue our journey towards becoming who God made us to be. That makes everything we do as Catholics purpose driven, and we have to be careful not to fall back to doing things out of mere religious duty.

If lent is a time to grow in our identity, what we do must serve that purpose. How does not eating fish on Friday increases your awareness of who you are? If it doesn’t, then you are abstaining in vain –  or not abstaining at all because you see a point to it. In everything that you do, do it with purpose. To live with purpose is to know your God given identity and to be consistent: that your material life which comes second may reflect your spiritual life which should come first.

We tend to do it the other way around. We spend so much time thinking about our physical existence and our material needs instead of spending time in prayer, asking God to expand our minds. We spend so much time at work and frantic activity when the most important reflection of the divine image is our capacity to rest. We are so bad at resting God has to force us, make it a commandment to not work on Sunday, the Lord’s Day. We so easily trust the promises that people make to us instead of trusting the covenant oath that God has sworn to us.

Lent is a time to learn how to be spiritual first, it is to be restored in our desire to live in God’s glory and not be ashamed of it, and only the power of God’s love can dispel away our shame. So, if you are having a hard time embracing your faith publicly, or you are letting the shame of your sin stop you from your faith fully, pray for the grace of experiencing the love of God in Christ, and open yourself to this love in these weeks of lent.

Our citizenship is in heaven. While many people are distracted by achieving earthly citizenship, today we are reminded that the power that governs the lives of Christians is beyond the powers that govern the world. Only Christ has the power to truly bring all things together, therefore, my dear family in faith whom I love, stay firm in the Lord.