The Gospel for the First Sunday of Lent narrates the temptations of Jesus. That for the Second Sunday celebrates Jesus' Transfiguration. The Lucan account of the Transfiguration begins with the words, "After eight days" (omitted from the lectionary reading).In his small, but rich book, The Dwelling of the Light: Praying with Icons of Christ, Rowan Williams writes:

Christ's light alone will make the final pattern coherent, for each of us as for all human history. And that light shines on the far side of the world's limits, the dawn of the eighth day. When Jesus is transfigured, it is as if there is a brief glimpse of the end of all things -- the world aflame with God's light.In the strength of that glimpse, things become possible. We can confront today's business with new thoughts and feelings, reflect on our sufferings and our failures with some degree of hope -- not with a nice and easy message of consolation but with the knowledge that there is a depth to the world's reality and out of that comes the light which will somehow connect, around and in Jesus Christ, all the complex, painful, shapeless experience of human beings.