Being Transfigured

  [The parts in Italics were used only at the Extraordinary Form Mass]

Second Sunday of/in Lent
    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.]. When I talk about going on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, I talk about how visiting the Holy Land makes it so that you never read the Gospel the same way, because you see in your mind the places where these things happened.  This is certainly true for the Transfiguration.  I remember the first time I went to the Holy Land, as a seminarian.  We stayed with the Franciscan friars at the top of Mt. Tabor.  To get up there, there are shuttles you have to take for large groups; the big travel busses can’t handle the snake-back roads.  While waiting for the shuttle, I decided I was going to climb up the mountain, and hopefully save some time.  So, with my Birkenstock sandals on, on a warm, May day, I started walking up the side of Mt. Tabor.  It was not as easy as I thought, with all the thorns and bushes.  Sometimes the stones were a little loose, and I lost my footing.  But I made it to the top, quite sweaty and hot, probably a little dehydrated, but proud at my accomplishment.

    I had another experience at Mt. Tabor, as I went inside the church.  There is a beautiful mosaic of the transfiguration in the apse of the church, and as I was praying, the sun shone just perfectly so that it hit the image of Jesus, and illumined Him.  I remember thinking that this must have been something like the apostles saw when our Lord was transfigured.  Combining those two days, it’s even more amazing when Christ was transfigured, as He and the apostles would also have likely been hot and sweaty, and yet Christ’s clothes became as white as light.
    That’s all well and good to understand some very realistic background, but what, we may ask, does the Transfiguration have to do with us?  How does the Transfiguration change my life?  Well, as with so many aspects of our Lord’s life, what He showed us is what He desires to happen to us.  We are supposed to be transfigured as well.  We are supposed to go from earthly dirty, sweaty, and tired, to clean, bright, and glorified.
    That process started for us in baptism.  At our baptism, the voice of the Father may not have been heard, but He said that we are His beloved.  We became configured to Christ for the first time (but hopefully, not the last!).  And from that moment on, we were destined for glory, the glory that Christ shone forth as a foretaste at the Transfiguration.  We call this divinization, or deification.
    God wants us to be like Him.  We cannot be the same nature of God (as we are limited and He is infinite), but He wants us to be transformed so that we are images of Him.  This is the whole idea of the Christian life.  From baptism until death, we are called to become more and more like Christ, the new Adam, and less and less like the first Adam.  St. Paul will talk about this using the terms “old man” and “new man.”  
    How does this happen?  Some of it happens through the sacraments.  I already mentioned baptism, but the Sacrament of Penance helps us be more like God through having our fallen actions (sins) washed away by the Blood of Christ.  Confirmation empowers us to act like Christ in public.  The Eucharist is meant to transform us from the inside out, so that as we receive Christ in the Eucharist, we become more like Him in what we do because we have Him inside us.    Marriage helps us to live for the other, as Christ did for His Bride, the Church.  Holy Orders allows one to act in the name and person of Christ the Head.  Anointing of the Sick strengthens us in illness to trust in God, even in difficult circumstances.  So when we receive the sacraments, it’s not meant to be coming up to receive some thing, like a prize for the just, but is meant to be a way of receiving God so that we can become more like God.  Which is why those in mortal sin have to go to confession first, because, among other reasons, you cannot become like God if you have separated yourself from Him.  Each time we receive sacramental grace, God wants us to utilize that grace to act more like Him in daily life.  
    Also, askesis, asceticism, is meant to help us be more like God.  We say no to things that we don’t need to rely more on the One whom we really need: God.  Especially in Lent, it can be easy to see penitential practices we do as something that we’re required to do, but only extrinsic practices.  Instead, in the Catholic spiritual tradition, our penitential practices are the practical ways that we say no to our fallen nature, and yes to Christ’s divine nature.  Do we see our Lenten penances that way?  Did we choose penances that will help us transform into the people God wants us to be, people more like Himself?  Or is it just “I gave up chocolate or beer for Lent because I would like to lose weight, but I’m going to go right back to it, and maybe even more, once Easter comes.”  It is so easy to pick a penance, and not get to the deeper reality of that penance, or what the penance is supposed to do.  
    Daily prayer is also a great means of divinization or deification.  Our Lord was always in contact with His heavenly Father, and would take specific time away from His preaching and miracles to be alone in prayer.  Is prayer just something that we check off to get it done for the day?  Or do we see it as our privileged time of speaking to and listening to the Father, so that He can change us to be more like Christ?      [Lastly, St. Paul in today’s epistle talks about how even the gift of our sexuality is meant to be transfigured by Christ.  Specifically, he talks about how to find a spouse in a Christian manner, not a pagan manner.  The Christian seeks someone whom they can help go to heaven, not just someone who looks good and satisfies bodily desires and lust.  In Christian marriage, personal happiness is not the goal; the holiness and happiness of the other is the goal.  Again, this is different from a pagan or secular point of view, which views the other as a means to the end of personal pleasure.  The way that we utilize our God-given gift of sexuality changes because of our relationship with Christ, whether we are single, married, in consecrated life, or ordained.  God wants to divinize all of us, not just parts of us.]
    Life is tiring, sweaty, and sometimes a hot mess.  We may always feel like we’re climbing, but never reaching the top of the mountain.  But if we allow God’s grace to be active in us; if we are open to the sacramental graces that we receive on such a regular basis; if we do penances that help us die to our old, fallen self; if we take time to really speak our heart to God and listen for what His heart says to us, then we will arrive at the top of the mountain, and find that God has transfigured us as well, to be a reflection of the glory of His Son, [who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is Lord, for ever and ever.  Amen.] 

Hammering in the Nails

Palm Sunday of Passion of the Lord

            We began Holy Week by hearing how Jesus entered triumphantly into His city, Jerusalem.  Shortly afterwards, we recalled in the Gospel how Jesus was then mocked, stripped, and crucified for our salvation.  What a stark contrast in a short amount of time.  What a short time it must have seemed for Jesus between the original Palm Sunday and Good Friday.

            How fickle the crown of God’s creation can be.  How easily swayed we are by excitement…and fear.  With the celebration of the Passover in the background, with tens of thousands of pilgrims coming to Jerusalem, the Jews welcomed Jesus.  With the pressure of the Chief Priests, the Scribes, and the Sadducees, the Jews condemned Jesus for blasphemy.  The King of Glory who entered His capital with shouts of “Hosanna” was made to reign upon the Cross with shouts of “Hail the King of the Jews” in mockery. 

            Because we have become so used to seeing Jesus on the cross in artistic renditions of the crucifix, we can easily become numb to its reality.  Death by crucifixion was a death of suffocation, the lungs filling with fluid, making it harder and harder to breathe.  The only way to get a breath was to use the hands and feet to push oneself up, which only increased the pain where the nails were.  It was a horrible, painful death, filled with shame and derision.

            In the face of such suffering, we can all too easily think that we would never have been part of the crowd crucifying Jesus.  We would not be so easily swayed.  We might even say with St. Peter, “‘Even though all should have their faith shaken, mine will not be.’”  But we would be wrong.  All of us—from Pope Benedict XVI to me and you—have all helped to hammer in those nails into Jesus’ hands and feet.  All of us stand guilty.

            If we lie to another, the hammer falls.  If we swear and curse and take the Lord’s name in vain, the hammer falls.  If we totally ignore the poor standing on the corner; if we make decisions based on prejudice and racism; if we fail to see Christ in those around us, the hammer falls.  If we think first of ourselves and never of others; if we skip Mass because we don’t make time for the Lord; if we react to our parents, children, or family members with anger rather than responding with love, the hammer falls.  If we ignore the Church’s teaching on human sexuality, marriage, and contraception because we feel we’re more enlightened; if we support organizations or ideologies that allow for an innocent child in the womb or an elderly or ill person to be put to death because they are inconvenient to our way of life; if we support the objectification of men and women through pornography, the hammer falls.

            All of us who can make a moral choice have been in that fickle mob that first hailed Jesus on His entry into Jerusalem, and then mocked him by hailing Him on the cross.  All of us have helped hammer in the nails into Jesus’ hands and feet.  All of us have sinned, and fallen short of the glory of God.  We made Jesus cry out from that cross “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” as Jesus felt the weight of our sins. 

            Since we have forced Jesus to walk that dark pilgrimage to the crucifixion, let us not abandon Him this week.  Though we ran away with the apostles in the garden 2,000 years ago, let us accompany Jesus this year, this week, these days as the Church celebrates our salvation in Christ: to the upper room on Holy Thursday to celebrate the Last Supper; from the upper room to the Garden of Gethsemane to keep watch in prayer; from Gethsemane to Golgotha on Good Friday; and because death and sin do not have the final word, from Golgotha to the empty tomb for the Easter Vigil or the Easter Sunday Mass.  We began Holy Week today in joy.  Let us also end it in the joy of those who, having repented of their sins and confessed them to the Lord, have been washed clean in the blood of the Lamb.  “Come now, let us set things right, says the Lord: Though your sins be like scarlet, they may become white as snow; Though they be red like crimson, they may become white as wool.”