For the next four Sundays I will be leading an adult catechesis series in my Parish. Each week we'll be reflecting on the previous Sunday's Gospel and our pastor's excellent homilies. I've decided to share these here so that others may follow along. If you're interested I can send you a copy of the homily, just leave me a comment or email me.-->
Here is my reflection for last week's Gospel account of the Transfiguration. May it be a blessing.
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Let us pray.
Father, we thank You for this day which You have made and
have given us. Thank You for this and
every opportunity we have to gather together here to praise Christ in whom we
place our hope and our fidelity. We ask You
to bless each one of us here with your abundant grace that we may grow in
wisdom and knowledge from our time here and increase in faith, hope, and
charity. Open our hearts and our minds
to receive what is Bless our time here
together this morning that in the spirit of this Lenten season we will be drawn
ever nearer to You, O Lord.
Jesus, I trust in You.
Our Father, who art in Heaven, Hallowed be Thy name. Thy
kingdom come. Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive
us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation but deliver
us from evil, Amen.
This is the journey.
We were created by God to be beloved sons and
daughters; to enjoy Him and abide with Him; to love, adore, and glorify Him
forever. To abide in Him, to trust Him completely, to walk with Him, to
know Him and to know His presence.
But sin, along with disobedience, doubt, and
distrust of God entered the world as did death. We became alienated from
our Creator, our Father, our God.
But God came to us, the Word became flesh and made
His dwelling among us! He came in the person of Jesus to be one of
us. He loved us so much and He really wanted us to know who He was so we
would believe in Him, believe in His promises, that we would trust in Him, and
could have eternal life.
Jesus showed us the Father.
Jesus taught us to obey Him.
Jesus, by His passion and crucifixion, conquered
the stranglehold that sin and death held over us. Christ is indeed
victorious.
But how can we say that Christ has triumphed over
sin, suffering, and death when it’s obviously still very much a part of this
world?
We are stuck in the reality that we
are made for eternity; for happiness and union with our God, but we are living
in a world that is broken; full of sin, pain, suffering and death. As Christians we do our best to avoid sin and
we repent and seek forgiveness when we do, we certainly try to make this world
a better, more loving place, we strive to reduce the pain and suffering we see
in others. Yet, we ourselves still
experience pain, suffering, and death. Jesus
himself experienced the ultimate in pain, suffering, and death, furthermore,
Jesus promises us that if we are to follow him we will be required to pick up
our crosses and embrace suffering and death.
In the first letter to the Corinthians it says that Christ crucified is
folly to the Greek and a stumbling block to the Jews. Before
he became Pope, Benedict XVI reiterated that this is because there can be no
love without suffering.
“Anyone
who really wanted to get rid of suffering would have to get rid of love before
anything else, because there can be no love without suffering, because it
always demands an element of self-sacrifice, because, given temperamental
differences and the drama of situations, it will always bring with it
renunciation and pain….When we know that the way of love–this exodus, this
going out of oneself–is the true way by which man becomes human, then we also
understand that suffering is the process through which we mature. Anyone who
has inwardly accepted suffering becomes more mature and more understanding of
others, becomes more human. Anyone who has consistently avoided suffering does
not understand other people; he becomes hard and selfish.”
(From: “God and the World: A
conversation with Peter Seewald” 2002)
What really stands out to me about the
Transfiguration is the juxtaposition between our finite, natural world and the
infinite, supernatural reality that overlays, informs, and completes it.
I think it’s important to point out that there are two common beliefs
about the supernatural out there in the wider world that we need to
avoid: one belief is that there is no such thing as the
supernatural. That if you can’t measure or test something empirically
then it isn’t real. The second is the gnostic belief that there is a
spiritual or supernatural reality which is in stark contrast to the physical
world. This belief sees everything physical – the body, the world etc. as evil
and to be rejected while the soul, the spiritual is good.
Christianity of course rejects the first belief but it also rejects
the second. Christianity firmly holds that everything God created was
good. Sin has disfigured creation, we say we are broken people, that the
world is broken. But Christianity is not about liberating our souls from
wretched bodies and leaving this world behind. No! Christ’s coming into the
world marks the beginning of a new creation, in which everything is being and
will be redeemed. Yes, there will be a new heaven, but there will also be a new
earth. We believe in the resurrection of the Body and the life
everlasting.
As I was saying: What really stands out to me about
the Transfiguration is the juxtaposition between our finite, natural world and
the infinite, supernatural reality that overlays, informs and completes it.
At the transfiguration, the supernatural reality of Jesus, His Glory, was
physically manifest, it peeked through the veil into our world. Peter,
James, and John saw what they saw with human eyes. It powerfully reminds us
that humans are uniquely both physical and spiritual creatures! It
reminds us that God is not only the Creator of both our mortal bodies and our
eternal souls, but also that He ministers to our whole person. The new creation
is breaking into the old and we are in it and we are part of it and as
Christians we are co-labourers in this transformation; in this world but not of
it.
God sent His only Son into the world at a
particular time and in a particular land, but He sent Him for people of every
time and every land. God physically revealed Himself by appearing in
flesh at a particular time and place in history, and God has continued to
reveal Himself ever since.
The man of Jesus, who lived and died in Palestine
two thousand years ago, saved his contemporaries from sin and death through His
Passion and His death on the Cross, but the Bible also recounts that during His
public ministry He forgave sins, He raised the dead. But Christ Jesus
lives for all time (He was in the beginning with the Father and the Holy Spirit
and He will be in the end. He is the alpha and the omega) and He has triumphed
over sin and death for people of all time.
It is into this reality of an infinite,
perfect, all-loving God moving in a finite, imperfect, often unloving world
that we must understand our hope. Christ is Victor, now and forever.
Discussion Questions
1.
Give an example of a time someone’s patient suffering,
self-sacrifice made love abound. Did
this experience of another’s love draw you closer to an awareness of God’s love
for you?
2.
When in your life has God caused goodness, love, and holiness to emerge
from your own struggles, suffering and pain?
3.
Father Peter’s homily reminds us that in order to keep our hope in
times of difficulty we need to pray, partake in the Sacraments, and recollect
upon the graces that we have received in our lives. These three practices nurture our
relationship with our Father and remind us that God is very much present and
active in our lives and that we are his beloved children. For the encouragement of the others in your
group, testify how you have grown closer to God through these practices.
4.
According to the Bible, “You shall love the Lord your God with all
your heart, all your mind, all your soul, and with all your strength; you shall
love your neighbour as yourself.” We can’t
do anything without God, so in order for us to fulfill that commandment, He
gives us every necessary grace. That
means He ministers and gives graces to our hearts, our minds, our souls, and
our strength -or our physical bodies, that is to our whole humanity. This is especially true of the Sacraments. Take an inventory of the Sacraments and how
they minister to the various aspects of our humanity.
