Palm-Passion Sunday

Palm Sunday- Passion Sunday

My dear brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ,
“Today the palms - tomorrow the passion”. The grim truth is that the same people who shouted "Hosanna" on Sunday shouted "Crucify him," just five days later. It is sobering to recall that the same people shouting Hosanna on Palm Sunday were crying "Crucify him" on Good Friday! Quite a reversal, pretty inconsistent. But isn't that a contemporary experience too, the inconsistency of what we do here on Sunday and how we are tempted to live the rest of the week in other aspects of our lives.
What we commemorate and relive during this week called "holy" is not just Jesus’ dying and rising, but our own dying and rising in Him.
Are we ready to die with Him in our lives? One of the two men crucified with Jesus was an "honest thief." He was brave enough to confess who he was. If we were honest, we would also admit we had taken things that do not belong to us. You know, it is not just the one who steals money or shoplifts who is a thief. The person who has sex apart from marriage is taking something that does not belong to him. Even if you call it "living together" it is still stealing. The same with the husband who spends all his time with buddies; he is robbing his wife and children. The person whose motto is "shop till I drop" and who never thinks about the needy is stealing from the poor. The one who is speaking to you now, recognizes he is a big thief.
Max Lucado reminds us that each of us has got a donkey that the Lord needs. “Sometimes I get the impression that God wants me to give him something and sometimes I don't give it because I don't know for sure, and then I feel bad because I've missed my chance. Other times I know he wants something but I don't give it because I'm too selfish. And other times, too few times, I hear him and I obey him and feel honored that a gift of mine would be used to carry Jesus to another place. …Maybe you have those questions, too. All of us have a donkey. You and I each have something in our lives, which, if given back to God, could, like the donkey, move Jesus and his story further down the road. Whichever, your donkey belongs to him. It really does belong to him. Your gifts are his and the donkey was his. The original wording of the instructions Jesus gave to his disciples is proof: "If anyone asks you why you are taking the donkeys, you are to say, 'Its Lord is in need.'" [Max Lucado, And the Angels were Silent, p. 54]
What the passion narrative teaches us today?
First, our God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God who raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead, the God who created heaven and earth, the God who created your life and mine, that God, the true God, our God, is a God who suffers and cries and dies. Our true God suffers and cries and dies. The suffering of our God is not imaginary or fictitious or make believe. God’s suffering; pain and tears are as real as yours and mine. He knows what the real pain is. He can feel your pain, because he had suffered it before you.
The cross cries out its message of pain. We hear the words at Lazarus’ death: “He wept.” Our God, the true God, suffers and cries and dies, like we do.
We are the only religion in the world whose God gets hurt, whose God gets stabbed, who writhes in pain on the cross, who gets whipped, who has five wounds in his body, and who shouts his pain in the midst of his suffering on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me and let me suffer like that?” What other religion is there where a cross becomes a throne? His suffering was not imaginary, it was not make believe, and it is not a fake. The cross tells us that. Passion Sunday tells us that. Our God suffers and cries and dies.
But there is a second part. Our God is a God who loves his children so much that God is willing to die in their behalf. Our passionate God suffers cries and dies for us, in our behalf.
That is what the cross tells us: God loved us so much that God was willing to die for us. That is the message of the cross. It is only in the cross that we see the face of God’s love. The cross is that glorious window through which we see God’s great love, a love so great that God was willing to die for you, that God’s son was willing to lay down his life for you and me.
It is from the cross that we hear the voice of God who constantly and persistently says, “I love you. I forgive you. I am with you always.”
There is something about the cross that compels us to make a choice, either for him or against him. You can’t find a middle ground when it comes to Christ, even though at times we try to.
This is clearly expressed in a poem:
I stood alone at the cross of Christ,In the hush of twilight dim,And faced the questionThat pierced my heart,What shall I do with him?
Crown or crucify, what shall it be?No other choice is offered me.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Jesus I trust in You

Our lady of the Scapular and St Stephen's church and Chapel of Sacred heart of Jesus and Mary

Annunciation

Annunciation

Today, we recall with gratitude and celebrate with joy the Annunciation of the Lord to Mary and His Incarnation. We focus on Christ, who on entering into the world, offers His Father an act of obedience, as He says "Behold, I come to do your will" and on Mary, who receiving God’s invitation through the Angel Gabriel to become the Mother of God, likewise makes an act of obedience, as she says: "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word" The central focus of the feast of the annunciation is the Incarnation: God has become one of us. From all eternity God had decided that the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity should become human. Because human beings have rejected God, Jesus will accept a life of suffering and an agonizing death: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13).
Mary has an important role to play in God’s plan. From all eternity God destined her to be the mother of Jesus and closely related to him in the creation and redemption of the world. Together with Jesus, the privileged and graced Mary is the link between heaven and earth. She is the human being who best, after Jesus, exemplifies the possibilities of human existence. She received into her lowliness the infinite love of God. She shows how an ordinary human being can reflect God in the ordinary circumstances of life. She exemplifies what the Church and every member of the Church is meant to become.
There is a good reason why the Annunciation occurs during Lent. Two good reasons: This day, the day that Mary finds out that she is pregnant, occurs just exactly nine months before the Nativity of the Lord in December. But, there is a deeper, subtler reason. In Lent, we talk about the way in which God decided to save the world. It happens through the death and the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. And, so it seems fitting that we pause for a moment to remember the very first moment when Jesus was introduced onto the stage of salvation history, that moment when he began his life within the womb of his mother the Blessed Virgin Mary.
The Annunciation is one of those events which points to the human nature of Jesus. Leo the Great, who was the Bishop of Rome in the fifth century, wrote about the mystery of the dual nature of Christ in these words:
He who is true God was therefore born in the complete and perfectnature of a true human being, whole in his own nature, whole in ours. By our nature we mean what the Creator had fashioned in us from the beginning and took to himself in order to perfect it.”
The annunciation is in part about the way that God gives humanity a compassionate embrace. Remember what Leo said: God took us to himself in order to restore our human nature. God took us to himself.
As we respond to the awesome reality of God’s choosing to love us even when we were sinners by sending His Son to save us, we not only express gratitude and praise; we not only confess our sins as individuals and a parish. Inspired by the Gospel and strengthened by divine grace, we recommit ourselves "to become more like Jesus Christ, whom we acknowledge as our redeemer, God and man". We want to be like Him. He chose to do God’s will, to take up our human condition and to save us. He chose to love. We can do no less.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.

5th Sunday Lent C Forgiveness and sin

Mother Teresa said: “Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are endless.”
My dear brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ,
One rainy afternoon a mother was driving along one of the main streets of town. Suddenly, her son spoke up from his relaxed position in the rear seat. “Mom, I’m thinking of something.” This announcement usually meant he had been pondering some fact for a while and was now ready to expound all that his seven-year-old mind had discovered. His mother was eager to hear. “What are you thinking?” she asked. “The rain is like sin and the windscreen wipers are like God, wiping our sins away.” “That’s really good, sweet heart, but do you notice how the rain keeps on coming? What does that tell you?” He didn’t hesitate one moment with his answer: “We keep on sinning, and God just keeps on forgiving us.” Yes dear brothers and sisters, isn’t it comforting to know that God does keep forgiving us? All we have to do is trust Jesus as our savior and He will keep washing our sins away.
What a contrast between the cruelty of the scribes and Pharisees and the compassion of Jesus in our Gospel. The scribes and Pharisees had no regard for the woman. They were only interested in using her to try to trap Jesus; she was a pawn in their game of chess. But Jesus is full of compassion. He restored the woman again. He restored her in two ways. He restored her spiritually by forgiving her, telling her he did not condemn her, while also insisting that she should not sin again, and he restored her to society by saving her life. No one knows what Jesus wrote on the ground but some people suspect Jesus wrote the sins of the scribes and Pharisees.
Notice Jesus' last words to the woman, "go away and don't sin any more." Although Jesus has forgiven her sin he expects her to live a life of grace and union with God from now on by not sinning any more. Jesus doesn't say that sin does not matter because sin does matter and damages our relationship with God. But Jesus does convict her, but did not condemn her — He convicts her of her sin 'Go, and from now on do not sin anymore."
He calls her action a "sin"—not a mistake, or a foible, or a weakness. He labels the deed a sin, and commands her not to do it again.
This leads to the obvious question: What exactly is the difference between "convicting" and "condemning"?
Simply put, to convict is to identify or expose a particular sin; to condemn is to say or imply that someone is damned. During his earthly life, Jesus very often did the first, but he never, ever did the second—as we see evidenced in this Gospel.
Biblically speaking, "to judge" means "to condemn." We Christians need to be clear about that. It has nothing to do with calling sin "sin"!
But think about it: getting convicted now is much better than being condemned on the Day of Judgment! Condemnation is final, because it always sends a person to hell. But every conviction can be easily overturned by an attitude of repentance and a good confession. This means that the experience of being convicted can actually lead us to heaven, if we convert our hearts after being convicted of the sin.
Jesus said to the woman not to sin again and since sin is so horrible and horrific we need to take steps to ensure that we do not sin again because otherwise we will gradually drift again into the same sin. The first step to take is deal with where all sin begins the mind.
Sin begins in the mind. We need to fill our minds with what is good instead of with rubbish. IN Mark 7: 20-23 we read “ From Within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly”.
Sin begins in the mind, from there it moves on to become an action, from there it moves on to become a lifestyle, and then it affects us in eternity. Remember the failure of King David in 2nd Samuel Chapter 11. Instead of going for war, he was walking on the roof and saw Bathsheba, wife of Uriah, taking bath and in his mind he committed sin before he actually committed adultery and then murder. Sin begins in the mind. We need to begin by feeding our minds with what is good instead of with what is rubbish. In our second reading today we see Paul filling himself only with Jesus and cutting out all rubbish from his life,
"I Consider everything as a loss because of the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For this sake I have accepted the loss of all things and I consider them so much rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him…"( Phil.3:8-11)
Jesus does not condemn us when we sin but he asks us to turn away from sin and follow him again. Remember what he said to the woman caught in adultery, "Neither do I condemn you but go and do not sin again." (John 8:11) Jesus does not condemn you but asks you not to sin again.
"The Son of Man has not come to call the virtuous but to call sinners to repentance." (Luke 19:10)
So have no fear in approaching Jesus to tell him your sins. He is a friend of sinners. He loves us so much.
How much does Jesus love us? This much [stretching out arms], he stretched out his arms on the cross and died for us. Let us never be afraid to turn to Jesus for mercy after sinning, he is always waiting to forgive us and restore us again.
Imagine when you die and Jesus comes to meet you and shows you a video of your entire life. On the video you see all the good things you did. But there are also a number of blanks on the tape. You ask why there are such blanks on the tape of your life. Jesus tells you these were the times when you sinned and asked for God's mercy. When God forgives he completely blanks out our sins and does not remember.
The nature of sin is always self-defeating and binding. When we think we are actually doing for ourselves, we are actually defeating our self. We grow when we selflessly do things for others. This is the foundation of Christian life. God created us to know God to Love God and to Serve God. But when we sin we are against our true nature. When you buy any electronic items, you get a manual with it. When we follow the manual and use according to it, the manufacturer guarantees us that it will have long life but if you do it by yourself not following the manual it may have life but it will go dead meantime. Follow the manuals of God and we will live long.
Genesis 4: 7 SAYS “If you do what is right, you will be accepted. But if you do not do what is right, sin is couching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it”.
As Jesus showed the mercy to the sinful woman we need to show the three-tiered mercy: to God, to neighbor, to self. Forgive God. It's important. Forgive your neighbor. It's the law. Forgive yourself. It's Christ-like.
Forgive God, to begin with. Surely, you have something against God — life being what it is.
Sometimes we do not forgive, but carries a grudge, resentment, a justified umbrage for what someone has done to us: Boss, inferior, or equal.
And you, my brothers and sisters, have you forgiven yourself? Here it starts; here it ends, for forgiveness is meaningless when it does not start at home, in your own heart.
Forgive what you have done, or should have done, or could have done and did not. Hatred is the acid that corrodes its container.
I ask you to consider again the power of the Sacrament of Reconciliation, Confession, to remove rubbish and garbage and junk from our lives. It is not the priest that you meet in Confession, it is Jesus you meet, and it is he who heals you during the sacrament. "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever." He can walk back in time to when we got that rubbish and he can remove it and repair us.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.

4th Sunday Lent C Prodigal Son

The Prodigal Son

My dear brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ,

I wonder hominy times we have had meditated upon this beautiful story. The prodigal son's decision to leave the father's house and to immerse himself into a life of rebellion, clearly illustrates the nature of sin. Every sin is an abuse of human freedom. When we sin, we defy God who loves us unconditionally. When he asks for his inheritance, the young son isn't simply asking for a large sum of money. He is in effect saying to his father: "I'm treating you as if you're dead. And I want to get now what I'm supposed to receive after you're dead.”
No matter how great your sins may be, this is the day of grace. The bible says, “Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts. Let him turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will freely pardon” (Isa.55:7)
Notice the steps of Young son’s conversion. There were steps away from God: rebellion against the father, desire for total independence, waste of inheritance, desperate need, debasement and bondage. It is the way of sin, always. But just as there were steps away, so also are steps back. The consequences of sin are always disastrous. Every sinner always experiences profound sadness. As the poet laureate told the congress of the U.S. one day, "the greater honor should go to the one who saw ahead and invented the brake."
First there is an awakening to one’s true condition (v.17). One of the tragedies of sin is that it blinds us to our condition; so we imagine ourselves to be happy when in reality we are miserable or free when we are enslaved. The most miserable people I know think they are happy, or at least are trying to convince themselves they are happy. The prodigal son even when he had to take a job with a detested pig farmer, he supposed he was only doing it on a short- term basis to keep body and soul together until his bad fortune changed. The prodigal son did the most unthinkable job for a Jew. He worked with swine; he worked with what was unclean.
Then he "came to himself". This is a very hard thing to understand. A man cannot be saved unless he comes to himself. What does this mean? In saving our souls, two things must we know. One is to know God, and other is to know ourselves. The two are learned in parallel. If you learn only of God, you will be filled with pride, and your soul will be paralyzed. If you know only about your sins and your unworthiness and know little about God, you will be filled with despondency and fear, or escapism, and your soul will also be paralyzed, unable to do good. But if you learn of yourself and God at the same time, God will reveal Himself and self-knowledge also, within you. Once you know where you are and who you are, it is very easy to make a good decision to rectify your life.
The fist step in conversion is a recognition and repudiation of the lie, which actually an awakening to reality.
The second step in the prodigal’s conversion was an honest confession of true sin. Notice he did not speak of his “Youthful wild oats,” “faults” or “failings”. He did not blame others, as Adam had blamed Eve or Eve the serpent. No! He confessed his sins. We remember King David, who prayed, “Against you, you alone, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight” (Ps.51:4).
Finally the third step in his conversion was an actual return to the father. Thinking alone did not save him, confession alone did not save him, he need to turn around and seek God. And that he did! He actually left his sin and returned to his Father.
When the prodigal son left home, he said “Give Me”. He wanted something. When he returned home a much wiser, but sadder youth, he said, “Make me”. This is the conversion of heart. From “give me” mentality to “make me” mentality.
When the prodigal son came to his senses with the pigs and decided to return to his father he did not expect his father to treat him again as his son. So he made up his mind that he would ask to become one of his servants. He could not imagine that his father would want him back as his son again. He had a warped understanding of his father’s forgiveness. We have a warped understanding of God’s mercy for us. We make the mistake of thinking that God is like us and so we cannot understand God’s mercy. God made us in his image and likeness and ever since then we are making God in our image and likeness.
But when the younger son was on the way back home his father was outside waiting for him. His father ran to him, clasped him in his arms and kissed him. That is what God is like, always longing and waiting for our love. That love and care and concern of God for us is expressed beautifully in Ps 139,O Lord, you search me and you know me, You know my resting and my rising,…Behind and before you besiege me, Your hand ever laid upon me. Too wonderful for me, this knowledge, Too high, beyond my reach.
When we return to God he throws a party for us. Even though the son was far away from his sight, he was never away from his heart. Mercy of our loving God is overflowing.
But there was one who was not celebrating- the older Son. We sympathize with the older son because we think of ourselves as being like him. We are not like the prodigal- so we imagine. We are like that faithful, hardworking, obedient son- so we suppose. But we are not! What was wrong with the older son? Several things: first, he loved property more than people. He would have been quite happy if the money had come back and his brother had been lost. As it was he was angry that the property was lost and his brother recovered. Second, and as a result of his first error, he had an inflated estimate of his own importance and a scorn of others. He was loyal, hardworking, and obedient- or so he thought. So low was his opinion of his brother that he would not even acknowledge his relationship to him, calling him only “the sons of yours” (v.30).
Far away hills look green, there are many attractions in life, there are many voices saying to us ‘Follow me’ or ‘Follow your desires and you will find happiness.’ But the best offer of happiness is from God our Father, “all I have is yours”. This is a most beautiful promise and invitation. After reading this parable we also have a choice to make, will we stay outside or will we go in to enjoy the Father’s party. God our heavenly Father is outside the door waiting for us to come to him. When we return he runs to us, clasps us in his arms and invites us into the party.
So, to summarize, this parable teaches us that God loves us so much; He is willing to forgive even our most terrible sins, as long as we return to Him in repentance and humility.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.

Repent and remove your sandals of Pride 3rd C lent

Remove the Sandals of Ego and repent and turn to God
My Dear brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ,
One day a disciple came to pay homage to his master. He carried flowers on his both hands. When he entered in the presence of his master he heard a sound saying “drop it”. He thought it may not be right to offer flowers with left hand so he dropped the flowers from his left and he continued. When he was at the center he heard the same sound again “drop it”. So he dropped the flowers from his hands. He thought the master may not like the flowers. When he was very near to the master when he was about to bend his knees he heard the same sound “drop it”. He was shocked. Didn’t master saw that I drop the flowers? Then he heard the sound saying “drop it. Drop it not the Flowers but your Ego. Then come and pay homage.”
Yes dear brothers and sisters in our first reading we heard God is asking the same kind of a dropping off. Remove the sandals. If you happened to be in any of the Mosques or in the eastern Hindu temples or some Asian churches you have to remove your sandals or shoes. Taking off our shoes reminds us of our smallness and our poverty. Here God is asking Moses to remove the sandals. Because you are in the holy presence. If you wish to be in the presence of God, you need to remove your sandals. What are these sandals that you wear? IN Jesus’ time only the sons wear the sandals not the slaves. We know when we read the story of the prodigal son father says the servants to bring the sandals for his prodigal son. We have to remove the sandals we wear in our heart. The sandals of egoism, the sandals of power, the position, money, authority, the sandals of worries, tension, anxieties for tomorrow, sandals of hatred , un-forgiveness, revenge, pride etc.,. We can not enter in the presence of God wearing all these sandals of pride and ego.
To make it simple take the word “SIN” S-I-N. Sin happens when I stand out in the center of our life. Take that I from the Word SIN which is our egoism, the “I-ness” and bend it as much as you can and you know the most you can bend is to make it a zero. When your I become a big Zero then you place it right in the same position where you took the I from SIN then you get back your true nature SON. You become sons and daughters of God .When you change from the I centered life to Other centered life you get back your son-ship. When you remove I, the pride the ego from you then you can see the presence of God throughout your life. Then you can feel it experience it. Until and unless you are not ready to remove the sandals of your reason and ego you can never experience the loving God. God is asking us today trough the Gospel to repent. Remove I and become Zero. God is asking us to become SON.
Isaac Newton said “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.”
But even if it’s the way of the world, maybe it’s not God’s way. Jesus tells us “Unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.” No mention of whether you’re a good person or not. No consideration given to hard work and noble intentions or whether you come from a “good family.” If you don’t repent, you’ll perish. And not just die a peaceful death, but be executed in a way that would make Isaac Newton conclude that you must have been a very bad person.
The reason for that is we’re all sinners. All of us have fallen short of the glory of God, as St. Paul wrote. Sure, we might think we’re a little better than the guy sitting next to us, but even if that’s true we’re still full of sin. No matter who we are we don’t have the right to stand before God and tell God that He is obligated to bless us. God accepts us only out of the goodness of His heart, not because we deserve it in some way.
The gardener asks the man to give it just one more year. He’ll care for it and till it and fertilize it. And if it still doesn’t bear fruit by then, then he’ll cut it down. But just give it one more chance.
Though God's salvation is always available, only those willing to change their core lives ever notice it. Repentance is the first step in our redemption. That is why Jesus gives the strong warning in today’s gospel; "If you do not repent, you will all perish."
Teshuvá was the key concept in the rabbinic view of sin, repentance, and forgiveness. The Jewish rabbis taught that repentance required five elements: recognition of one's sin as sin; remorse for having committed the sin; desisting from repeating this sin; restitution for the damage done by the sin where possible; and confession. One who followed these steps to teshuvá was called a "penitent." In fact, Jesus invited his Jewish listeners to such repentance. “Repent” (Greek, metanoia), implies not just regret for the past but a radical conversion and a complete change in our way of life in responding and opening ourselves to the love of God. Repentance, or a turning away from one path to another, is not so much finding God as being found by God. Literally, in Greek, “Metanoia” means “turn around.” “A decision which changes the direction of a person’s life or behavior.” Turn to God. Trust in God, not in your idea of what you deserve and don’t deserve. We are called to abandon our false gods of money, power and pleasure and return to the one God, who “secures justice and the rights of all the oppressed.”
Imagine that you are in Love. If you are in love, you want nothing to come between you and your beloved; and the effort must be made daily both to avoid creating obstacles and to getting rid of any that may have appeared. You want straight paths, no hills or valleys! That is just another way of speaking of the spirit of repentance, seeking to keep completely open the channels of love, life and rejoicing which deepen with every passing day. Repentance is not being sorrowful and heavy, Feeling sorry and weeping but turning from the evil life to Godly life. Truing back to sin and turning to God. Remember Both Judas Iscariot and Peter were sorry for their sins but Judas turned to himself but Peter turned to God.
We need to live lives of repentance, because we never know when we will meet a tragedy of our own. Let us repent while we have the chance. Let us turn to Christ, acknowledge our faults and failings and receive from him mercy, forgiveness and the promise of eternal life. There is no better way to take these words of Jesus to heart than to go to sacramental confession; and there is no better time to go to confession than during Lent.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.

St Stephen's Church 29th street Manhattan

2nd Sunday in Lent C Transfiguration of Jesus

Transfiguration Of Jesus
My dear brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ,
It is always a grace to be someone special. What a grace for Peter and James and John to see Jesus transfigured. They got a preview of the glory of Jesus risen from the dead and his glory in heaven. A Mountain-Top Experience. It was also a preview of the glory we all hope to share in heaven.
It was not the only special grace Jesus shared with Peter, James and John. Earlier in the Gospel (Mark and Luke) we read that Jesus only allowed Peter and James and John with him into the house of the synagogue official whose daughter he raised up again (Mark 5:37; Luke 8:51). Later when Jesus was teaching in the temple Peter and James and John asked Jesus a question privately and he gave them more teaching (Mark 13:3). In Gethsemane, Jesus took Peter, James and John aside from the others to be near him during his agony (Mark 14:33). So Peter, James and John received many special graces from Jesus.
Peter, James and John were the three main councilors of Jesus, or the best disciples or best friend or the people whom Jesus loved more than others. They were selected to experience this dazzling revelation of the inner reality of Jesus. Even though they were privileged persons we see in today’s gospel account and in Gethsemane account that they were sleeping.
How could they have slept, we ask? How… after all these privilege experiences and love, could they have slept, not only in the presence of Christ but also in such a moment when Christ is so desperately needed their companionship, their comfort, their consoling presence with Him in His agony?
While we blame the apostles let us think “how could we, after receiving so many gifts from God , still spiritually snooze and doze our way through our prayers, our Masses and, indeed, throughout our whole spiritual life?
When we were young we’ve had many mountain top experiences in our spiritual life. We were proud to be catholic and to go for the sacraments and serving in the church and supporting, but now after all these wonderful experiences we just sleep. We sleep because of routine, because of boredom. We sleep because we're exhausted, drained, and running on empty. Why does Jesus gives us some special experiences? To be active and to live for Him even at the point of death.
At the transfiguration story Jesus is joined by two great men of God from the Old Testament: Moses and Elijah.
Why were Moses and Elijah chosen to meet with Jesus on this occasion? Why not Adam and Eve? Why not Noah? Why not Abraham or Isaac or Jacob or King David?
It’s because Moses represented the Law: the Law that God had given to his people on Mt. Sinai. And Elijah represented all the prophets, whom God had raised up to prepare his people for the Messiah. when combined, they symbolize the Old Covenant. Their conversation with Jesus points to Him being the fulfillment of the Covenant. God had used the Law and the prophets in the Old Testament to get his people ready for Jesus, and Moses and Elijah witnessed to that fact by their presence at the Transfiguration.
What was; what is; what will be: Moses and Elijah saw the connection! They understood how their work in the past was a preparation for what Jesus was doing in the present, and for what he was about to do in the near future through his passion and death.
I think that is one of the greatest challenges of our life to see the connection between what was, what is, and what will be. Even if we are witnessing different transfiguration in our everyday lives we may not find the connection between what was; what is and what will be. We get glimpses of God in the love we receive from other people. We get glimpses of God when badly needed help suddenly comes to us from out of nowhere. We get glimpses of God when we look back over our lives and what we couldn’t understand in the past makes sense now.
There is a mysterious story in 2 Kings that can help us understand what is happening in the transfiguration. Israel is at war with Aram and Elisha the man of God is using his prophetic powers to reveal the strategic plans of the Aramean army to the Israelites. At first the King of Aram thinks that one of his officers is playing the spy but when he learns the truth he dispatches troops to go and capture Elisha who is residing in Dothan. The Aramean troops move in under cover of darkness and surround the city. In the morning Elisha's servant is the first to discover that they are trapped and fears for his master's safety. He runs to Elisha and says, "Oh, my lord, what shall we do?" The prophet answers "Don't be afraid. Those who are with us are more than those who are with them." But who would believe that when the surrounding mountainside is covered with advancing enemy troops? So Elisha prays, "O Lord, open his eyes that he may see." Then the Lord opens the servant's eyes, and he looks and sees the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha (2 Kings 6:8-23). This vision was all that Elisha's disciple needed to reassure him. At the end of the story, not only was the prophet of God safe but the invading army was totally humiliated. Ask the Lord to open our inner eyes that we may see and experience him. When we are spiritually blind we may not experience the providential hand of God in our lives and we are afraid.
If you ask any film directors, they will tell you how they make the horror movies and how they make those gruesome films with beasts that tower over us like ten-storey buildings and gigantic, slimy creatures that send us quivering under our seats? It’s quite easy. All they do is to destroy the ordinary backcloth and replace it with a false one, and against this false sense of perspective an ant can look like a terrifying monster.’ It is true when the splendor and majesty of our God is forgotten our problems, our demands and talks will appear to be nightmares that outstrip our resources. And we are afraid. Don’t ever forget that everything flows from God’s grace. John Newton wrote: “I am not what I ought to be, I am not what one day I hope to be, But, Praise God, I am not what I used to be, and I am what I am by the grace of God.”
My dear brothers and sisters, the transfiguration of Jesus on the mountain is also awaiting each of us after death. Why can we look forward to being transfigured after death like Jesus? Because we are baptized. When we were baptized God put his seal on us. What was that seal? The Holy Spirit. We were sealed with the Holy Spirit on the day we were baptized. We were marked out as God’s property, belonging to God. Let us hold our heads high. When the media or your friends criticize the Church and make you look foolish because you are still a practicing Catholic, hold your head high. Because you have been baptized into the Church Jesus will transfigure our wretched bodies into copies of his glorious body. When you were baptized you were sealed with the Holy Spirit as God’s own child. Be proud to be a catholic.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.