I spoke to someone
recently who has decided that for Lent he would look at some of his wedding
photos every day. Not because this was an unpleasant penance… our Lenten
observances aren’t meant to be as arduous as possible, they’re meant to be
things that make us holier. In this case, the idea was that going back and
looking at a beautiful beginning was meant to be inspire him to live his
marriage vows more ardently.
I’m sure we
all have moments from our past that we love to revisit in our memories; moments
that we would have loved to freeze-frame when they happened, that we long to
have been able to package in a way that we could open them up again and again,
and let their fragrance revive us from any spiritual drowsiness we find
ourselves in. There are big, obvious
moments like a wedding, maybe your first child’s first smile or, for me, my
profession of perpetual vows in Holy Cross, or my ordination; and any number of
more unique moments we each cherish. And
going back to those mentally, spiritually is great, but we can’t live there. If
the guy I was talking to staring ignoring his wife because he was too busy
looking at pictures, his Lenten observance would have failed. What’s amazing
about each of those moments, is that they all look forward, prepare us for
something totally new, something that we could never have begun to embrace
without that amazing moment, but we also could never have gotten to if we hadn’t
climbed down from the mountain and dared to walk in the plain.
This
Transfiguration moment was one of those for Peter, and I’m sure for James and
John too. I think we can easily
underestimate that it must have been one for Jesus too. Imagine the amazing intimacy of being able to
reveal your divine glory to your closest human friends, being able to show in
the brilliance of your shining visage the still greater blazing brilliance of
the fire of your love. Imagine being
Peter, or James or John, and being lit up by that brilliance of your Lord, your
Master, and your friend. That deep human
need to know and be known. It is no wonder that Peter wanted to freeze-frame
that moment, to dwell in it. It’s a
natural human instinct; in fact it’s the foundation story of almost every Greek
or Roman shrine – some god appeared here, so we built this shrine – and Peter
knows his Bible well enough to think of tents as a very appropriate
shrine. But the cloud intervenes. It overshadowed them and called them to
something new; just as the Spirit’s overshadowing of Mary called forth someone
new. Peter’s call is not to build tents on a mountain, but a church on
earth. He must climb down, transformed
by this experience as truly as Jesus was transfigured, and put that cherished
memory at the service of his walk on the plains. And Jesus has warned them, and will warn them
again, that this walk will not be easy.
It will be the kind of walk that is characterized by taking up a cross
and following after him. But, we follow,
and we walk, knowing he walks with us, that glorious lover of humanity, and we
walk grateful for God’s command to listen to him, for we know he speaks. And we know that when we walk following our
Master’s voice, following his path, he leads us to the glory of the kingdom.
We, like
Jesus, have had an experience of being named as God’s chosen son, chosen
daughter. We have been chosen and
claimed and adopted by God in baptism.
We hear a voice as amazing as a heavenly one whenever we hear God’s
word, and we see the glory of God’s love for us in focused form in the
sacraments, and in a more diffuse more still real way in the wonder of all
created beauty. But we don’t cling, we
don’t try to freeze-frame. The Mass ends, importantly, with a dismissal, not
just with us wandering out. We let ourselves be sent forth; we climb down the
mountain to walk with Him.
Now, I’d
like to turn a little more directly to those of you are dismissed to
sacramentally carry Christ to the world, those extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion
who bring the Eucharist to the sick and homebound. I know that a lot of you sit
and take notes, and share something of the homily with those to whom you bring
communion. That image, of being sent forth, of walking with Jesus, might not work
with them. The reason you’re bringing them communion is precisely because they
can’t go out physically. But, in a very
real way, God is inviting them to understand their predicament as walk with
Christ. They may very well not be having a glorious mountaintop experience
right now. But they have had one, we all
have, and the memory can sustain them, refreshed by the ongoing gift of Jesus’
word, and his body, blood, soul and divinity, fully contained in one small
consecrated host.
Praying for
others is walk with Christ, is building up the Church on earth. Seeing how one’s
sufferings are tied up with the loving sufferings of Christ is walk with Christ,
is building up the Church on earth. And we know where walk with Christ leads.
It leads us home.
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