Transfiguration not only for the Apostles (Lent 2.C)

 

I’ve never forgotten the excellent homily one of my professors gave when I was in the seminary. Unfortunately, when I heard it a second time, I hadn’t forgotten the first time he’d preached it, four years earlier.

Msgr. McConnon was, shall we say, recycling his material. He didn’t think we’d remember. But we did.

Maybe he did it on purpose. Certainly it taught me that if I wanted to reuse a homily, it better be at least five years old.

This morning I am going to recycle thoughts that are only one year old—from a homily I have on the second Sunday of Lent, 2021> Not because I am lazy because I think it’s very interesting to reflect on where we find ourselves one year later.

On this day last year I talked about reading a chapter of a book titled “My Soul is Tired.” I confessed that those words captured exactly how I felt that Sunday. 

And today I say it again: My soul is tired.

I’m sure many of you feel the same way; in fact, I know many of you feel the same way, since you’ve told me so.

Not my heaviness or yours comes directly from the pandemic. Some are just coincidence. But there’s a lot happening to make our souls feel weary.

In his book Heartstorming: Creating a Place God Can Call Home, Robert Wicks writes about the “gray” times in our lives. He says that we can truly benefit from them if we don’t just ignore or play down our troubled feelings.

Our “low” points, he says, can bring spiritual blessings if we intentionally bring God into the times that are “difficult, disappointing, troubling, confusing… or sad.”

I don’t know about you, but my first thought is to ask God to get rid of these feelings, not to invite him in. But Wicks says by exploring them with God we can learn a great deal about ourselves and, more importantly, a great deal about God’s love.

But we can’t stop at exploring our own lows… today the Gospel invites us to explore one of the great highs in the lives of three apostles. And to learn from their experience.

First of all, the Transfiguration shows us how much Jesus cares about how we feel. Since the Transfiguration is only a preview of the Resurrection, what’s most important is not what happened but why it happened.

Jesus is strengthening three key disciples to face his suffering and death. He cares enough to want to prepare them in advance with a preview of the happy ending to the story of his Passion.

He wants us too to be strengthened by his Resurrection from the dead—to be strong enough to face any and every trial. As I said in a funeral homily yesterday,  once we believe that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead, everything else is only relative.

The Transfiguration also says something to us as the restrictions on Mass attendance disappear. Jesus granted Peter and James and John more than knowledge; he gave them an experience—an experience not only of himself but of Elijah and Moses, who were so present on the mountain that Peter wanted to build them each a little mountain chalet.

Two thousand years later, Jesus wants to give us that experience—an experience of his glory, the Law and the Prophets, and each other. He wants to gather us around him, right here in this church.

The live stream Mass has been a godsend in the darkest days of the pandemic. But Christians are an experiential, incarnational, and existential community. We are meant to gather. It is good for use to be here, as Peter said to Jesus.

The beginning of the end of our isolation from one another has arrived. And unless we have medical reasons we should be eager o be back in church, every Sunday.

And let’s do some thinking about that book Heartstorming, with its lovely subtitle Creating a Place God Can Call Home.  As we move out of these “gray times,” let’s work and making our parish a place God can call home.

Obviously those of you who are at Mass today don’t need to be told how good it is to be here—to be back as a community of faith gathered around the altar, a Mount of Transfiguration for each of us.

But you all know someone who is hesitating—call them and tell them how good it is to be here; remind them of the joys of worshipping in person. And these gray times come slowly to an end, invite them to walk into the light that can transfigure us all.

There's an excellent way to invite the hesitant back to church: our "Water in the Desert" evening of quiet, music, and adoration every Saturday evening in Lent at 7 pm. Last night lifted me right out of my gray zone!