[Homily.  Feast of the Transfiguration and First Friday. 
Live-streamed Mass.  August 6, 2021.]

On this First Friday we celebrate the Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord. We are invited to contemplate this mystery as we continue to beg God for an intimate knowledge of Jesus and of God's love. 

The account by Mark of the Transfiguration is the simplest of the synoptics.  Jesus takes the apostles Peter, James and John up a high mountain and is transfigured before them.  "His clothes become dazzling white, such as no fuller on earth could bleach them."  Matthew's account adds Jesus' face:  "His face shone like the sun and his clothes became white like light" (Mt 17:2).  In Luke's account there is a detail about prayer.  Jesus had gone up the mountain with his chosen disciples in order "to pray."  Presumably while praying, while in communion with his Father, "his face changed in appearance and his clothing became dazzling white" (Lk 9:29). 

All three describe this extraordinary event in the context of what had happened a week earlier in Caesarea Philippi.  Jesus had asked his disciples what the people were saying about him.  When they reported that some were saying he was John the Baptist, others Elijah or one of the other prophets, he asked them, "But you:  who do you say I am?" Mark reports Peter replied, "You are the Messiah" (Mk 6:29).  Luke underscores his divine origin, "You are the Messiah of God" (Lk. 9:20).  Matthew reports similarly, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God."  But to this response, Matthew adds Jesus' description of Simon's special vocation:  "Blessed are you Simon, Son of Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father.  And so I say to you, you are Peter and upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it…" 

But when Jesus took the occasion of his having been recognized as the Messiah to state that this meant "he must go to Jerusalem  and suffer greatly from the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised" (Mt 16:21), Peter took Jesus aside to push back, "God forbid, Lord!  No such thing shall ever happen to you!" (Mt 16:22).  Perhaps he was thinking he would defend him with his sword!  But Jesus swung around to sternly rebuke Peter, "Get behind me, Satan!  You are an obstacle to me! You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do!" (Mt 16:23).  Jesus' angry rebuke must have devastated Peter.  How else could he have been thinking except as a human?  He only meant he did not want to see Jesus hurt. Or killed.   Why was that so satanic?  But Jesus' logic was based on his commitment to obey his Father, whatever this may entail.  So Peter's words were a temptation he needed to repel.  At the same time, Jesus' anger could only have been a symptom of the inner turmoil he was experiencing.  What Peter suggested was what Jesus was actually grappling with within.  Being acknowledged as the Messiah meant not just an entry into Jerusalem where the people would be chanting, "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!"  It also meant climbing the Mount of Calvary in great suffering to be stripped of his garments, nailed to a cross, raised up on the cross, hang, suffer and die.  Wasn't there a more humane way of doing this?  This prospect was so overwhelming, it overshadowed his having spoken of resurrection after three days.  Within, he was already experiencing how he would agonize in the Garden of Gethsemane, sweat blood, and cry, "If it be possible Lord, take this chalice away from me! … Yet, not my will, thine be done!" (Lk 22:42).

It was with this heaviness that our Gospel today says Jesus climbed the mountain with his most trusted followers to pray, to converse with the Father he could only obey.  It was as he was praying that the transfiguration took place, his face shining like the sun, and his garments becoming white like light!  In his human turmoil his divinity breaks through;  in his human struggle with darkness, his divine Light breaks through, in his struggle with his humanity, his divinity breaks through.  In the experience, the Father is reassuring him in his mission.  And also revealing to us more profoundly who Jesus is.

Peter, James and John witness this, and are overwhelmed.  Meanwhile they witness Jesus conversing with Moses and with Elijah.  He was conversing with the one called by God to lead the Israelites out of slavery and the prophet who battled the priests of Baal to preserve the People of Yahweh  from idolatry.  He was conversing with the representatives of the Law and of the Prophets.  In Luke, what they conversed about is explicit: "they spoke of the exodus he was going to accomplish in Jerusalem" – not just the exodus from Pharaoh's slavery, but the exodus of all humanity from the slavery to sin and death.  "Let us build three tents here," Peter says senselessly, "one for you, one for Moses, one for Elijah!" (Mk 9:5b).  He wanted to stay forever transfixed by the mystical moment, not getting the meaning of the exodus Jesus needed to effect through his death and resurrection in Jerusalem.

Then Mark reports that a cloud came over them, cast a shadow over them, then a voice proclaims, "This is my beloved Son.  Listen to him" (Mk 9:7b).  The experience of Jesus transfigured as he prayed is a theophany:  a manifestation by God the Father of his Son.  It is similar to the theophany that occurred when Jesus was baptized and the Father, well pleased with him, introduced him as his Son (Mt. 3:17).  Now, however, well into the public life of Jesus, after Jesus had countless times spoken of the coming of the Kingdom of God, and the need for men and women to repent, now, after countless miracles of healing of the infirm, making the blind to see, the deaf to hear, the dead to be restored to life, and the indifference that all this effected in many of his listeners, God needed to say, "This is my beloved Son, listen to him!"

It is the message that is being given to us today, on this First Friday.  This is my beloved Son… There is a word there that is not being heard.  There is a song there that is not being sung. There is a stubbornness in us that resists the consent to this Jesus, that refuses faith in Jesus, and so closes our eyes to this moment of transfiguration and our ears to the Father's saying, I have sent him to you in love.  He will do everything for you in love.  He will die for you in love.  Listen to him!.  But we refuse to listen.  Who can deny this?  The stock market is more interesting.  The newspapers more black and white.  The internet more exciting.  Worldly glory more enticing.  And the message of the scribes and Pharisees, with their rules and regulations, and their shameless hypocrisy, much less demanding than this thing Jesus calls faith!  But Jesus' transfiguration is God's invitation to our own transfiguration in God's power and Jesus' Love.  Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.  Whoever does not deny father, mother, sister, brother, fields and property for my sake is not worthy of me (cf. Mt 10:38; Mk 10:29).  Even as this current walk in the valley of darkness becomes darker with every new report of pernicious variants, virus mutating itself in newer and deadlier forms, infecting and even killing not just people out there but our relatives, our friends, just as sin in our world mutates itself in newer and various forms, infecting and killing not just people out there but ourselves, our relatives and our friends!  We say, this should be so easy to overcome.  We have the scientists, we have the knowledge, we have the reason, we have the technology, we have the freedom to do the right thing.  We just don't.  We are happy to trump the truth if trumping the truth works for us.  There is always darkness I can hide in.  There is always the grand lie I can use to cover up my failure, my nakedness and my shame.  And yet, in the darkness of it all, in the endlessly self-sacrificing service of the front liner, God breaks through.  In the volunteers in the vaccination lines, divinity breaks through.  In the breaking of the seven loaves of bread and the sharing of the two fish,  Compassion breaks through.  In the honest service of the civil servant, Light breaks through.  In the humble prayer of the repentant sinner, Forgiveness breaks through in the gentle breeze.  Sometimes, in all the crazy godlessness, God does break through;  and in all the misgovernance and malgovernance not only in government but in my life, God's Kingdom does break through. 

Then a voice says in love, "This is my beloved Son.  Listen to him." 

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