Saturday, August 04, 2018

Sunday Aug. 5, 2018 Homily


Feast of the Transfiguration, Monday August 6, 2018
By Rev. Bob Johnnene OFM from Readings: Daniel 7:9-14, Psalm 96, 2 Peter 1:16-19, Mark 9:2-10
Mission Saints Sergius & Bacchus/ Order Franciscans of Mercy

Tomorrow is the feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord and I know that sounds embarrassingly magical. In the reading from Peter, he even remarks, “It was not any cleverly invented myths that we were repeating when we brought you the knowledge of the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ; we have seen His majesty ourselves. He was honored and glorified by God the Father, when the Sublime Glory itself spoke to him and said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; he enjoys my favor’. We heard this ourselves, spoken from heaven, when we were with him on the holy mountain.”
Think about this, Jesus goes up onto a mountain and his clothes become dazzlingly white. Prophets appear and talk to him. And then it is all over and Jesus tells his disciples to say nothing until he has gone to the father. Why should we believe the absurdity of this incident? Why was this even included in the approved gospel texts? What purpose and what gain could the church have from having this in the Holy Scriptures?
It changes in no way what Christ taught. A story like this would make any skeptic laugh. There is only one reason to put it in the Gospel, and that is because it happened.  It is a case of the evangelists recording events they had witnessed down, even though they knew people would think them daffy which Peter acknowledges in his letter.
The true miracle of the Transfiguration is not the shining face and white garments, or the appearance of the prophets of Old or the voice of God thundering from the heavens, but the fact that from that time until after Christ had ascended into heaven, Jesus hid his glory so well.
The first recorded celebration of this feast is in the fourth century in the Armenian church around the tenth century the Roman church adopted the feast and in 1456 it became a feast for the Universal church to be celebrated on August 6th.
The words of Almighty God, heard by the Apostles present, “This is My beloved Son, Listen to Him” might be the real reason that this relation of events is important.  Almighty God is proclaiming to the world that what Jesus had taught is what He, God, wanted people to do.
It was, possibly, God’s way of proclaiming a new order, a new covenant. God may have been telling us that all the rules and teachings that had preceded Jesus birth were meant to prepare the world for his coming and guide them in leading a good life.
Think about it! If we “Love the Lord, our God, with your whole heart, mind, soul and body and love our neighbor as ourselves” what else is there to do?
To love God completely means that we live our lives in such a manner as to have respect for everything that Almighty God created. We would take care of God’s creation and not destroy it. We would try to see God in every person we meet, even those who are not in agreement with us.
By living he Second part of Christ message “Love your neighbor as yourself” we would not condemn a person because they were divorced until we know all the circumstances, or because they were created by God to be attracted to people of the same gender and had fallen in love with someone.
We would not disparage a person because of their national origin, or the color of their skin, or because they chose to worship Almighty God in a church other than ours. In short, we would have respect for all people of good will.
As for those individuals who would do us harm, or are full of anger, hate, jealousy, and greed, who steal, murder, cheat and do all manner of evil things, we need to pray for them and ask God to drive the power of evil from them as Christ drove out the demons from those possessed.
To Transfigure means to REFORM, CHANGE, REVOLUTIONIZE, and UPDATE. Perhaps, that is another reason why the story in included in the scriptures, God inspired the evangelists to include it because He was trying to let them know that through Christ a new age had come. Through Christ God was teaching us a new way of thinking, God was reform all that had come before and showing us the way to Eternal Salvation with Him.
If that was and is the case, how sad that so many years have gone by with our stubbornly holding on to the old ways and only accepting that part of Christ’s message that suited our own agendas and political purposes.
On this feast of the Transfiguration, let us contemplate on this and what the event meant and why it was included in Scripture. Was it included just as another story of Christ’s life and events, or did God inspire the writers of the event and the hierarchy and those involved in making the decisions about what was “ORTHODOX” scripture and what would not be admitted to include that story in the hopes that at some time we might contemplate on it and seek the meaning.
I do not purport to know the answer, I just think it might be worth more knowledgeable people to think about it and the ramifications it could have on our current way of thinking about how we will achieve everlasting life with Almighty God as promised by His son Jesus Christ our savior and redeemer. AMEN


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