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
