We need today’s feast. It gives us hope in what seems a very troubled world of multiple armed conflicts and a planet in trouble. The disciples and early Christians also lived in a troubled world. Perhaps that’s why the account of the transfiguration, our Gospel today, was so important to them that it was included in the Gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke. In our second reading today from 2 Peter, written at the end of the first century, the author tells us that this transfiguration account is not a “clever myth,” our fake news, but comes to us from “eyewitnesses of his glory.” “Glory” is divinity language. We hear this language in today’s opening prayer: “O God, who in the glorious Transfiguration of your Only Begotten Son … wonderfully prefigured our full adoption to sonship … grant … that … we may become full heirs with him…” In other words, because God became human, we become “divine.” We also have the GLORY Jesus was given by his Father, which lets us be full heirs with the Lord Jesus. We can participate in the very being of God (GLORY) because we have “full access” through our very humanness, which forever is joined with God through the risen Christ. Once the U.S. monk Thomas Merton left his Gethsemane monastery for an appointment in town and, while standing on a street corner, he had a vision. He saw all the passersby surrounded by shimmering auras of holiness. Our faith tells us we are much more than the ordinary selves others see, or even that we see reflected in mirrors or windows. We are glorified. Transfiguration is happening in us all the time. We glow with God’s goodness within us. Have a glorious day!
— Blog entry by Sister Mary Garascia; image by G4889166 from Pixabay
Glorious, LORD, God ~~ My daughter, Lisa, lives with such deep loneliness, which causes her distress, depression, and despair. In all your goodness, and in and through all your gracious love and mercy, LORD, God, extend to Lisa, your own beloved daughter, some relief from this debilitating loneliness. And may she experience some of this “glorified” experience in her life through your gifts of presence, friendship, and community here-and-now. In JESUS’ Beloved Name and Person, and through His Most Precious Blood, we pray. Amen.