Homily for Feast of Transfiguration

Homily for the Feast of the
Transfiguration

Aug. 6, 1995

Luke 9: 28-36
St. Peter, Gloucester, Mass.

Another homily from the archive.  I have only 2 homilies for this feast in the archive that are readily discoverable—neither for the current cycle of readings (Year A).

“While he was praying, his face changed in appearance and his clothes became dazzling white.  Suddenly two men were talking with him—Moses and Elijah” (Luke 9: 29-30).

The Transfiguration, by Bellini

The cycle of our Sundays in O.T. is broken today by the feast of the Transfiguration, which falls on Aug. 6.  Ordinarily, feasts don’t replace a Sunday celebration, but feasts of our Lord such as today’s do.  And it’s fitting that the transfiguration be observed even on Sunday.  For the Church tells us that every Sunday celebration is a little Easter.  On this feast of the Transfiguration, Jesus, his apostles, and we look toward his passion, death, and resurrection, the “passage he was about to fulfill in Jerusalem” (9:31).

The word translated here as “passage” is, in St. Luke’s Greek, exodos, “going out.”  That word recalls the exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt under the leadership of Moses, their delivery from slavery to freedom, their covenant at Mt. Sinai to be God’s chosen people.

And here is Moses, speaking with Jesus about his approaching exodus in Jerusalem, by which Jesus will go out from the sufferings of this life to the glory of everlasting life, opening that road for us too, so that we, the people of the new covenant, might pass from the slavery of our sins to the freedom of God’s children.  Easter is the Christian passover.

Elijah, also, appears and speaks with Jesus.  That prophet of the 9th century B.C. experienced his own exodus or passage.  When his earthly ministry was completed, he was taken up into heaven by a fiery chariot, as we read in 2 Kings (2:9-12).  Similarly, Jesus’ passage will be completed when he ascends to heaven on a cloud.

The revelation on the mountaintop shows Jesus to be the new Moses and the new Elijah.  Moses represents the prophets and fidelity to the covenant.  Jesus has come to bring the law and the prophets to their perfection.  He has come to bind all mankind, and not just the Hebrews, into a new covenant with our Creator and Father.  More than Moses, more than Elijah, he is the Chosen One of God, and therefore all of God’s people must “listen to him” (Luke 9:35).

Only by listening to Jesus shall we surely be on the road out of the slavery of sin into the freedom of God’s children.  Only by listening to Jesus shall we surely be faithful to the covenant God sealed with us in Baptism and Confirmation, the covenant that he reseals with us every time we partake of the Eucharist, which is Christ’s body given for us (Luke 22:19), his blood of the covenant (Mark 14:24) poured out for us.

But how can we listen to Jesus?  Listening to him begins with prayer.  In last week’s gospel, Jesus taught us to pray.  This week he gives us the example, for he is praying when his transfiguration happens.  Prayer opens our ears, our minds, and our hearts to the voice of Christ.  Prayer prepares our wills to do whatever Christ asks of us, prepares us to be transfigured into glorious images of Christ, God’s Chosen One.  For whenever we do what Christ asks, we are his images.

We listen to Christ in the holy Scriptures.  “To know the Scriptures is to know Christ,” St. Jerome says, “and ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ.”  We hear and reflect upon a little bit of the Bible whenever we come to Mass.  But we must open and reflect on the Bible privately too—every day, if possible.  That’s an old New England custom, you know, going back to the 1st settlements at Plymouth, Salem, Gloucester, and Boston.  Most households had only one book, the Bible.  When Massachusetts enacted the world’s 1st public school law in the 1640s, it was so that all children would be able to read the Bible.  Unlike our Puritan ancestors, we don’t have a Christian culture around us to guide us in Christ’s way; we need the Word of God even more than they did.

The people of the diocese of Greensburg, Penna., were surveyed recently about the priorities that thought their pastors should treat in their preaching.  4th in the list of 12 topics was the sacrament of Penance and spiritual direction.  Listening to Christ also means confessing our sins to him, thru his priestly minister, and hearing his words of advice, encouragement, and pardon in this wonderful sacrament.  It means seeking out a priest to whom we can open our hearts confidently and be guided in our spiritual lives.  You see, hearing a sermon is hearing something necessarily directed to maybe a couple of hundred people at a time; spiritual direction in one-on-one.

A 4th way in which we listen to Christ is by listening to his Church.  The Pope and the bishops speak to us in Christ’s name, teaching us what the word of God means today, teaching us how to live Christ’s word today.

Finally, listening to Christ means acting.  St. James tell us, “Be doers of the word and not hearers only, deluding yourselves.  Just as a body without a spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead” (1:22; 2:26).  After praying, reflecting on the Scriptures, seeking spiritual direction, and absorbing the teaching of the Church, we have to act.  To listen to Christ is to obey him:  “If you love me, you will keep my commandments,” he said at the Last Supper (John 14:15), keep them as they apply to our own lives as parents or youngsters or widows, as workers or retirees or students, in all aspects of our lives.  Christ wants us to transfigure our world, to make its appearance and its reality change, by the impact that we have on it as his disciples.