Learning Transfiguration Prayer

 

Deacon Dave · Learning Transfiguration Prayer

Homily for the 2nd Sunday of Lent, February 25, 2024. Gospel: Mark 9:2-10. Theme: Learning Transfiguration Prayer 

 In our 2,000-year heritage of Christian spirituality, the Transfiguration of Jesus, which we hear in today’s gospel, has often been considered as a lesson in what it means to have a prayerful experience of God. Spending time in prayer is all about personal intimacy with Jesus, about coming to know Him as He really is, and in the process getting to know ourselves as we really are. This is something that Peter, James and John experienced. They went away with Jesus up the mountain and gazed upon His true glory, resting in His divinely transformed presence. 

 During this experience, Jesus’ true inner self, His divinity, began to shine through the flesh of His humanity. It changed His appearance; it revealed His secret identity so to speak. The disciples were caught up in this awesome revelation and when it was over, the Father’s voice directed them to listen to Jesus because He is the Beloved Son. They returned to regular life re-energized in their relationship with Christ which had been deepened, personalized, strengthened by this experience. 

 The Transfiguration story gives us a very good description of the type of Christian prayer that is called meditation. It’s also known by other names such as prayer of the heart, contemplation or sometimes just pondering. And it’s very different, worlds apart really, from the types of meditation we often hear about today such as yoga-mindfulness or Hindu transcendentalism. These eastern forms of meditation encourage us to empty our minds, to get in touch with our inner-energy and to focus on ourselves. 

 But Christian meditation is the polar opposite. It’s not about focusing on oneself or trying to be empty inside. It’s all about focusing on God and growing in our love and awareness of Him in our lives. It’s not about being empty, but about being filled up with grace, with the light, truth and peace of Christ. Christian meditation is an important way for God to become more present, more real, more meaningful and more personal in our everyday lives. By reflecting on the Transfiguration experience of Peter, James and John, we can learn the three basic steps that make-up the prayer form of meditation. 

 The first step is solitude. We see that Jesus brought the disciples up a mountain, away from the hustle and bustle of daily life. This teaches us that we need to intentionally take time to find someplace where we can be alone and undisturbed for prayer. We need to get away from the many distractions that life throws at us, so that we can devote quality time to our relationship with God. 

 The second step is to be with Jesus. We do not go to our isolated place alone. We go with Jesus and we can do this by taking up the gospels through which he is always present for us. We chose a story and imagine Jesus and the details which the story presents to our minds. We take our time with it. We ponder it. In this step, we are like those three apostles looking at the transfigured Jesus and taking it all in. We permit the image of Christ it presents to us to penetrate our minds and hearts. 

 Lastly, the third step is speaking with Jesus. We ask him to show us what he wants us to learn from this experience. We obey the words of God the Father and listen to his Beloved Son speaking to the ears of our heart. His words might come to us as an idea or an image that enters into our minds. We respond to Jesus like Peter did, sharing with Him our thoughts, feelings and insights into what we have encountered in our time of solitude with him. 

 Then, after our meditation, we return to our daily duties, treasuring this prayerful experience of Jesus in our hearts, just as Peter, James and John did when coming down off that mountain. If we practice meditation regularly, we will become more aware of the presence of God living within us by grace and faith. We will become more aware of the beautiful truth that we are called to a divine romance, so to speak, with God who is love. This will lead us to experience a personal transfiguration in our own lives as we gradually grow, day by day, to become the beloved sons and daughters of God that we were created to be.

Hope Beyond All Hope

 

Deacon Dave · Hope Beyond All Hope

Homily for the First Sunday of Lent, February 18, 2024. Readings: Genesis 9:8-15; 2 Peter 3:18-22; Gospel of St. Mark 1:12-15. Theme: Hope Beyond All Hope 

 All three of today’s readings carry the hopeful theme of receiving a second chance, making a fresh start, turning our lives around. We heard the Old Testament story of Noah and his family escaping the Great Flood and receiving a second chance at life on planet Earth. Then in the second reading from St. Peter we are told that baptism connects us with Christ’s death and resurrection, and like the wood of Noah’s Ark, the wood of the cross gives us a second chance at living right with God. Lastly, Jesus proclaims the time of fulfillment, meaning he is going to open the gates to the Kingdom of God for all who repent and believe in the gospel. 

 “Repenting” means turning our lives around, turning away from ourselves and towards God. “Believing in the gospel” means trusting in Christ as the one and only Savior, who can make us brand new persons from the inside out. This sounds almost too good to be true for a lot of people, especially to those who think that what they have done in the past cannot be repaired and what they have made out of their lives is beyond redemption. But in the second reading St. Peter assures us that anyone who truly turns to Christ can claim a clear conscience and live a new life. This hope-filled truth of Scripture was the inspiration behind the unbelievable story of the Dominican Sisters of Bethany. They are living proof that repenting and believing in the gospel is a sure way to a fresh start, a second chance, a turning around of one’s life. 

 In 1864, a young Dominican priest named Fr. Lataste was send to give a series of religious talks in a notorious women’s prison in France. He accepted this assignment admitting that he shared in the social attitude and prejudices towards these female prisoners, and thinking it was a useless endeavor to preach a retreat to over 400 inmates who had been prostitutes, drug addicts, thieves and murderers. But something came over him soon after he stepped past the gates and began to really look at the women in their poverty and reality. The words of Christ began to ring in the ears of his heart and echo in his mind, “Now is the time…now if the fulfillment...repent…believe ... I have come to heal the sick, to restore the sinners…” 

 As the retreat moved on Fr. Lataste found himself deeply moved with compassion and mercy, and began calling the inmates his sisters. He told them that the moment they freely chose to claim a clean conscience through confession and then embrace the grace of their baptism with a new spirit, their lives, even as prisoners, would assume a new value. He concluded his several days of retreat with these words, “Whatever may have been your past, do not any longer consider yourselves inmates. You can choose to be people consecrated to God just like the Sisters are...” He assured them that they could turn their lives over to the service and praise God even in prison, just as much as nuns do in the seclusion of their monasteries, because what God looks at is the love and sincerity of the heart, not our external surroundings. 

 The retreat, which Fr. Lataste had originally thought would be “useless and a waste of time”, was an extraordinary success! The inmates, until then rejected and despised women, had suddenly discovered how precious they were in the eyes of God. They had been rehabilitated by his tender mercy. And as a result, several women, after they were released from prison, came to see him. Together, they started a now worldwide religious community called the “Dominican Sisters of Bethany”. It was the first time ever that a religious community was started by ex-convicts and Fr. Lataste had to fight long and hard for its right to exist. 

 To give them a real chance for a totally fresh start, Fr. Lataste made a rule that the membership would include both women who had been in prison and those who had not. This would allow those “with a past” to truly blend in and leave the details of their former lives behind them. If you go today to a monastery of these Sisters, you’ll have no clue as to who is who. Last names are not used in Bethany nor is one’s past ever discussed for good reason. Everything about their community life is structured to assure privacy and support fresh starts, remembering that Fr. Lataste had said, “God does not ask us what we have been; he looks only at what we are today.” 

 This is the very same message of hope that Jesus proclaims to us today. He is calling us seemingly respectable people out of other types of prisons besides those made of brick and mortar. These are the prisons of addiction, of a life of selfishness, lust and greed. The prison of a destructive existence that seems to spiral into hopelessness but which looks so good and normal to others from the outside. Anyone and everyone, no matter who they are, what they are, or where they are, can experience liberation from the inside out by having their slate wiped clean through the mercy of Jesus. And in Christ, anyone and everyone can find hope beyond all hope, simply by starting with the words of the Gospel that we heard proclaimed to each one of us today, “The time of fulfillment is at hand. The Kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe in the Gospel.”

A Community of Dominican Sisters of Bethany Today

We Are All Fixer-Uppers

 

No audio version of my homily is available this week. Only printed form below.

Homily for the 5th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Feb. 4, 2024. Gospel of St. Mark 1:29-39.  Theme: We’re All Fixer-Uppers 

 

I have to confess that I am a big fan of the many fixer-upper shows on TV these days.  It always amazes me how someone can look beyond the mess and destruction of a totally run-down house and see its future possibility. I enjoy watching the transformation through the various stages of renovation – demolition day, re-wiring, reinforcing weak foundations to make them sound and solid again. And then in the end I marvel at a house that has been totally renewed and restored to the beauty it originally possessed.

 

You know, it seems to me that this can be a good way to look at the healing mission of Jesus, because the truth is that we’re all fixer-uppers. We may not all be in the same dilapidated condition but we all need saving and restoring. Some of us might be like rundown shacks that need our relationship with God and others completely rebuilt from the foundation up. Others might require extensive structural repair due to having been so terribly mistreated and neglected. And then there are those who simply need some spiritual cleaning and refurbishing to make them shine.  But all of us, without exception, need some kind of work to be done so that we can be made new, transformed from the inside out.

 

Jesus looks beyond the mess and even destruction we may have made in our lives and sees the possibilities within us.  He has a burning desire to restore us to what we were always meant to be: holy and happy children of God. That’s why He came into our world as one of us: to heal what is sick, to drive out what is evil, and to fix what is broken. That’s what our Gospel today is all about. That’s why we call it Good News!  So, I think the big question would be:  How do we cooperate with Jesus in this task of repairing and restoring us? Well, like any fixer-upper job we need two fundamental things: a plan or blueprint to follow, and the right tools to get the job done. And Jesus provides both of these for us.

 

We find the blueprint in the example of Jesus himself. His words, his attitude, his actions, his relationships… are all what we are meant to be like as Christians.  This is why frequent and thoughtful reading of the gospels is so vital for us. We simply cannot get to know Jesus and absorb his attitude and behavior in any other way.  This is precisely what St. Paul did in his many letters in the New Testament.  He explains and applies Christ-like living to our everyday situations, so his writings should also be part of our regular spiritual reading and reflection.

But head knowledge is not enough to bring about a change in us. No matter how many times a contractor looks at a blueprint, the house is going to remain in its sorry state until he gets going with the actual work of making the blueprint become a reality. The same is true for us. We need to allow Jesus, the Master Carpenter from Nazareth, to get on with the job of rebuilding us. We have to permit Him to work on us by letting go of our self-sufficiency and by ceasing to cling to our usual ways of thinking and acting. We have to open up the door of our lives to Him, allow Him to enter and grant Him access to every part of us.  

And once we let Him in, the first spiritual tool we need to use is that of repentance. Through our sincere sorrow for selfishness and sin in our lives we can allow His grace to haul away the spiritual junk and debris that has accumulated within us. Then as trash gets cleared away the renovation can begin. We can move forward with the hard task of rebuilding by using such additional tools as prayer, practicing the Beatitudes, spiritual reading, acts of self-denial, and works of mercy for the sake of others.

 

But the most powerful spiritual tool we have at our disposal is our relationship with Christ in the Eucharist.  Holy Communion received with a real desire to become one with Jesus will shore up the weak spots in the foundation of our relationship with God and our neighbor.  Frequent and faith-filled reception of the Lord's Body and Blood will make the framework of our lives more sound and solid.  The more we open our hearts to the power of His Presence within us, the more we will persevere in taking on a new way of thinking, a new way of looking at life, a new way of loving that shows we are being restored, renewed and transformed.

 

It was precisely with all this in mind that we decided to offer the parish  Lent With The Chosen as a spiritual program for Lent. If we spend this Lent seriously following the blueprint of Jesus that we see in the episodes of The Chosen and reflect on in the 40 Days With Jesus book that goes along with it, then when Easter comes around we just might be in for a pleasant surprise. We just might begin to see that what was once an old fixer-upper has been refurbished and restored,  repaired and transformed into a Living Temple of God.  The joy of Easter will be ours as we hope to see fulfilled in us the glorious promise of becoming what we were originally meant to be.