Dear friends,
Today we celebrate the Transfiguration of the Lord. While we are given the foretaste of what awaits us if we rely on the Lord and embark on the path of discipleship, today’s celebration is a pressing call and invitation to open our hearts and minds and to focus on the purpose for which God has chosen us. But before getting there, we have to fulfill a requirement, namely, to believe in Jesus Christ as the Only Son of God, through and by whom we have salvation and everlasting life.
Two truths are highlighted here. The first is that we come to know Jesus for who he truly is, namely, the Son of God. In other parts of the gospels Jesus’ special and unique nature is revealed on different occasions such as calming a storm, healing the sick, raising the dead, feeding thousands with small amount of food, and walking on the water. The transfiguration, as it is, is unique because it will be repeated only after the resurrection, announcing therefore the glory of the Only Begotten Son of God, who is God. This belief and faith in Jesus Christ leads us to engage on a journey of preaching and witness as disciples. Because we are not preaching just a hearsay but what we have experienced ourselves, as Saint Peter hammers it at home.
Secondly, the truth of the transfiguration comes with an invitation and a call from the Father: “listen to him.” Here we are meant to establish a difference between two verbs: to listen and to hear. God does not tell us to hear his Son, but to listen to him. This means that we have to take time to reflect on his teachings to discover what God’s plan is for us. This will help us to discover the way God wants us to live. As disciples, we listen to out master to learn from him. And once we have learned from him, we lead others to him through our ways of life and commitment to discipleship.
Listening to the Son of God means for us to let his words and the holy spirit transfigure and transform us. Our relationship with the transfigured Lord communicates to us the power to be transformed to courageous and committed disciples who preach nothing else but Christ whom we listened to and who sent us to be his witnesses. To do so, we will pray that the Lord will help us to know his presence with us today and always in the sacrament of his body and blood, the holy Communion.
And let us continue to pray for one another and for our parish family, so that our today’s experience in the mountain with the Lord might not lead us to escape from the challenges of discipleship but rather strengthens us to go down the mountain to proclaim our personal and particular experience with the Lord.
Fr. Emery