Homily for Thursday, 6 August 2015– Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord

Thursday of the 18th Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14; Psalm 97:1-2, 5-6, 9; 2 Peter 1:16-19;  Mark 9:2-10

What is the central message of the Transfiguration of the Lord, which we celebrate today? What truths does Jesus’ Transfiguration proclaim about Jesus and about us?

Before I became a Basilian, my spiritual director at the time asked me a similar question to these about the Transfiguration: What is this event’s central point? I felt hopelessly distracted from the central point of the Transfiguration by the dramatic narrative our Gospels place around this event.

To me, the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ Transfiguration read like the script of a brilliant drama or action film: Jesus takes his three most trusted disciples, Peter, James, and John, up a mountain alone. In Scripture, mountains are usually the place of encounter with God, so something is bound to light up the big screen! Almost on cue, Jesus’ “clothes [become] a dazzling white.” Then Moses and Elijah, the Law and Prophets in person, appear and speak with Jesus. Peter, James, and John are left by themselves in the distance. A cloud casts a shadow over them. Could this be the presence of God’s Holy Spirit? A voice from on high (Could this be God the Father?) says to “listen to” Jesus. We hear clear mention of “the Son of Man” having to die and then rise from the dead. Who is this “Son of Man”? Obviously on one level the Son of Man is Jesus, but could it also be all of us, daughters and sons of God; Jesus’ disciples? And what does death and “rising from the dead” mean, for Jesus or for us?

Understandably, Mark’s Gospel says, Peter and James and John “hardly [know] what to say, they [are] so terrified” at Jesus’ Transfiguration. But amid their terror, Peter, James, and John are in danger of missing the central point of the Transfiguration; what this event proclaims about us and about Jesus. And what is this central point of the Transfiguration? If only for a moment, Peter gets it right. Peter’s words reveal a truth about us: “Rabbi, it is good that we are here”! This truth about us is coupled with a truth about the identity of Jesus as God in the words spoken from heaven: “This is my beloved Son. Listen to him.”

The rest of this scene: The secluded mountain setting; Jesus’ bright transfigured clothing, the cloud; Moses and Elijah all point us to this dual truth. But these “special effects” can also be a distraction from a superb central plot line perhaps rarely seen in action films (I would give this one five stars): “Rabbi, it is good that we are here… This is my beloved Son. Listen to him.”

How many of us are vulnerable to similar distractions? Not only the fear of death can be this distraction, as it was for Peter, James, and John on the mountain of the Transfiguration. Can our fears; worries about loved ones’ or our own health and well-being; our work or lack of work; our struggles with prayer not also distract us?

And so we ask God to center us on the truths of Jesus’ Transfiguration; truths about us and about Jesus and our response to Jesus: “It is good that we are here… This is my beloved Son. Listen to him.”

Homily for Tuesday, 10 February 2015– Memorial of St. Scholastica

Tuesday of the 5th Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Genesis 1:20-2:4a; Psalm 8:4-5, 6-7, 8-9; Mark 7:1-13

If we were to write a book or make a movie about our first reading today, could we not call it something like, “God Saw How Good it Was: Part 2”? Yesterday we heard Part 1, the first four days of creation in Genesis 1, and today we hear the last three days of the Genesis 1 creation account.

“God saw how good it was,” Genesis repeats after each day of creation, the central and timeless truth of Genesis 1. But what does God create on the sixth day? God creates human beings “in his image… male and female.” God gives us great responsibility over the rest of God’s creation: “Be fertile and multiply. Fill the earth and subdue it,” that is, act with God’s goodness and loving care for creation, not abusively but in grateful service toward creation. “Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the living things that move on the earth.”

And then, on the sixth day the repetitive words of Genesis change slightly. We hear that, when God had finished creating the universe; all its living beings; us, “God looked at everything he had made, and he found it very good.”

This leads me to ask a possibly controversial question of us this morning: Is it not perhaps arrogant of us to assume that we are the only beings in the universe who make God’s creation not only “good” but “very good”; the only beings in the universe capable of some kind of relationship and understanding of an infinitely loving and creative God?

I ask this question mainly because I just finished reading a wonderful book by a Jesuit brother and priest, Guy Consolmagno and Paul Mueller, astronomers at the Vatican Observatory in Tucson, Arizona. Their book, inspired by a question first raised at a General Audience by Pope Francis, is called, Would you Baptize an Extra-Terrestrial?

This assumes there are extra-terrestrials out there who would want to be baptized; that there are extra-terrestrials out there at all. I mean, there is no scientific proof that extra-terrestrial intelligent life exists, let alone with awareness of a loving creator God. There is no Biblical mention of extra-terrestrials either, unless, as my professor of Old Testament in the seminary used to joke, “They’re in the divinely-inspired footnotes”!

But still I ask, “What if”? As Guy Consolmagno, Paul Mueller, and Pope Francis have asked, what if we were to encounter aliens who exit a UFO, have pointy ears, bug eyes, and green skin like the ones in children’s drawings, or who look like ET from the movie; who, like us, have some awareness of relationship with a loving creator-God; who maybe speak in backward sentences like Yoda from Star Wars? Challenge our faith, would ET?

Challenge our faith… perhaps. But I hope we would be able to consider such a being, like any being or thing God has created, as even more evidence of timeless truths that go back to the Book of Genesis; to the beginning of our universe: God’s love is limitless. God’s love is creative. God looks upon all creation, known or yet unknown to us, and indeed it is “very good.”

Homily for Wednesday, 26 November 2014– Ferial

Wednesday of the 34th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Revelation 15:1-4; Psalm 98:1, 2-3ab, 7-8, 9; Luke 21:12-19

Who among us has seen a good action movie, one in which the hero emerges in a final scene from the destruction and chaos with maybe a few scratches?

The cynical side of me says when I see this kind of scene, “This is unrealistic. That explosion would have killed our hero. In no way would our hero have survived that”!

Now imagine ourselves in one of these scenes, only we are not in an action movie. What we are experiencing is real. If we can place ourselves in this kind of action scene as the heroes who emerge unscathed from the final chaos, we have some understanding of the strange readings we hear today from Revelation and the Gospel of Luke.

Our readings today are from what is called apocalyptic literature in the Bible; writings that were meant to inspire people to remain faithful to God in times of trial; crisis; hostility. The message the same now as when Revelation and Luke’s Gospel were written: Remain faithful to God and God will have the last word. The eternal God will deliver and save us from earthly trials and crises that, as terrible as they can be, are temporary. God will have the last word; the final judgment. Remain faithful, and we will emerge unscathed, as though we were standing on “a sea of glass mingled with fire,” the action heroes looking defiantly on the chaos we have just overcome; that God has led us to overcome.

Of course the crisis we face may not be as spectacular as the “sea of glass mingled with fire” or even the brutal Roman occupation the people faced when the New Testament books were written. Our crises are more subtle today, but are nevertheless present. In our own culture, our own nation, we face affronts to the sanctity of all human life from conception to natural death. We face affronts to justice and human rights: The right to a living wage for workers; the right not to live in abject poverty; the rights of immigrants and refugees; rights that, when broken or ignored, contribute to situations like what is unfolding now in Ferguson, Missouri. Some of us face crises within our own families: Gossip, ridicule for holding fast to our faith even from those we love most; family division and breakdown of the kind Jesus speaks in our Gospel reading. But then Jesus ends our Gospel reading with this: “By your perseverance you will secure your lives.”

Our message is still the same today as in the spectacular apocalyptic images of our readings: Remain faithful to God. Work for what is right and just, even if we are ridiculed or ignored. God will have the final word; the last judgment.

We near the end of our Church year, with Advent beginning this weekend. This end of our Church year is a reminder of the end times; of God’s final judgement that is real, not only a scene in an action movie. And yet we are the heroes of these end times. Like a good action hero, if we remain faithful we will emerge from the chaos unscathed; saved; with God in eternal life.