“Jesus took Peter, James and John and led them up a high
mountain apart by themselves.” (Mark 9:2)
What must have been going through the minds of Peter, James,
and John as the followed Jesus up that high mountain? What expectations could they possibly have
had? Obviously, they were not expecting
what eventually occurred. They couldn’t
have possibly imagined that the Lord would be transfigured before them, that
they would catch a glimpse of his glory, and that they would hear the voice of
the Father telling them that this was his beloved Son to listen to him. They couldn’t have expected any of this. Yet, that is what happened. That is what Jesus chose to reveal to
them. As we wander through the desert of
our Lenten journey, like the disciples, we catch a glimpse of the glory to
come.
As I’ve been meditating and thinking about the
Transfiguration the last couple of days, I’ve been focusing on what we expect
when we come to Mass. I’ve been focusing
it more on what you as the faithful expect.
As Catholics who come to Mass, you expect to hear the Word of God and
you expect to be fed from this table.
Aside from those two essential elements of the Eucharistic Celebration,
you expect good music, a good homily, an air-conditioned church, and all of
these are reasonable expectations. But
these reasonable expectations may lead to a sense of complacency. So as a pastor I started thinking beyond what
my faithful expect towards what my faithful deserve. You deserve all those things listed above and
much more, fed by the Word and by His Body, you deserve inspiring homilies, you
deserve divine music, a beautiful worship area, but above all you deserve to
have a genuine encounter with Christ as the disciples did on that mountain. As a pastor and as a church, we cannot keep
catering to the lowest common denominator and lazily go through the motions,
rather we need to raise the bar in terms of what people expect and deserve when
they come to church so that they have a Transfiguration experience. But it goes beyond an experience. It must lead to action. Experiences are all well and good, but we
have to move beyond them to concrete action and evangelization. In the gospel, the Transfiguration eventually
ended and they had to go down the mountain because Jesus’ mission was not quite
complete.
The Church’s mission is never complete. We have to go in search of those who are lost,
those who may at one time experienced this glorious Christ, but did not make
Christ a central part of our lives. In
short, what I’m saying it that we have to get past the “warm and fuzzies.” I’ve always been wary of the “warm and fuzzy”
experience of Jesus. It’s what Peter did
not understand on that mountain. In
speaking to youth leaders this past week, Archbishop Wenski warned about this
complacency and the experiential: “In the past, the force of custom in a
culture that was friendly to faith gave rise to a sense of complacency among
pastors and faithful. That complacency has led us to tolerate more than we should
have the inadequate and even defective religious formation of our young people.
Today after some 30 years of “experiential” catechesis most of our young people
are religious illiterates (Archbishop Thomas Wenski, Lenten Reflection to Youth
Leaders, 2/25/25).” What the
Archbishop is saying is what I underscored earlier: you deserve better. He notes that because of this complacency our
young people, and I would add many adults, have left the faith.
This is why we have to look beyond just simple expectations
and start looking at the glorious Christ as our model and ideal instead of
someone we’ve had an experience with.
Let me give you an example. After
CCD yesterday, I was sitting in the church waiting for the rain to subside
talking to a catechist when a six-year-old little girl walked up to me and
said, “Hi Jesus!” The catechist laughed
and corrected her, “his name is Father Manny,” then she pointed to the
crucifix, “that is Jesus.” I smiled
because that little six-year-old fleshed out my homily today with a two-word
greeting. Of course I’m not Jesus, but I
must be Jesus to all of you as a priest.
In fact, we all have to be like Jesus.
We have to aspire to be like Jesus.
That’s the goal! We are presented
with this gospel of the glorious Christ at this juncture in Lent to remind us
that He is our goal. As Catholics, we
cannot settle for anything less than being Jesus to others. The disciples would
not “get this” until after the resurrection.
Yes, it is good that we are here, but that isn’t enough. Once we behold the beauty of our Lord on that
mountain, we have to fall back to earth to share that beauty in a real,
concrete way. But we do need our time on
the mountain. We do need our time to
listen to the Beloved Son, to know Him well enough so that we can share
Him. And herein lies the challenge for
each of us going forward in Lent because we deserve so much more than what our
expectations demand: do we truly know
this Jesus?
