The Transfiguration of our Lord

Deacon Pat - A Homily for the Feast of the Transfiguration August 6, 2017 

Today we celebrate the great Feast of the Transfiguration of Jesus on Mt. Tabor. The Transfiguration is and was a glimpse of the Glory of God. Yet, in addition to seeing Moses and Elijah, and the Glory of God shining through the face of Jesus, something else of great importance occurred on Mt. Tabor that day. The three Apostles heard the voice of God the Father say, “This is my beloved Son. Listen to him.” Let me say that again: “This is my beloved Son. Listen to him.” It seems like such an easy, straight-forward command, yet it seems so very difficult for so many of us much of the time. Listening seems like one of the easiest things for us to do. After all, God gave most of us two good ears, and as my father used to point out, we should listen twice as much as we speak since we only have one mouth. However, truth be told, many of us are not very good listeners; and not because we are hard of hearing or deaf. 

Before becoming a deacon I studied for years to become a psychiatric nurse, and much of that training was so that I could become an “effective listener,” and any therapist will tell you that listening effectively can be a lot of hard work. So why are many of us not good listeners? One reason might be because we are too busy doing all the talking. We just talk and talk and many do the same to God, or maybe at God, without letting God get a word in. God is not the ultimate “customer service department” whom we call whenever we are in need. God is the Creator of all, and our loving Father. He wants a relationship with us. He knows what is for our best, even when it looks not so good to us. We need to listen to Him, for doing so will lead to both psychological and spiritual growth, which will allow us to become more aware of reality and to deal with it more effectively. “Listening makes us open to Christ, the Word of God, spoken in all things: in the material world, the Scriptures, the Church and sacraments and, sometimes most threateningly, in our fellow human beings” (Benedict Groeschel, Listening at Prayer, Paulist Press, 1984, p. 3). Listening, however, is more than just the perception of sound with our ears. There are so many sounds in our world that while we may perceive them, we do not listen to all of them. Most we simply ignore. True listening requires a response. This does not mean we need to say something. Rather it means attending to what was said, recognizing its meaning, and making it part of our inner, conscious experience. The same applies to the listening that does not come to us via our ears. God speaks to us in so many ways. One person may barely notice a patch of blue sky, whereas the person of prayer, who listens to God, sees in it the dome of heaven. Or how often do we come to Mass and are more aware of the person coughing, the kid banging their toy on the pew in front of us, and just wishing it would be over soon. The person of prayer, however, is aware of all these same things, and is not only attending to what is happening in the liturgy, but is also aware of something much more important. They are aware of participating in the Divine Liturgy celebrated in the Kingdom of Heaven with all the saints. For one, they are surrounded by distractions, while for the other they are surrounded by saints and angels. 

St. John of the Cross once pointed out that many of the people who think they are listening to God are actually only listening to themselves. 

There is so much that could be said about listening, especially in prayer, but let’s keep it simple for today. I am going to share with you a few ideas borrowed from a wonderful little book by Fr. Benedict Groeschel, called Listening at Prayer. First of all, we need to learn to listen to what life is saying in the present moment before trying to shape our prayer. Too often we make the world just a projection of our own desires and fears. We can get so wrapped up in deciding what advice to give God about how to run the world, especially to meet our “needs,” that we are unable to listen to any of life’s real messages. To grow in the Christian life we must have an openness to the true and living God. We need to divest ourselves of preconceived expectations of life, and take life as it comes. Secondly, when life gives us its message, we should make the understanding of that message the first object of our prayer. At the foundation of the prayer of life is the virtue of hope, and “hope is the grace to believe that whatever events occur, they will contain the necessary ingredients of our salvation” (Benedict Groeschel, Listening at Prayer, Paulist Press, 1984, p. 18). This is often the really difficult part in listening at prayer, because often the most important lessons in life come from listening to God speaking to us in the tragic circumstances of our lives. God does not want evil in the world; it is the result of sin, of our refusing to let God’s love into certain parts of our lives. It is because of the disobedience of our first parents that a strain of disorder has infected, like a virus, all of creation. Yet God offers us the grace to see His order of love even in the disorder. 

Fr. Groeschel, in his books, tells of meeting a man terribly afflicted with leprosy which had destroyed his hands and most of his face, yet the man was grateful to have contracted the disease because prior to his illness he lived a wild, godless life. His disease allowed him to see the real emptiness of his life without God, so now he was at peace because he was seeking God and was in relationship with Him. Jesus tells us in the Gospel that it is better to enter the Kingdom of God maimed or lame than to have all our limbs and be cast into the fires of Hell. Thirdly, once we have received the message of life we must attempt to integrate it with our efforts to live by the Gospel. The Gospel must be the focal point of our lives, and not just something relegated to an hour a week at Mass. It is often rather shocking for people as they become more effective listeners at prayer to discover that many of our values and desires are quite pagan in light of the Gospel. “The prayer of listening will help us confront precisely those areas needing conversion if we do not allow discouragement and worldly values to take over.” As our prayer life improves so will how we live life. 

And Finally we need to pray that we may pray. God has no need of our prayer, in fact the very desire to pray is a gift from God. St. Paul noted in one of his epistles that often we do not know how to pray as we should, thus it is important to ask the Holy Spirit for the grace of prayer. All of this requires effort on our part. We need to make time and space for prayer. Fr. Groeschel suggests that we start by first offering to the Lord some prayer that we know by heart – say the Our Father or Hail Mary – and include a petition, either for ourselves or a loved one. But then we should just relax and ponder what we have just done. We, a finite being, have just spoken to the infinite and living God. (Repeat) Wow! What an incredible thing it is to pray. Did you know that our church and the chapel that we have in our parish, is open daily for our use, and is a valuable gift that we have. It is a quiet place where we can go and just listen to God speaking in our lives. It is a place where we can pray without words. Where we, finite creatures that we are, can marvel at the infinite love that God has for us, “for God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him might not perish but might have eternal life” (John 3:16). And Jesus loves us so much that He not only suffered and died for us, but He further humbled Himself to remain with us, Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity in the appearance of bread and wine. How awesome is that! We can sit in the presence of the Lord housed in the tabernacles pretty much whenever we want. And better yet, in just minutes many of us with receive him in the most intimate way, through the Eucharist. He that is everything will be united to us and us to him. Take a moment and ponder the power of that act. It is overwhelming and unexplainable. (Pause) 

Yet, The real message of today’s gospel is to LISTEN TO HIM! Really listen to God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – speaking to us in the Scriptures and the sacraments, and in the ordinary moments of our lives. Listen to Him, and God will help us “surrender our preconceived notions and fantasies, to go beyond our defenses and shallow expectations, to be lifted on the eagle wings of grace” (Benedict Groeschel, Listening at Prayer, Paulist Press, 1984, p. 24). Jesus promises that “the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened” (Matt. 7:8), and for the disciple who makes the effort to listen, the Kingdom of God will be revealed. The three Apostles heard the voice of God the Father say, “This is my beloved Son. Listen to him.” “This is my beloved Son. Listen to him.”