Pastor’s Notes

“Metamorphosis.“

A big word about a big change! St Matthew’s Gospel used to describe the event on the mountain in this weekends Gospel is Transfiguration. It is like what a caterpillar goes through in the journey to butterfly.  The word means beautiful as well as good or truthful.  The transfiguration on the mountain was a radiant, fabulous…metamorphosis experience.   Each Evangelist has different words to describe it.   Our brothers and sisters of the Eastern churches celebrate this event in greater depth than we of the West because they see the process of “divinization” as a goal for all Christians.  Therefore Jesus simply reveals this possibility to his three closest collaborators. What he has, they can have.

Dr. Martin Luther King’s great speech on the road to Memphis made reference to his own  transformation.  “We’ve got some difficult days ahead,” he said. “ But it doesn’t matter with me now because I’ve been to the mountaintop … Like anybody I would like to live a long life, but I’m not worried about that now…and I not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man… and mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”  That is metamorphosis! Only God energy pulls that off.

Lent focuses on the journey from our baptisms to glory.  The rite of Baptism contains a promise of this glory when one is incorporated into Christ.  St Matthew’s  Transfiguration tells us how this was accomplished for Jesus, and how it will also take place for us. I don’t know what Dr. King’s personal mountaintop was like, whether it was a special place, moment, and time?  But, when he left there, he was a changed man.  Terror of death was gone.  Self doubt and hesitance was changed into assurance, conviction, dedication and vision. He knew where he was going.  And he knew where God wanted him to go.

But we all get mountaintops when we pay attention.  And they change us. Christian life is a transforming process.  About being transformed, and transforming the world we live.  The disciples wake up long enough to get a brief glimpse of Jesus’ glory, to give us a foretaste of what is to come after the trials.  Unlike the disciples who climbed the mountain that day…we don’t have a  reason to keep our mouths shut. With Peter we don’t build little booths to shelter God’s glory … Or capture the moment on our cell phone.  We can’t collect those peak experiences in a scrapbook.   Rather use them to build a Church, a community of people enlightened by God’s glory, so it can be seen throughout the world.

Join us our coming parish mission with Sr. Eileen, our meatless Fridays, Stations of the Cross in English and Spanish, Confessions and Saturdays food distributions with St. Vincent de Paul, 5PM Sunday Evening Prayers, and numerous opportunities to be generous in our giving. It is a sacred time of metamorphosis.

A gentle week,
Fr. Michael Weldon, OFM