Author: DVO

The Transfiguration, which we celebrate today, is an extraordinary moment and memory in Jesus’s life and in the Church’s birthing. We remember Jesus appearing suddenly to Peter, James, and John in a cloud of dazzling light, conversing with Moses and Elijah, and the voice of God naming him beloved Son. We rehearse the command of God, a mantra to guide our lives: “Listen to him.” Yet the Transfiguration is not only about God’s glory shining in Jesus. It is also about us, the hearers of the word, and our full adoption as sons and daughters of God when we look upon Jesus and receive the good news into our hearts. Today’s Communion antiphon proclaims: “When Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” Think how desperately Peter would have needed to hear this message and take it into his heart. Imagine the regret and self-loathing Peter must have felt under the shadow of the crucifixion. Three times, he had said, “I do not know him.” Forgiven by Christ himself, Peter can now proclaim with confidence and without shame that the good news is not a fantasy or a “cleverly devised myth.” To see Christ “as he is” is at once to see ourselves as we truly are, like him, both broken and lifted up in glory. Because God has entered into our condition without reserve, even unto shame and violence and death, we can say of the good news, “It is reliable. It is a lamp shining in a dark place.” In the shadow of all our shame and moral failures, as crucifixions seem to stretch endlessly across the horizon of our broken world, the light of Christ rekindles our joy and courage for love “until the day dawns” and “the morning star rises” again in our hearts. God is Love. Christ is our way. The Spirit fires our courage and faith in all things. Come, Lord Jesus, come. – Dr. Christopher Pramuk

Today’s reflection verse from the Gospel of Matthew speaks to an action Jesus did frequently: withdrawing to be alone. What lesson can we learn from this? How do we handle our darkest, most depressed, most lonely moments? Do we take time in these situations to bring our concerns to God? In our Lord Jesus’ darkest hour, he withdrew to speak to the Father. In this moment, we see Jesus’ humanity breaking through as he begs the Father to allow him to escape what he knows is coming. Fr. Rolheiser writes that Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane can be a model for how to pray when we’re in crisis. Here are seven aspects to consider when taking a crisis to God:

1. His prayer arises from his loneliness: In our deepest crises, we are always painfully alone, a stone’s throw away from others. Deep prayer should arise from that place.
2. His prayer is one of great familiarity: In our darkest hours, we must be most familiar with God.
3. His prayer is one of complete honesty. Prayer is classically defined as “lifting mind and heart to God.” In our darkest hour, we must be totally open to God.
4. His prayer is one of utter helplessness: Jesus’ prayer contains the petition that if God is to do this through him, God needs to provide the strength for it.
5. His prayer is one of openness, despite personal resistance: Jesus’ prayer opens him to God’s will if that is ultimately being asked of him.
6. His prayer is one of repetition: Jesus repeats the prayer several times, each time more earnestly, sweating blood, not just once, but several times over.
7. His prayer is one of transformation: Strength can only flow into Jesus after he has, through helplessness, let go of his own strength. Only after the desert has done its work on us are we open to allowing God’s strength to flow into us.

When we pray honestly, whatever our pain, an angel of God will always find us.

Jesus is asked by people following him, who many scholars believe are the same ones that received the bread and fish from the multiplication Jesus performed for them, to perform a sign so that they may believe in him. Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that Jesus tells us to discern the finger of God by reading the signs of the times. What’s meant by that? The idea isn’t so much that we look to every social, political, and religious analysis to try to understand what’s going on in the world, but rather that we look at every event in our lives, personal or global, and ask ourselves: What’s God saying to me this event? What’s God saying to us in this event? An older generation understood this as trying to attune itself to “divine providence.” That practice goes back to biblical times. For example, if a nation was to lose a war, it wasn’t because the other side had superior soldiers, but rather that God had somehow engineered this to teach them a lesson. Or if they were hit by drought, it was because God had actively stopped the heavens from raining, again to teach them a lesson. Scripture does not intend to teach us that God causes wars or stops the heavens from raining; it accepts that they result from natural contingency. The lesson is only that God speaks through them. James Mackey teaches that divine providence is a conspiracy of accidents through which God speaks. Frederick Buechner teases this out a little further by saying: “This does not mean that God makes events happen to us which move us in certain directions like chessmen. Instead, events happen under their own steam as random as rain, which means that God is present in them not as their cause but as the one who, even in the hardest and most hair-raising of them, offers us the possibility of that new life and healing which I believe is what salvation is.” God doesn’t cause AIDS, global warming, the refugee situation in the world, a cancer diagnosis, world hunger, hurricanes, tornadoes, or any other such thing to teach us a lesson, but something in all of these invites us to try to discern what God is saying through them. Likewise, God doesn’t cause your favorite sports team to win a championship; that also results from a conspiracy of accidents. But God speaks through all of these things – even your favorite team’s championship win!

The gospels tell us that, next to Jesus, there isn’t anyone more important than John the Baptist. Herod knew well of John’s criticism of his behavior. But, like John, criticism is only a half-job, a half-prophecy: It can denounce a king by showing what’s wrong, and it can wash the soul in sand by blasting off layers of accumulated rust and dirt, but ultimately it can’t empower us to correct anything. Something else is needed. Grace. Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that the gospels speak of two kinds of baptisms: the baptism of John and the baptism of Jesus, adding that John’s baptism is only a preparation for Jesus’ baptism. What’s John’s baptism? It’s a baptism of repentance, a realization of our wrongdoings, and a clear resolution to correct our bad behavior. What’s Jesus’ baptism? It’s an entry into grace and community in such a way that it empowers us internally to do what is impossible for us to do by our willpower alone. But how does this work? Is grace a kind of magic? No. It’s not magic. All psychic, emotional, and spiritual energy is, by definition, beyond a simple phenomenological understanding. Simply put, we can’t lay out its inner plumbing. There’s a mystery to all energy. But we can empirically lay out its effect: spiritual energy works. Grace works. This has been proven inside the experience of thousands of people (many of them atheists) who have been able to find an energy inside them that clearly does not come from them and yet empowers them beyond their willpower alone. Ask any addict in recovery about this. Sadly, many of us who are solid believers still haven’t grasped the lesson. We’re still trying to live out our lives by John’s baptism alone, that is, by our own willpower. That makes us excellent critics but leaves us powerless to change our own lives. What we are looking for and desperately need is a deeper immersion into the baptism of Jesus, that is, into community and grace.

Jesus is confronted today by the people of his own town who question how he became so wise since they only knew him as the carpenter’s son. This begs the question, what does it mean to be wise? There’s a vast difference between being bright and being wise, between brilliance and wisdom. We can be brilliant but not very wise. Ideally, we should strive to be both, but that is only sometimes the case, particularly today. Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that we’re living in a culture that rewards brilliance above wisdom and within which we pride ourselves, first of all, in being brighter than each other. Who has the highest degree? Who went to the most elite university? Who’s the most entrepreneurial? Who’s the most popular? Who’s the cleverest scientist, researcher, writer, journalist, television personality, or wit at the office or family table? Who’s the most brilliant? We never ask: Who’s the wisest? Today, intelligence is valued far above wisdom, and that’s not always good. We’re a highly informed and intelligent people, but our compassion is not nearly on par with our brilliance. We’re bright but not wise. What’s the difference between intelligence and wisdom? Wisdom is intelligence that’s colored by understanding (which, parsed to its root, means infused with empathy). In the end, what makes for wisdom is intelligence informed by empathy, intelligence that grasps with sympathy the complexity of others and the world. Empathy is not to be confused with sentimentality or naiveté, as is sometimes the case. Sentimentality and naiveté see a fault within intellectuality itself, seeing learning itself as the problem. But learning is never the problem. One-sided learning is the problem, namely, learning that isn’t sufficiently informed by empathy, which seeks knowledge without understanding. It’s not good merely to be smart; we must also be compassionate.

Why does God not act in the face of suffering? Why do bad things happen with seemingly no response from God? Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that there have been countless attempts to answer this question, not least inside the tortured experience of those suffering. Jesus died in silence, inside God’s silence and the world’s incomprehension. And we can let ourselves be scandalized by that silence, just as we can be scandalized by the seeming triumph of evil, pain, and suffering in our world. God’s seeming silence in the face of evil and death can forever scandalize us. In Christian theology, we believe that what is ultimately at stake is human freedom and God’s respect for it. God gives us freedom and refuses to violate it, even when it would seem beneficial to do so. That leaves us in a lot of pain at times, but, as Jesus reveals, God is not so much a rescuing God as a redeeming one. God’s seeming indifference to suffering is not so much a mystery that leaves the mind befuddled but a mystery that makes sense only if you give yourself over in a certain level of trust. Forgiveness and faith work the same. You have to roll the dice in trust. Nothing else can give you an answer. Despite every appearance to the contrary at times, in the end, love does triumph over hatred. Peace does triumph over chaos. Forgiveness does triumph over bitterness. Hope does triumph over cynicism. Fidelity does triumph over despair. Virtue does triumph over sin. Conscience does triumph over callousness. Life triumphs over death, and good always triumphs over evil. Our faith begins at the very point where it seems it should end, in God’s seeming silence in the face of evil. And what does this ask of us? We must trust in the truth of the resurrection. Those who live in trust will find love. God’s silence can be trusted, even when we die inside of it. We must remain faithful in love, forgiveness, and conscience despite everything suggesting they are naive. They will bring us to what is deepest inside of life. Ultimately, God vindicates virtue. God vindicates love. God vindicates conscience. God vindicates forgiveness. God vindicates fidelity. Ultimately, God vindicated Jesus and will vindicate us, too, if we remain faithful.

Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that every choice in life is a renunciation. Thomas Aquinas said that, and it helps explain why we struggle so painfully to make clear choices. We want the right things, but we want other things too. Every choice is a series of renunciations: If I marry one person, I cannot marry anyone else; if I live in one place, I cannot live anywhere else; if I choose a certain career, that excludes many other careers; if I have this, then I cannot have that. The list could go on indefinitely. To choose one thing is to renounce others. That’s the nature of choice. We are fired into this world with a madness that comes from the gods and has us believe that we are destined to embrace the cosmos itself. We don’t want something, we want everything. That’s a simple way, though a good one, of saying something that Christianity has always said, namely, that in body and soul we are meant to embrace everyone and we already hunger for that. Perhaps we experience it most clearly in our sexuality, but the hunger is everywhere present in us. Our yearning is wide, our longing is infinite, our urge to embrace is promiscuous. We are infinite in yearning, but, in this life, only get to meet the finite. Life and love, beyond the abstract and beyond the grandiosity of our own daydreams, involve hard, painful renunciation. But it is precisely that very renunciation that helps us grow up and makes our lives real in a way that our daydreams don’t. In trying to explain some of the deeper secrets of life, Jesus gives us this parable: The Kingdom of God is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, when he finds a single one of great value, he goes and sells all that he owns and buys that pearl. That, the pearl of great price, the value of love and its cost, is in essence the challenge that young husband put to his wife when he told her to sort out the question: “Are you a married woman or are you something else?” For what are you willing to renounce other things? What is our own pearl of great price? Are we willing to give up everything in exchange for it? Are we willing to live with its limits? Thoreau once said: “The youth gets together materials to build a bridge to the moon or perhaps a palace or a temple…at length the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them.” So too in love and life: The child sets out make love to the whole world and the adult eventually concludes to marry a single person, in essence, to build a woodshed. But it’s only in that woodshed where life and love are real in this world.

God is ineffable because God’s energy is ineffable. What, indeed, is energy? Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that we rarely ask this question because we take energy as something so primal that it cannot be defined but only taken as a given, as self-evident. We see energy as the primal force that lies at the heart of everything that exists, animate and inanimate. Moreover, we feel energy powerfully within ourselves. We know energy and feel energy but can rarely recognize its origins, its prodigiousness, its joy, its goodness, its effervescence, and its exuberance. We rarely recognize what it tells us about God. What does it tell us? The first quality of energy is its prodigiousness. It is prodigal beyond our imagination, and this speaks something about God. What kind of creator makes billions of throwaway universes?  What kind of creator makes trillions upon trillions of species of life, millions of them never to be seen by the human eye? What kind of father or mother has billions of children? And what does the exuberance in the energy of young children say about our creator? What does their playfulness suggest about what must also lie inside of sacred energy? What does the energy of a young puppy tell us about what’s sacred? What do laughter, wit, and irony tell us about God? No doubt the energy we see around us and feel irrepressibly within us tells us that, underneath, before and below everything else, there flows a sacred force, both physical and spiritual, which is at its root, joyous, happy, playful, exuberant, effervescent, and deeply personal and loving.  That energy is God. That energy speaks of God, and that energy tells us why God made us and what kind of permissions God is giving us for living out our lives. Moreover, that energy, at its sacred root, is not just creative, intelligent, personal, and loving, it’s also joyous, colorful, witty, playful, humorous, erotic, and exuberant at it very core. To feel it is an invitation to gratitude. The challenge of our lives is to live inside that energy in a way that honors it and its origins. That means keeping our shoes off before the burning bush as we respect its sacredness, even as we take from it permission to be more robust, free, joyous, humorous, and playful – and especially more grateful.

The Lazarus story begs a lot of questions. Lazarus and his sisters, Martha and Mary, were very close friends of Jesus. Martha and Mary sent word to Jesus that “the man you love is ill.” That man was Lazarus. So their request came with an implied reaction that Jesus should come and heal him. Hence, we are understandably taken aback by Jesus’ seeming lack of response to Lazarus’ illness and the request to come and heal him. As Jesus approaches the village where Lazarus has died, he is met by Martha and then, later, by Mary. Each, in turn, asks him the question: “Why?”  Why, since you loved this man, did you not come to save him from death? Jesus doesn’t offer any theoretical apologia in response. Instead, he asks where they have laid the body, lets them take him there, sees the burial site, weeps in sorrow, and then raises his dead friend back to life.  So why did he let him die in the first place? Why didn’t Jesus rush down to save Lazarus since he loved him? The answer to that question teaches a very important lesson about Jesus, God, and faith, namely, that God is not a God who ordinarily rescues us but is rather a God who redeems us. God doesn’t ordinarily intervene to save us from humiliation, pain, and death; rather, he redeems humiliation, pain, and death after the fact. This is one of the key revelations inside the resurrection: We have a redeeming, not a rescuing, God. Jesus never promised us rescue, exemptions, immunity from cancer, or escape from death. He promised rather that, in the end, there will be redemption, vindication, immunity from suffering, and eternal life. But that’s in the end; meantime, in the early and intermediate chapters of our lives, there will be the same kinds of humiliation, pain, and death that everyone else suffers. The death and resurrection of Jesus reveal a redeeming, not a rescuing, God.

At the end of the day, all of us, believers and non-believers, pious and impious, share one common humanity and all end up on the same road. This has many implications. It’s no secret that today religious practice is plummeting radically everywhere in the secular world. Those who are opting out don’t all look the same, nor go by the same name. Some are atheists, explicitly denying the existence of God. Others are agnostics, open to accepting the existence of God but remaining undecided. Others self-define as nones; asked what faith they belong to they respond by saying none. There are those who define themselves as dones, done with religion and done with church. Then there are the procrastinators, persons who know that someday they will have to deal with the religious question, but, like Saint Augustine, keep saying, eventually I need to do this, but not yet! Finally, there’s that huge group who define themselves as spiritual but not religious, saying they believe in God but not in institutionalized religion. I suspect that God doesn’t much share our anxiety here, not that God sees this as perfectly healthy (humans are human!), but rather that God has a larger perspective on it, is infinitely loving, and is longsuffering in patience while tolerating our choices. Gabriel Marcel once famously stated, To say to someone ‘I love you’ is to say, ‘you will never be lost’. As Christians, we understand this in terms of our unity inside the Body of Christ. God loves everyone individually and passionately and works in ways that ensure that nobody gets lost. God is infinitely patient. We have an intended destination, and God gives us constant instructions along the way.  Religion and the church are an excellent GPS. However, they can be ignored and frequently are. But God’s response is never one of anger nor of a final impatience. Like a trusted GPS, God is forever saying ‘recalculating’ and giving us new instructions predicated on our failure to accept the previous instruction. Eventually, no matter our number of wrong turns and dead ends, God will get us home. Ultimately, God is the only game in town, in that no matter how many false roads we take and how many good roads we ignore, we all end up on the one, same, last, final road.