Working out my salvation one gloppy mess at a time

This is an article developed from one I originally wrote a couple of years ago. I'm delighted that it was recently published by Aleteia.org!

For a long time after reverting to Catholicism I would trip up over the idea of “duty”. Over and over again I’d read about discerning the will of God, and I’d consider that whatever God’s will for one’s life, it always included a sense of vocational duty.

But I had a stubborn resistance to being told what to do. In my mind I associated duty with oppression, or at least with unfortunate, toilsome obligation. Wasn’t this what the Protestants were always charging Catholics with: thinking we had to work for our salvation?

I came to realize that I had been thinking of my duty – within my vocation as a mother, for instance — as what I begrudgingly needed do in order to repay God for ....  

To read the rest of the article, please follow the link to the Aleteia website.

Why You Should Read "Why I Am Catholic (and you should be too)" by Brandon Vogt

I was given the chance to receive a complimentary copy of Brandon Vogt's new book "Why I am Catholic (and you should be too)" in exchange for an honest review.  So, thank you, Ave Maria Press for that opportunity.

Brandon Vogt has written a great summary of the basic arguments for Catholicism, and that in itself comprises an exhaustive list.  His work, while concise, covers so much ground. It truly is impressive and would stand out among other introductory apologetic works for that reason alone.   This is clearly a well-planned, and deliberately executed book.  I get the sense no detail was left to chance.  

I know Brandon has done extensive research into the 'none' phenomena and has written about and developed evangelical tools to that end previously. Brandon is an expert apologist and evangelist, no doubt.  However, the rigidity of the structure kind of got to me: Twice in the book he states something akin to wishing he had more space to elaborate.  Personally, that irks me.  "It's YOUR book!" I feel like shouting at the page, "Who's stopping you from writing what you want to write if it's that important to you?"  At points like that I feel like I can see a bit too much of the behind-the-scenes, planning and that is a bit off-putting, but really, this is the only criticism I have of this entire book.  

But, since it's so well-structured, let's look at that, because really, I think it was brilliant and was what really made this such a great book, that exceeded my expectations.  The book begins and ends with a provocative appeal to the 'nones' to seriously consider Catholicism as the last true rebellion.  Sandwiched between the introduction and conclusion, Brandon categorizes his arguments.  Each chapter is entitled with a direct and concise answer to the question "Why I Am Catholic". These chapters are organized under what he calls the three Transcendentals: truth, goodness, and beauty, and herein the book soars.  More about that in a minute.

As someone who is already Catholic, I think this book, thanks in large part to its clear and thoughtful organization, makes for a great reference book to have on hand for me to "always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope" (1 Peter 3:15).  

But this book isn't really written for Catholics. Brandon has written this book for "nones" -- those who have either never experienced religion, or who effectively rejected the religious tradition of their parents by the time they reached young adulthood.  This is the group of people who claim no religious affiliation.  This is not exactly the same as atheism or agnosticism, as many 'nones' have not necessarily ever pursued that line of thought -- rather it seems that many have either just passively arrived at adulthood with no religious conviction, or having rejected some element of their childhood faith tradition, left it and never filled that void, at least not with God.

I was baptized as a ten-day old and raised by my Catholic mom and my 'none' dad. I went to Catholic school, was quite involved in my parish, and considered Catholicism to be an important part of my identity.  However, as a sinful young person, my desire to justify my appetite for sinful behaviour led me down the road of twisting the truth, picking and choosing Church teachings, embracing subjective truth, and basically fabricating a set of beliefs that I wrongly felt suited my (stunted) self. Before long, and without noticing, the deity I worshiped was replaced by the god of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.  I no longer knew or believed in God the Creator; God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; the Word made flesh who dwelt among us.    Having married a 'none' myself, being only nominally concerned with my faith at that time, I slowly began to tire of coming up with convoluted, wishy-washy answers to my husband's questions about Catholic teaching that allowed me to have my cake and eat it too.  Finally, I rejected this god I had constructed as weak, distant, and unconcerned with life on Earth, and I embraced the 'none' label myself.  Looking back I see this as a very good thing, as I wasn't rejecting God, but an idol, and He would use that void to draw me back to Himself.  But at that time, I would have none of it and I sought to reconstruct my understanding of the world and actively undo all the silly, quaint, beliefs of my youth.

Now back to the Transcendentals.

Brandon has organized his arguments into three categories: evidence that speaks to truth; evidence that speaks to goodness; and evidence that speaks to beauty.  Each of these three transcendentals have the ability to lead us to that point where all of our natural, empirical explanations hit a wall, but with enough force, these transcendentals carry us through that wall, as though it were the back side of the Narnian wardrobe, and we find ourselves bewildered, lost in wonderment, and often falling to our knees in the sudden, staggering awareness that life and has just exploded out of the tidy, natural confines of the physical box we believed to contain the totality of the universe.  In a moment you believe there is something so much more than this paltry, earthly, physical existence.  You can sense the supernatural layer that infuses every aspect of reality, coating the world as with a blanket of love.   For the first time in your life, you have truly tasted reality and you can never go back.

This transcendence isn't analogous to anything material I can think of to use as a worthwhile example.   Suffice to say, if you aren't sure you've experienced it, you probably haven't.  

It is the Holy Spirit, God Himself, who alone is capable of converting people.  But I believe that the witnesses of the faithful, mounting piles of evidence, thoughtful reasoning, heroic demonstrations of goodness and charity, and breathtaking beauty are all tools He uses; His cooperation with His creation, to rouse and prompt the soul to conversion.

I think that what Brandon rightly intuits is that when faced with an avalanche of truth, goodness, or beauty, we will ultimately be carried on a wave through that back wardrobe wall.  For myself, it was the truth that first got me. One evening I started googling for evidence to either support or reject a claim that a Christian friend had presented me with.  By the end of that night, the truth I found had surmounted to slay all my resistance in a single moment. In a heartbeat I knew. God was real. More real to me than my own hand.  He was the Creator of all things. And He was the Trinitarian God of the Bible.   As Brandon says in his book, citing Socrates, just because something is true, doesn't make it comfortable, but we need to follow it wherever it leads, despite the discomfort or unpopularity. In that instant I knew I was a lost sinner, I knew I needed to repent, and I knew I needed to cling to God.  
Sure, I had a lot to learn and a long way to go, but something had changed, my path was set, there could be no turning back.
  
For others, I know that it has been goodness or beauty that caused them to recognize God and upend their lives for love of Him.  In Les Misérables, it is an incredible encounter with a merciful priest that radically transformed the escaped, hardened convict Jean Valjean into a heroic, model of charity.  In a word, he was confronted and overwhelmed by goodness.  For Dorothy Day, I would say it was beauty that caught her: in her memoir The Long Loneliness, Day writes of the indescribable gratitude for her newborn daughter and the longing to give thanks, and the realization that there must be something greater, beyond the simply natural world, to whom she owes this thanks.  The beauty of new life turned her mind to thoughts beyond this plain.  

For most armchair theologian-Catholics, many of the arguments that Brandon presents will be familiar ones, but he still manages to give them an air of freshness and he is always very clear.  But some of the arguments were ones I don't remember explicitly coming across previously and I was truly impressed. His chapters, "Because it Offers Forgiveness" and "Because of Heroic Charity" both made my heart surge with love.  "Because it Lifts us Up" is a remarkable discussion of the teleology of life in Christ that you don't often encounter in the Western Church.  Finally, "Because We Need Religion" is a convincing response to the spiritual-but-not-religious mantra of the current age.

Brandon has commendably provided ample materials for the avalanche. But will the 'nones' respond to this book? 

Here is the really exciting part that all you Catholics reading this, thinking about your lost loved ones really want to hear:  is there any chance this book will actually touch the heart and mind of your beloved unbeliever?  This is where I am thrilled to offer up the following test case: my husband.  My husband was never baptized, never raised in any kind of faith tradition.  Although we've known each other for over nineteen years, God, Christianity in general, and Catholicism in particular are still foreign and weird to him.  And this is a guy who goes to Mass every Sunday for love of his family.  Still, to him, Mass might as well be a standing date with any club. To this day, he has always claimed unbelief.

So, knowing I had to write this review I asked if he would at least read the introduction to give me his thoughts. As I said above, the introduction really provokes the 'none' to stick with the rest of the book.  My husband is not a man who reads for fun.  But he obliged me.  And here is what he said of the introduction:
"It's intriguing. I definitely felt compelled to read more. It's better than any of the other books like this that you've given me. It's smarter."  That was promising!
So today he made some time to read the first chapter: "Because God Exists".   His thoughts:
"I'm really impressed with the Kalam argument; I had never heard that."
"Hey," I interjected, my pride bruised, "I've said that to you before and all those other books did too!"
"Well, how it's written is really clear and makes a lot of sense."

He came back to me a bit later and said, "That book! It's really good. It's really making me think. It's poking holes in all my arguments."  And he's only on the first chapter!

I can't give a better testimony to the quality of the book than that!

What's in a word: comfort edition

Four Weeks in the Mud

Friends, I have set myself the goal of publishing something -- anything -- daily for the next four weeks.  I need to not just think about writing more, but actually sitting down and doing it. I need to make it a routine if I want to get anywhere with this, so please, bear with me! 

The overarching goal of the blog is to praise God for His ever-present care and love for us, and to point out a few of the gifts He has given me that I have delighted to stumble upon in my ordinary life.  I am planning to rotate through some sub-themes to give me something to write about each day. 

One of these themes will be entymology, or the study of word origins and they way their meanings have changed over time.   Language, and our capacity for it, is an incredible, intimate gift from our God, who spoke the universe into being and is the Word made flesh.  

 As always, I love feedback -- even just knowing that someone is reading, so please leave me a comment or send me an email.


Word of the week: comfort

I love words!  I love understanding the meanings of the roots of words and seeing them pop up in all kinds of unexpected places across languages.

I especially love "faux amis" as they are called in French, or false cognates. This refers to words that seem very similar in two languages, but that are not actually equivalent to each other.  There are three categories of faux amis: the first refers to words that appear to have similar roots, but actually don't; the second category is words that do have a shared root but have different meanings in the two modern languages; the third category is words that have a shared root and an overlapping but not identical meaning in the two languages.  

The reason I love them is that they beckon you to go digging into the root words. Often times you can track back to see that even if the words seem wildly divergent today they do have a similar source and this often adds nuance, layers of meaning, and power to the everyday, ho-hum words we use.  These often help us to understand the culture of the language speakers. And since I'm all about looking out for the treasures hidden in ordinary life crossed with my love for communication, uncovering word treasures is especially delightful.

Let's talk about comfort.

I asked my daughter what she thinks of when she hears that word.  She gave two answers:
1) Sitting on the couch, by the fireplace, petting my cat
2) Hot chocolate and warm beds.

In modern-day North America I think we tend to equate comfort, and its related adjective 'comfortable', with coziness, warmth, security, satiety, safety, and being protected from the environmental extremes; the "creature comforts".   There's a nuance of laziness in this understanding of comfort.

When we think of 'comfort' as a verb, we think in terms of consoling or cheering up someone who is suffering or sad.  Perhaps that is to return the person to a state of comfort -- as described above -- or maybe it's to encourage them to carry on despite their discomfort (ah, that word again).

But when we look at the Latin meaning of the word, we discover that comfort comes from 'confortare' having the roots 'com' (which is a prefix indicating intensity) + 'fortis' which means 'strong'.  It literally means to strengthen much.   A far cry from lounging on the couch!

What does this tell us about ourselves and who we are called to be?  I think it says we are called, in our nature, to be strong, that this should be our neutral state.  Certainly, christianity isn't for wimps!  Ask the martyrs, ask the persecuted Church today.  We, the Church militant are always in battle against sin and the devil.   Even though it is in our weakness that God makes us strong and that we can only do all things through Christ who strengthens us, we are definitely called to strength.  And so we are called to strengthen, to comfort one another, for this battle for good: not so we feel good and have an easy life -- what our culture would tell us is our goal.  As Saint John Paul the Great wrote: "The ways of the Lord are not easy, but we were not created for an easy life, but for great things, for goodness."

Interestingly, and something I hope to write about more at a later date is that Latin is the language of the Roman Empire -- the language of conquering soldiers and cool, calculating, strategizing emporers, but it became the language of the Church.  I think it's beautiful how Christianity subverted this language of war into the language of love.

Be strong!

comfort (n.)

c. 1200, "feeling of relief" (as still in to take comfort in something); also "source of alleviation or relief;" from Old French confort (see comfort (v.)). Replaced Old English frofor. Comforts (as opposed to necessities and luxuries) is from 1650s.

comfort (v.)

late 13c., conforten "to cheer up, console," from Old French conforter "to comfort, to solace; to help, strengthen," from Late Latin confortare "to strengthen much" (used in Vulgate), from Latin com-, intensive prefix (see com-), + fortis "strong" (see fort). Change of -n- to -m- began in English 14c. Related: Comforted; comforting.

Sources: http://www.etymonline.com/word/comfort
https://www.frenchasyoulikeit.com/speak-better-french-learn-faux-amis/
https://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2005/april/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20050425_german-pilgrims.html

Riverside

We took our new puppy for a walk down to the river this morning.  We are all exhausted from this little fellow who wakes up in the middle of the night and takes forever to do his business outside but does it only too quickly on the kitchen floor.  The kids are adjusting to homeschooling as am I. Spending so much time with each other has its ups and downs.  Taking an extended walk daily has become a sanity saver for all of us; a pick-me-up to keep us going for the rest of the day.

We make the trek to our favourite spot on the river, walking past older cottage-like homes on sleepy tree-lined streets.  I always feel like I've stepped back in time when I walk through this neighbourhood. It's wonderful.   As we walk we recite the geography songs and Scripture verses we are trying to memorize and we grumble through the Rosary. Lord, forgive us!

Our pilgrimage ends daily at the old boat launch.  The puppy sniffs about in the tall, reedy grasses and the kids climb along the rocks that act as a breaker along the shore. They scour the pebbly beach for good skipping stones and set to work on their water-skimming skills.

This morning as I stood at the water's edge, little waves lapping up gently at my feet, I took in the scene: four kids filled with the simple joy that only comes with forgetting yourself in nature, and a curious little puppy discovering a strange new world and my heart surged with love and hope for them and my mind turned to prayer.

Lord, make my kids resilient. Give me the grace to be resilient myself; to preserve in bringing up and shaping these children whom You've entrusted to me the way You desire.  Don't let them be crippled by a fear of failure like I've always been.  Give them the grace to be courageous, to fearlessly follow You wherever You lead them, to place all their trust in Your goodness.

Lord, let them feel cherished. Let their father and I fill them with the experiential knowledge of how precious they are in
Your sight -- as they are in ours.  Let them be quick to forget our failings and let them be slow to forget our love for them.  Let them build their identities on the rock which is Your steadfast love. Therein lies the secret to resilience, perseverance, hope. Let this perfect love from You brim up in them and overflow into the lives of their siblings.

Lord, make their hearts' greatest desire be to become saints. Let them know there is no greater joy than to know You and love You and abide with You forever.

Lord, cover the gaps in what I can give them, perfect my broken offering born of weakness. Thank you for the grace of being their mother, their guardian, Your vicar.  Thank you, Lord, for the precious gift of faith that You have bestowed on us.    For eyes to see that Your hand is upon us and that You are always near us in our messy, imperfect lives.

I led the troops back home with a wet puppy, relaxed shoulders, and the resolve to keep on with our day.    Grateful, Father, for this little glimpse of how You truly do make all things work together for the good of those who love you, and confident in the hope that is life in You.

Cosmic catapults

It's Saturday night.  I'm sitting in my van, in the parking lot, about to go into the grocery store. It's 8pm. I'd hoped to go earlier in the day but my allergies are terrible and the allergy pills that gave me great relief from the itching and wheezing knocked me out for several hours midday.

I've been feeling irritable, anxious, out-of-sorts today. The kids are so busy and bickering with one another. Thoughts of leaving school in less than a month fill me with sadness though not regret. I know this is right but I know it's going to be a hard adjustment and I fear the impending loneliness and separation from my community. 

I feel I've been called to a time of hidden-ness, of deliberately stepping away from the busy-ness of the outside world and to focus my efforts and my love and my work on my family.  I know this means days could easily pass without me seeing a single person who doesn't share my last name.  

Notice me! See me!  Don't we all want to know we matter to someone? That someone out there cherishes me - you - us?  That your life matters? That you are known, are loved, are going to be remembered. We want to be eternal.  I think we have that hunger because that's what we were made for. He made us to love us and for us to love Him and enjoy Him and abide in Him forever. We are made for connection; designed for intimately deep heart-stretching relationship.  We are made by Love to be love to one another.  

My biggest struggle with temptation always revolves around my desire for affection, connection, encouragement, depth. Those are good things. 

But it's the temptation to take short cuts that is the problem: to want to spend my time only with people who like me and who see the world as I see it;  not wanting to put in the time to build up and heal the broken, difficult relationships that I am called to attend to.  The temptation to wallow in feeling frustrated and sorry for myself when those desires just are not met. That sense of entitlement to such affection, interest, appreciation. I want quick and easy answers to my deepest fear of being forgotten, left behind, unwanted.

It's the selfishness of seeking to receive that which I ought to be solely concerned with giving instead. 'Cause when you can focus on that, then you are free, then you have love.  Instead,   I look for short cuts, for self-selected metrics to measure my worth and keep my insecurities at bay.  The plan sounds brilliant but it only fuels obsession and anxiety...because I'm looking in the wrong direction.
  
I know I need to lay this down, I know this comes up in my heart because my greatest love, my Lord, wants to show me His way, to true intimacy with Him, the one I was made for.  That constant seeking of approval, of acknowledgment, of recognition and praise is really my heart crying out for Him.

Our hearts are restless until they rest in Him... So I interpret restlessness as a sign that I'm not actually resting in Him.  It's always His way of reminding me that I'm depending on myself, on my pride, on my vanity for my worth.  That I'm looking outside of Him to be filled with something only He can give.  Looking to save myself.
  
So I will lay it down, cross my arms over my head and step back, force myself to trust in His wisdom and to relent. 

And as I step back I look up to you; Lord, I am unworthy to that you should enter under my roof...and yet you still desire to enter, into the midst of my unworthiness.   It is our emptiness, our nothingness that makes room for Him to enter,  to dwell, I in Him and Christ in me.  He promises us that by the world's accounting we will be forgotten, derided, over-looked, neglected, humiliated, looked-down upon.  We will lose everything and everyone that matters to us.  We will be crushed and reduced to abject nothingness.  Because it happened to Him first.

Why do I find solace in this thought? Why does the promise of rejection - that which I dread - fill me with joy? I think it's because I know-with a degree of certitude that is rare for me-that He was there in my lowest lows, in my heart-aching-broken-down-misery.  That when the air was sucked out of the room I found a flame still flickering in the darkness of the room despite the lack of oxygen. There He was unquenchable. That is when I knew Him. That is when I knew what Love was.  

And how do I keep managing to forget THAT but not forget myself?  

Lord, wrench me from this black-hole of self-preservation and jolt my heart and catapult it back onto loving others.

Duty is gift

I wrote this post a couple years ago and just looked it up as I put together my talk for the next session in our Lenten Series.  This "duty is gift" idea has really transformed how I understand vocation and the sacrament of the present moment. It has greatly increased my ability to discover joy in ordinary time. I hope it will be a blessing!

***

"Yet, O Lord, you are our Father;
we are the clay, and you are our potter;
we are the work of your hand."  Isaiah 64:8

I have been tripping up over the idea of "duty". This stubborn resistance to being told what to do. I have this association with oppression (okay, that's extreme) or unfortunate, toilsome obligation.  Mainly I suddenly recognized that I have been thinking of the execution of duty as something that I must begrudgingly do to repay God for all His providential goodness or in hopes of meriting a future reward. And though I don't like a lot of the things I am supposed to do, mostly because I don't feel very adept at doing them, I do them and hopefully can motivate myself enough with the thought of who will be benefited and how (ho-hum) it will please God, so boo-hoo, sigh and get on with it. 

It's like, I strongly want to love God with all I've got, I want to love others 'til my heart bursts and doing my duties is some burden I must carry out begrudgingly to fulfill those two commandments.

Except I'm totally wrong.

1) I am nothing. I have nothing but the gifts that God gives me out of love for me. From the air I breathe, the heart that pumps blood through my arteries, for those arteries themselves, to the family in my care, the roof over my head, the rivers and mountains that fill my scenery. Existence itself, awareness itself, nothing apart from Him

2) I can do nothing in my own power. I can not fulfil any of these duties by my own ability. If I am "good" at something, it is because He has given me this talent. If I am "bad" at something, well, I guess He's lovingly withholding that ability from me right now. Maybe He's giving me the gift of an opportunity to patiently develop some perseverance in learning a new skill or fumbling through. Lovingly calling me to accept the challenge of improvement. Maybe He's teaching me humility in reminding me of my nothingness. Doesn't matter why. I just trust that He is all and I am naught.

3)  God is love. If we are chosen to follow Him it is only that He can use us to co-labour with His plan of love for others.

4) That we are chosen is a gift.  Thus, that we are invited to co-labour is a gift. 

Thus, every ordinary duty  from flossing my kids' teeth, to scrubbing the toilet, to making dinner, to picking up dirty tissues for the zillionth time that day is  actually the gift of God giving me the freedom to choose to co-labour with Him in giving of myself in that little task. Every word of encouragement of act of compassion or duty I perform is not counted as some good I've done, merited to me, but yet another gift from God, merited to His glory: the grace to participate in His labour of love. My good-deeds magnify Him, not me.

So wait, do good works then and obedience have a role in salvation?

Of course.

Because isn't salvation to abide with Him? To be free to worship Him without fear, holy and righteous in His sight? To be in His presence, eternally loving and praising Him?  And  because I'm guessing salvation is not linear temporally - Heaven after death, but beyond space and time, then every YES to some ordinary duty is His gift to us to enter into His will. Every duty I freely assent to co-labour in is an immersion in his merciful love for me, salvation.

So, with that I will joyfully, and with great thanksgiving embrace my housework, my kids' squabbles, and all the other beautiful opportunities to love Him and lose myself. 

"It is our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere, to give Him thanks."

Reflection on the Transfiguration

For the next four Sundays I will be leading an adult catechesis series in my Parish.  Each week we'll be reflecting on the previous Sunday's Gospel and our pastor's excellent homilies.  I've decided to share these here so that others may follow along. If you're interested I can send you a copy of the homily, just leave me a comment or email me.-->

 Here is my reflection for last week's Gospel account of the Transfiguration.  May it be a blessing.

***

Let us pray.

Father, we thank You for this day which You have made and have given us.  Thank You for this and every opportunity we have to gather together here to praise Christ in whom we place our hope and our fidelity.  We ask You to bless each one of us here with your abundant grace that we may grow in wisdom and knowledge from our time here and increase in faith, hope, and charity.  Open our hearts and our minds to receive what is   Bless our time here together this morning that in the spirit of this Lenten season we will be drawn ever nearer to You, O Lord. 

Jesus, I trust in You.

Our Father, who art in Heaven, Hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.  Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.  And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil, Amen.

This is the journey.

We were created by God to be beloved sons and daughters; to enjoy Him and abide with Him; to love, adore, and glorify Him forever.  To abide in Him, to trust Him completely, to walk with Him, to know Him and to know His presence.

But sin, along with disobedience, doubt, and distrust of God entered the world as did death.  We became alienated from our Creator, our Father, our God.

But God came to us, the Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us!  He came in the person of Jesus to be one of us.  He loved us so much and He really wanted us to know who He was so we would believe in Him, believe in His promises, that we would trust in Him, and could have eternal life.

Jesus showed us the Father.

Jesus taught us to obey Him.

Jesus, by His passion and crucifixion, conquered the stranglehold that sin and death held over us.  Christ is indeed victorious.

But how can we say that Christ has triumphed over sin, suffering, and death when it’s obviously still very much a part of this world?

We are stuck in the reality that we are made for eternity; for happiness and union with our God, but we are living in a world that is broken; full of sin, pain, suffering and death.  As Christians we do our best to avoid sin and we repent and seek forgiveness when we do, we certainly try to make this world a better, more loving place, we strive to reduce the pain and suffering we see in others.  Yet, we ourselves still experience pain, suffering, and death.  Jesus himself experienced the ultimate in pain, suffering, and death, furthermore, Jesus promises us that if we are to follow him we will be required to pick up our crosses and embrace suffering and death.  In the first letter to the Corinthians it says that Christ crucified is folly to the Greek and a stumbling block to the Jews.   Before he became Pope, Benedict XVI reiterated that this is because there can be no love without suffering.

“Anyone who really wanted to get rid of suffering would have to get rid of love before anything else, because there can be no love without suffering, because it always demands an element of self-sacrifice, because, given temperamental differences and the drama of situations, it will always bring with it renunciation and pain….When we know that the way of love–this exodus, this going out of oneself–is the true way by which man becomes human, then we also understand that suffering is the process through which we mature. Anyone who has inwardly accepted suffering becomes more mature and more understanding of others, becomes more human. Anyone who has consistently avoided suffering does not understand other people; he becomes hard and selfish.”

(From: “God and the World: A conversation with Peter Seewald” 2002)

What really stands out to me about the Transfiguration is the juxtaposition between our finite, natural world and the infinite, supernatural reality that overlays, informs, and completes it.   I think it’s important to point out that there are two common beliefs about the supernatural out there in the wider world that we need to avoid:  one belief is that there is no such thing as the supernatural.  That if you can’t measure or test something empirically then it isn’t real.  The second is the gnostic belief that there is a spiritual or supernatural reality which is in stark contrast to the physical world. This belief sees everything physical – the body, the world etc. as evil and to be rejected while the soul, the spiritual is good.   Christianity of course rejects the first belief but it also rejects the second.  Christianity firmly holds that everything God created was good.  Sin has disfigured creation, we say we are broken people, that the world is broken.  But Christianity is not about liberating our souls from wretched bodies and leaving this world behind. No! Christ’s coming into the world marks the beginning of a new creation, in which everything is being and will be redeemed. Yes, there will be a new heaven, but there will also be a new earth. We believe in the resurrection of the Body and the life everlasting. 

As I was saying: What really stands out to me about the Transfiguration is the juxtaposition between our finite, natural world and the infinite, supernatural reality that overlays, informs and completes it.  At the transfiguration, the supernatural reality of Jesus, His Glory, was physically manifest, it peeked through the veil into our world.  Peter, James, and John saw what they saw with human eyes. It powerfully reminds us that humans are uniquely both physical and spiritual creatures!   It reminds us that God is not only the Creator of both our mortal bodies and our eternal souls, but also that He ministers to our whole person. The new creation is breaking into the old and we are in it and we are part of it and as Christians we are co-labourers in this transformation; in this world but not of it.

God sent His only Son into the world at a particular time and in a particular land, but He sent Him for people of every time and every land.  God physically revealed Himself by appearing in flesh at a particular time and place in history, and God has continued to reveal Himself ever since.

The man of Jesus, who lived and died in Palestine two thousand years ago, saved his contemporaries from sin and death through His Passion and His death on the Cross, but the Bible also recounts that during His public ministry He forgave sins, He raised the dead.  But Christ Jesus lives for all time (He was in the beginning with the Father and the Holy Spirit and He will be in the end. He is the alpha and the omega) and He has triumphed over sin and death for people of all time. 

It is into this reality of an infinite, perfect, all-loving God moving in a finite, imperfect, often unloving world that we must understand our hope. Christ is Victor, now and forever.

Discussion Questions 

1.   Give an example of a time someone’s patient suffering, self-sacrifice made love abound.  Did this experience of another’s love draw you closer to an awareness of God’s love for you?

2.   When in your life has God caused goodness, love, and holiness to emerge from your own struggles, suffering and pain?

3.   Father Peter’s homily reminds us that in order to keep our hope in times of difficulty we need to pray, partake in the Sacraments, and recollect upon the graces that we have received in our lives.  These three practices nurture our relationship with our Father and remind us that God is very much present and active in our lives and that we are his beloved children.  For the encouragement of the others in your group, testify how you have grown closer to God through these practices.   

4.   According to the Bible, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul, and with all your strength; you shall love your neighbour as yourself.”   We can’t do anything without God, so in order for us to fulfill that commandment, He gives us every necessary grace.  That means He ministers and gives graces to our hearts, our minds, our souls, and our strength -or our physical bodies, that is to our whole humanity.  This is especially true of the Sacraments.  Take an inventory of the Sacraments and how they minister to the various aspects of our humanity.