Feast of the Transfiguration: A Reflection On The Holy Mass

Yes, let us fly to Mass and adore our God; let us be transfigured by the body and blood of Christ

In [Christ], God's light henceforth illumines definitively human life and the course of history: 'I am the light of the world,' he says in the Gospel, 'he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life'" (Pope Benedict XVI) On this Feast we are invited into the light.

DENVER, Co (Catholic Online) -- Jesus "took Peter, John, and James and went up the mountain to pray. While he was praying his face changed in appearance and his clothing became dazzling white. And behold, two men were conversing with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his exodus that he was going to accomplish in Jerusalem. Peter and his companions had been overcome by sleep, but becoming fully awake, they saw his glory and the two men standing with him. As they were about to part from him, Peter said to Jesus, 'Master, it is good that we are here; . . . '" (Lk 9:28-33).

How we long to be with Christ and, along with St. Peter, exclaim, "Master, it is good that we are here!" Yet this ardent longing which God has placed in the depths of our hearts can often be hampered by our contemporary culture's various deleterious influences. Consider a few effects of living in the twenty-first century West: we live in an age replete with technological "noise" and constant demands; a place where the drive for efficiency and productivity frequently undermine the true meaning and value of human labor; a culture in which there is a nearly constant pressure to discard the sacred with indifference, and follow a path which leads into parched and infertile lands.

It is therefore easy to be affected in a negative way, and become, for example, so immersed in the various daily activities and demands of life that we fail to notice the sacred Light which calls us. As a result, we might find ourselves bent by the weight of modern-day disorders, gazing downward rather than heavenward, oblivious to the Son who has risen in glorious light, transfiguring what was once a dark sky into brilliance beyond words.

Perhaps the most tragic example of unnoticed beauty is the failure to recognize the Mass for what it is. It is quite normal for us to look around at nature and notice beauty, whether it be wintery sunlit slopes or the blue-grey expanse of the sea, but there is a beauty far surpassing all these things which, beyond any strictly material creation, is sometimes slighted as if it were just one mundane event among others. But the Mass is not simply some thing, rather it is a supreme event of incomparable sacredness, one in which our Lord beckons us toward a unitive communion with himself, an intimate "joining" in which we are not only bathed in the light of his Transfiguration, as were Peter, James and John, but transformed through receiving his most precious body and blood.

It was our Lord himself who "eagerly desired to eat" the Passover with his apostles on that Holy Thursday before he suffered. (see Lk 22:15). And it was during this Passover meal that an event of profound magnificence occurred: our Savior took the bread into his hands and broke it, saying "This is my body, which will be given for you; do this in memory of me" (Lk 22:19). It was a moment which dwarfed the cosmos; an event of inconceivable love revealed in the simplicity of a shared meal; a sacred evening in which Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word, instituted the Holy Mass and the Eucharist.

It was God our Savior who said, "do this in memory of me." Twenty centuries ago our Lord was thinking of us, all of us, eagerly desiring that we come before the sacrificial altars placed in the thousands of Catholic churches around the world, calling us to receive something of unmatched greatness: his own body, blood, soul and divinity! Let us be as eager as was Christ, let us too thirst to join in Holy Communion with him at Mass in receiving Eucharist.

We Are Transfigured By The Most Holy Sacrifice Of The Mass

During his Angelus address on August 6, 2006, Pope Benedict XVI reminded us that "it is Christ who constitutes the full manifestation of God's light. His Resurrection defeated the power of the darkness of evil forever. With the Risen Christ, truth and love triumph over deceit and sin. In him, God's light henceforth illumines definitively human life and the course of history: 'I am the light of the world,' he says in the Gospel, 'he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life'" (see also Jn 8:12).

In his Bread of Life Discourse, our Lord admonishes us not to "work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you" (Jn 6:27). Christ desires that we seek spiritually proper food, that we may be transfigured in him and through him, that we may possess within us the Light of the world, and the "full manifestation of God's light." So important is receiving Christ in Eucharist at Mass that our Lord proclaimed, "Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you" (Jn 6:53).

In his 2003 message for World Mission Sunday, Pope John Paul II observed that on contemplating the Transfiguration, the "baptized person experiences the joy that awaits him." And what joy we experience, too, as we participate in the Holy Mass, as the sacrifice of the cross is perpetuated in an unbloody manner and offered to the Father, and in which we receive Christ himself under the signs of consecrated bread and wine, nourishing us with his body and blood.

It is at Mass that we receive the Living Water which quenches our thirst for eternity; it is at the Holy Sacrifice that we eat of the bread of heaven from paradise, and in which we are drawn through God's light into the totality of what it means to be truly human. Thus we can proclaim that in the existential reality of the Mass we are taken beyond what is strictly natural to man, and granted a foretaste of the heights of heaven, as we actively participate -- in fact immerse ourselves -- in the highest form of Christian prayer. In this way we are indeed transfigured with the light of Christ, though it is hidden within us, that we may one day be fully enveloped in the joy of the face to face vision of God.

It is through a love for the Mass that the soul is suffused with gratitude, and thus echoes the words of the Psalmist: "My soul yearns and pines for the courts of the LORD. My heart and flesh cry out for the living God. As the sparrow finds a home and the swallow a nest to settle her young, my home is by your altars, LORD of hosts, my king and my God!" (Ps 84:3-4).

During his sermon on the Transfiguration of the Lord, bishop Anastasius of Sinai reminds us that "Jesus goes before us to show us the way, both up the mountain and into heaven, and -- I speak boldly -- it is for us now to follow him with all speed, . . .

"Let us run with confidence and joy to enter into the cloud like Moses and Elijah, or like James and John. Let us be caught up like Peter to behold the divine vision and to be transfigured by that glorious transfiguration. Let us retire from the world, stand aloof from the earth, rise above the body, detach ourselves from creatures and turn to the Creator, to whom Peter in ecstasy exclaimed: 'Lord, it is good for us to be here.'"

Pope Paul VI once said in a homily that Christ "is necessary, and we cannot do without him; he is our fortune, joy and happiness, our promise and hope; our way, our truth and our life" (Insegnamenti, III [1965], 1192).

Yes, let us fly to Mass and adore our God; let us be transfigured by the body and blood of Christ; let us taste of heaven and immerse ourselves in Christ's light; let us bathe in the Love that first loved us. Let us ascend upon the mountain, and exclaim along with St. Peter, "Lord, it is good for us to be here!"

-----

F. K. Bartels is a Catholic writer who knows his Catholic faith is one of the greatest gifts a man could ever have. He is managing editor of cathlicpathways.com, and a contributing writer for Catholic Online.

---

'Help Give every Student and Teacher FREE resources for a world-class Moral Catholic Education'

Copyright 2021 - Distributed by Catholic Online