A TASTE OF GLORY

A SERMON FOR THE FEAST OF THE TRANSFIGURATION

A couple of days ago we celebrated the feast of the great St. Dominic.  One of the most important events in the life of this saint was his vision of the Mother of God, the Blessed Virgin Mary, who presented him with her most holy Rosary.  We’re all familiar with the Rosary, its division into Joyful, Sorrowful and Glorious, each with its own five mysteries that together tell the story of our Redemption from the Annunciation to the Virgin Mary of the Incarnation of the Son of God to the Coronation in heaven of that same Blessed Virgin by that same Son of God. 

As Catholics, we love the Rosary, and not just because it reminds us of the historical events surrounding our Redemption from the sin of Adam and from our own sins.  We love the Rosary because it makes sense of the joys and sorrows in our own lives, by the promise of the glory we might expect in the life to come.

However, there’s one thing about the Rosary that we all have a hard time with, especially in our own lives, and that’s the application of the Sorrowful Mysteries to ourselves.  Sure, we’re quite good at handling the joyful moments in our lives, but when it comes to the sorrowful, it’s a different story, isn’t it?  Suffering is not something that we take pleasure in, not if we’re psychologically normal.  Even the little crosses that come our way are met with resistance and an outburst of complaints and whining.  We try to have an aspirin for every headache, a cure for every ailment, a distraction for every worry.  Opportunities for penance are so very frequent, always knocking at our door.  And yet we always hesitate to open that door, and very rarely let the opportunity come walking through it.

The words of our Lord, however, ring in our guilty ears: “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.”  What does it take for us to embrace our penances, to take up our cross and follow our Lord, if necessary to the heights of Calvary itself?  It seems, unfortunately, that we have to have some kind of incentive.  That incentive should be the love of God.  But it’s a pity that the degree of our unselfish love and willingness to suffer for our Creator and Redeemer is so often too weak and lukewarm to inspire us enough to do so.  That is truly a shame, and should serve as a constant rebuke to us.

Unfortunately, it seems that for us to suffer willingly for God, we need an incentive that provides us with a reward for ourselves.  Again, this is a pity, but it’s a part of our weakened human nature since the fall of Adam.  We are self-centered at heart, and in order for us to do something for someone, especially if it’s a true sacrifice, isn’t it the case that so often we look for what we can get out of it for ourselves?  We’re apt to view a certain amount of suffering as “part of the deal,” something we have to put up with for the sake of some temporal joy.  We might study hard for an exam, for example, but it’s so that we can improve our career opportunities.  If we work hard all week, it’s so that we can come home with a paycheck at the weekend.  But what kind of incentive do we need to embrace real suffering, to suffer heroically, even to suffer torture and give up our lives as martyrs for God if necessary?

Fortunately for us, even though God demands of us our love and sacrifice, he understands our fallen human nature, and provides us with the much-needed incentive to help us take up our cross.  By including the Glorious Mysteries in the Rosary, with their promise of the glory to come, he gives us that everlasting incentive to endure whatever we must to achieve our destiny of celestial glory.

But think about the poor apostles.  They had no rosary, no glorious mysteries, no knowledge of the future Resurrection or Ascension or Descent of the Holy Ghost and the rest.  And they were about to encounter the greatest cross ever taken up by man, THE Cross, the holy Cross of Calvary itself, on which the Son of God would be nailed and die a shameful death.  And so, our blessed Lord, in his infinite wisdom and love for his children, gave them a little taste of Glory to prepare them.  For this one time only since God walked with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, he would allow his three chief apostles, Peter, James and John, to witness with their physical senses the majesty and divinity of God.

Here was our Lord Jesus Christ, appearing before them now in all his divine glory, providing them with physical proof of his divinity as a fortification for the great test of faith they would endure at his Passion and Death.  It was also the foretaste of their own glory in heaven, where they would dwell forever in the beatific vision of God.  And for us today, it’s the reminder of our own weak love of God, that requires such proof, that needs such strengthening so that we can endure the comparatively minor sorrows of our own lives.  As we experience the awe the apostles must have felt that day, let us also feel sadness that our poor fragile human nature needs to be fortified with such miracles.  Let us resolve to work harder at strengthening our love for God instead, so that, when the time of our suffering comes, we might be more willing to endure it, simply out of that love for God, and not because we hope for a reward.

The Glorious Mysteries of our Lady’s Rosary are there to help us, certainly.  Perhaps for this reason, we say them more often than the Joyful and Sorrowful Mysteries, three times a week instead of only twice.  But let us benefit by them and by today’s prophetic vision of the apostles, by using them not as a crutch, but as another reminder of God’s love for us.  Let us remind ourselves of the great love of God for the children of his creation, in that he has prepared for us such glories, by experiencing himself the slings and arrows, the joys and sorrows, of human existence in this vale of tears.

Finally, you’ll notice that our Blessed Lady was not invited to witness the vision of our Lord’s Transfiguration.  It should not shock us that she should not be present at this glorious event in her Son’s life.  The fact is, she didn’t need to be there.  She alone had the faith, the hope and the love sufficient for her to endure the greatest of all human suffering at the foot of the Cross.  She alone was in no need of miracles to bolster up her willingness to suffer for God.  She alone was full of grace.  By the fullness of faith she already knew her Son to be God.  And by the fullness of love, she embraced any opportunity she had to render back to God the suffering she knew he was to endure for mankind

Let’s pray to her today therefore, that she might increase our own love of God, and that we might lovingly embrace whatever suffering and sorrow comes our way, “not for the sake of winning heaven, nor of escaping hell; not from the hope of gaining aught, not seeking a reward; but as thyself hast lovèd me, O ever-loving Lord.”