REFLECTION

THE TRANSFIGURATION OF JESUS

GENESIS 22:1-2, 9A, 10-13, 15-18. ROMAN 8:31B-34 MARK 9:2-10

In the gospel narratives, the transfiguration of Jesus is a prelude to the resurrection to come. After the three disciples had witnessed his transfiguration Jesus told them not to say anything about what they had seen. Mark ends the passage by commenting that “they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what rising from the dead meant.” This comment throws a challenge our way. We, like those disciples, must discover what the resurrection means.

Every year, for a period of forty days, we dedicate ourselves to acts of penance and fasting to prepare ourselves for the celebration of Easter, the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Have you ever asked yourself why we go through all of this just to celebrate a moment in ancient history?

Actually, we’re not celebrating a historical anniversary. Fasting and penance are the tools, along with prayer and acts of charity, that we use to lift ourselves from the earthly plain to the spiritual plain the eternal now. This is where we discover the meaning of “rising from the dead.”

We can, and should, remember Jesus as an historical figure. He was a teacher, healer and miracle worker. He was betrayed by one of his followers, and sadistically executed. This is the story of the historical Jesus, Jesus of Nazareth.

The accounts of his resurrection and appearances to his disciples give witness to a Jesus liberated from the constraints of the historical plain. He appears to his disciples while they’re in hiding in the upper room. He teaches them. He eats with them. He appears to two of them as they flee Jerusalem. He teaches them and breaks bread with them. He promises that he’ll be with them until the end of time. This is the resurrected Jesus. This is Jesus, the universal Christ. He’s no longer bound by the restrictions of space and time.

The transfiguration is an icon of the resurrected Christ who in union with all of salvation history, past and present. In the eternal now, he’s in conversation with Moses and Elijah while still present to the three disciples who came with him to the mountaintop. This is the Jesus who said “this is my body – this is my blood” at the Last Supper. This is the resurrected Christ who speaks those same words at our Eucharist.

Lent is our communal retreat when we contemplate the meaning of the resurrection. This comes through prayer and an inner purification that frees us to love more deeply – to love as Jesus loved – unconditionally.

Lent is the time when Christians stop to reflect on the meaning of “rising from the dead.” The transfiguration is the icon the Church gives us for our contemplation. This image of the resurrected Christ is our invitation to transcend the earthly plain and to follow him.

REFLECTION

GENESIS 9:8-15 1 PETER 3:18-22 MARK 1:12-15

Here we are marking the First Sunday in Lent. Last year we couldn’t celebrate Ash Wednesday, and we couldn’t celebrate Holy Week. It seems like we’ve been trapped in a year that never ends. The account of Christ in the desert is an appropriate image of what we’ve been experiencing. It has been a year of endless “temptation.”

What the gospel narrates can be applied so easily to us and our experience. “The Spirit drove Jesus into the desert for 40 days, tempted by Satan.”

I personally believe that we’re experiencing a Spirit-directed time of temptation. But we must remember that with the temptation comes God’s grace. We’ve been forced to realize how fragile our health is. At the same time, we’ve been forced to see how fragile our country is. Our time of temptation isn’t over. Covid still rages, and the battle to preserve our democracy continues. We’re still in the desert.

The evangelist adds an important sentence to his account of Christ’s temptation that we need to note: “He was among the wild beasts and the angels ministered to him.”

Here, Mark is recalling Isaiah’s prophecy of universal peace when the lion and lamb will live together in a new world – the kingdom of God. The angels who come to minister to him during his temptation will again minister to Jesus during his final temptation in the garden of Gethsemane as he begins his Passover into the new Eden. Mark is telling us that a

time of temptation always opens up to a time of grace.

This year’s 40 days of Lent are, perhaps, the most important time we’re ever going to experience. Temptations are sent to us to make us strong. We’re being challenged to renew our faith with a vigor and fervor we’ve never imagined. But the Spirit is with us in our temptation. We’re being guided by that same Spirit to open our eyes – to envision, maybe for the first time, the world God intended for us – the kingdom of God. As St. Paul told the Corinthians, “the world as we know it is passing.” May his kingdom come.

PRAYER

Heavenly Father, I pray your Son’s prayer in a special way today. “Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.” May Christians, and all people of good faith, join together as brothers and sisters united in love for one another. May the sacrifices we make for the good of all help to bring about your reign, your kingdom on earth.

REFLECTION

LEVITICUS 13:1-2,44-46. 1 CORINTHIANS 10:31-11:1 MARK 1:40-45

In today’s gospel passage we’re told about Jesus curing a person with leprosy. But before we reflect on this particular cure let’s look at the social dynamic surrounding the disease during the time of Jesus. The medicines we have today that cure Hansen’s disease, called leprosy in the bible, were not available in Jesus’ day. There was tremendous fear of this disease.

It was incurable and fatal. It manifested itself in discolored patches on the skin, nodules, lumps on the face or earlobes, loss of eyebrows or eyelashes and stiff or dry skin. It was known that the disease was contagious but there was little scientific knowledge about the process of contagion. Leprosy was so feared that people afflicted with the disease were required to segregate themselves from society. Once diagnosed, they would never be allowed to return to their families.

Today we know that leprosy isn’t as highly contagious as the people in Jesus’ time thought. We now know that it’s spread by contact with the droplets from the mouth and nose when a person coughs or sneezes. Eating from a common dish or sharing utensils are high risk for contagion. It’s believed that Damien of Molokai contracted the disease by sharing his pipe and eating poi from the common dish. But in Jesus’ day it was believed that even a breeze that had touched a leper could carry the disease. That’s why lepers were required to shout “unclean” when they came near a town or village. The gradual degeneration of the body was a terrible part of the disease, but the social isolation was, perhaps, even more painful.

We can all relate to this aspect of the leper’s suffering, though in a lesser way. A year of living with Covid 19 and maintaining “social distancing” has brought depression and anxiety to most of us. The lack of human contact, socially and physically, is a source of terrible suffering. That’s why there’s so much protest against the practice of solitary confinement in our prisons, especially for teenage prisoners. It’s generally condemned by psychologists as inhumane. Some people consider it torture.

With all this in mind we can now look at Jesus’ encounter with the man suffering with leprosy. “A leper came up to Jesus, and kneeling down, begged him and said, ‘If you wish, you can make me clean.’” This seems natural enough to us, but not to the people standing with Jesus. A leprous man running through the crowd to get to Jesus must have caused tremendous panic. The entire 13th and 14 th chapters of the Book of Leviticus contains the instructions concerning lepers. Stemming from those chapters it was common practice that a distance of no less than sixteen feet be maintained between a leper and a healthy person.

Jesus remained alone with the man. From a safe distance everyone watched. What happened next would have brought an audible gasp from the crowd. “Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand, touched him, and said, ‘I

do will it. Be made clean.’”

According to the Law, Jesus would have, besides possibly contracting the disease, been instantly made ritually “unclean” himself, and would have had to go through a lengthy period of quarantine. The crowd watched as the man’s skin cleared. He was made whole and healthy again! In awestruck silence they listened as Jesus instructed the man to follow the laws from the Book of Leviticus, and to present himself to the priests who would proclaim him cured.

Let’s begin our reflection on this healing by applying it, first of all, to our society. Let’s, in the quiet of our hearts, ponder a few questions.

Who are the lepers of our day – the people we’re afraid to touch? Why are we afraid of them? What’s their status in our society? What does Jesus’ response to the leper teach us about our relationship with these “outcasts?”

It was a shocking and powerful moment when Jesus touched the leper. So, besides applying the account to our society, let’s also apply it to our personal lives. I’m going to conclude this reflection by sharing two “touching” moments in my own life. I encourage you to call to mind powerful “touching” moments in your own lives, too.

My sister called me to come to Wyckoff hospital in Brooklyn. Mom had suffered a stroke while in her doctor’s office. It took what seemed like hours to get there. I found my sister with her. My father was with the doctor.

I walked over to the gurney. Mom was sitting up. She looked at me and barely smiled a crooked smile. She looked at me with glassy, far away eyes, but I know she saw me. She reached out her hand and put it to my cheek for three, maybe four seconds before she began to get sick. A nurse came over to help her. My sister and I stood back. Mom slipped into a coma and died ten days later. She was 65. It would take a book for me to tell you what was contained in that touch. It spoke understanding. It spoke unconditional love. It said goodbye.

Years later, I was called to the home of a man in his 40’s who was dying. He had AIDS. He was lying on the living room sofa when I arrived. The friend who had called was with him. We talked a polite talk for a while. I sat down at the end of the sofa near his feet. We continued our polite talk a little longer. He began to tire so I said good-bye and left.

The next day his friend called me, thanking me profusely for visiting. He said that his friend was deeply moved by what I did. “What did I do?’ I asked. “When you sat down you began to rub his bare feet. For a nanosecond I was at the Last Supper. I believe that, during that short visit, both of us were healed.

REFLECTION

JOB 7:1-4, 6-7 1 CORINTHIANS 9:16-19 MARK 1:29-39

Today’s Gospel continues to report the events of Jesus’ first day of ministry. We read last week that he went to the synagogue in Capernaum for the Morning Prayer and then addressed the congregants. They were quite struck by the simplicity and authority with which he spoke. He wasn’t at all like the religious leaders. He also liberated a man who was possessed by an unclean spirit. Leaving the man’s body, the spirit cried out that Jesus was “the Holy One of God.” We’re told that, because of these events, “his fame spread everywhere throughout the whole region of Galilee.”

The dramatic events of the day continued after the Morning Service as Jesus, Simon, Andrew, James and John left the synagogue. They went to Simon’s home for the Sabbath meal. What took place in the synagogue was a public presentation of Jesus’ ministry. What took place at Simon’s home was just the opposite – it was an intimate teaching for this new family of disciples. As soon as Jesus arrived the people in the house told him that Simon’s mother-in-law was ill with a fever.

In Jesus’ day medicine was mixed with magic and incantations. A fever was cured by using a lock of hair from the sick person to tie an iron knife onto a thorn bush. The person returned to the bush for three consecutive days, each day quoting a portion of the account of God speaking to Moses from the burning bush. There were times Jesus used common techniques to cure. There is an instance when he made mud with his saliva and smeared it on the eye lids of a man born blind. He then told the man to wash his eyes in the pool of Siloam. Another time he put his fingers into the ears of a man who was deaf and mute and then put his saliva on the man’s tongue. Most of the time, however, Jesus cured with a mere command or a touch.

As soon as he heard of the fever Simon’s mother-in-law was suffering, he went to her, “grasped her hand and helped her up.” The cure was as simple as that. Jesus spoke no words or incantations. He said no prayers. It all seemed so natural. It was the Sabbath. Jesus and his four new disciples came to the house to partake in the

Sabbath meal. It was a special meal, a sacred meal, an essential element of the Shabbat Shalom, the sharing in the peaceful rest God took on the day after the creation of the world. Jesus restored her to her ministry of preparing the sacred meal. “The fever left her and she waited on them.”

There’s a lesson behind this healing. His first disciples, Simon, Andrew, James and John would, one day, discover that they couldn’t continue their ministry relying solely on their own strength. They would personally need the powerful, healing touch of Jesus. Only then would they be strong. Only then could the power of Jesus work through them.

At sundown of that same day, when the Sabbath rest was over, the people from the surrounding area came to the house bringing with them, the sick and possessed. He cured them all. We have to note the difference between the healing of Simon’s mother-in-law and the healing of the people. The people came to Jesus to get something from him. He cured their sick; they were happy and returned to their ordinary lives. Simon’s mother-in-law was cured and immediately began to minister to Jesus and his disciples. This is the second lesson we can draw from this remarkable day. If we’ve been touched by the healing hand of Jesus we’ve also been called to minister to others. Maybe we could say that our healing is the invitation to to follow him – to take up his ministry.