2nd Sunday of Lent 20.3.11 Living in hope
With the Transfiguration we see the glory of God mixed in with His suffering. It is hard for us to discern God in the suffering. We can take any amount of joy, but find it hard to reconcile belief in a loving God with suffering.
There are things we can say in support of suffering: it purifies us, forces us to pray more, to consider what really counts, and so on. These arguments are true but they can be perceived as too theoretical to one in the actual grip of suffering. Abstract consolations may not be much help if your family has just been buried under the rubble of an earthquake.
Sometimes it is better not to use words, just be silent for a time. The abiding truths still abide but the one suffering needs time to let things sink in.
For ourselves too, it does not mean we have lost our faith because we grieve. Look at the tears of Mary on Good Friday and Holy Saturday. She knew Our Lord would rise but still grieved.
The Transfiguration consoles us in our trials. The event was intended to strengthen the apostles against the experience of the Lord’s Passion. It seems as though it did not succeed in their case but it can work for us.
We can remember the glory of the Lord when we are going through dark times. We remember that times have been better and will be again.
For Our Lord it took only three days to rise; for us a lifetime, for the human race centuries.
Our entire lives are an experience of the Cross insofar as so many things are not as they should be.
A pall of sadness and darkness hangs over the world. It should not be there. The whole process of our lives as disciples is to lift that pall, disperse the dark.
The first thing is to ensure that we ourselves are not subject to it. We suffer from it but we are not conquered. Cf 2 Cor 4. Knocked down but never out.
The second thing is: we let the light of Christ shine through the darkness. For once the truth will be the right side up. Ever since the resurrection we have the victory established. But it has to be grasped and propagated in the here and now.
We have won the war but the fighting goes on. As if the ceasefire has been declared but they do not cease firing. Certainly the devil does not cease to fire.
The devil is being driven back to hell but he will take as many with him as possible.
Or to take another image, we are rich but we don’t know it. We are like the missing heir that can’t be found to be told that he has inherited millions. So we live like paupers, still slaves to sin when we could be free.
We have been robbed of the good news. So we must tell people how lucky they are.
Suffering there must be for the time but we absorb it, not allowing it to have greater prominence than necessary. We are neither defeated by it, nor deflected from our goal.
It may be hard to see a glorious future with all the trouble around, but we know there is one.
The Transfiguration is a celebration of hope. It is an anticipation of better things to come.
May the Lord sustain us in hope through this long night of waiting.
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