4) THE TRANSFIGURATION

Looking at the story of your life, when did you experience “Transfiguration Moments” when someone or some place or something or God was seen in a totally new light?

Too many times as we speed down the highway of life we don’t stop when we see the sign, “Scenic overview.”

Too many people have never climbed a mountain. As a result they don’t appreciate life in the valley as much as they could – if they “have been to the mountain.”

Few people climb Mount Everest – but lots of people climb smaller mountains as part of the story of their life.

Good shoes, good guides, good friends, good food, make climbing a mountain that much easier.

From the top of a mountain, “On a clear day, you can almost see forever”.

It’s important to climb mountains – to go to the peak and stop and see one’s life – to look up to the sky and know that God is above us and that we are not God – to look down and see where we’ve come from – and to know we can’t stay on top forever.

But it’s good to have been there – on top for a while.

Mountains are for peak experiences; valleys are for everyday life.

Jesus knew the importance of going to the mountain – to be with his Father in prayer and vision.

Jesus knew the importance of taking time off to climb a mountain with close friends.

And on that mountain Jesus was transfigured – in bright white light – and his clothes became whiter than any bleacher could bleach them – and his disciples were mesmerized and transformed by that vision –and they heard again the voice from the clouds that Jesus heard at his baptism. “This is my beloved Son, listen to him.”

On her wedding day, a bride comes down the aisle all dressed in white and her about-to-be husband wasn’t allowed to see her transfigured this way as a queen till that moment – and he sees her in the light of that moment on the most beautiful day of her life – and he vows to honor her and cherish her all the days of their life together. And then they come down the aisle and down from their honeymoon together and hopefully the wedding vision of his beloved never fades.

In the baseball movie, The Natural, Roy Hobbs is in the middle of a batting slump. He’s in the middle of going the wrong way with the wrong woman in his life. It’s a road game. He’s not at home. He stops before coming to home plate. He senses something is different. Someone is high in the stands rooting for him. She’s standing up while everyone else is seated. It’s a woman in white – in a bright white dress - the right woman in his life – the woman he forgot when left home for a baseball career. And everything went wrong when he went to see the woman in the black dress who shot him. And he hits a home run and breaks out of his batting slump. And after the game he meets the woman in white – his childhood sweetheart – and they talk and he tells her everything that happened to him – how things went wrong and how he didn’t see it coming – and everything slowly starts turning for the better.

In the speeches of Martin Luther King Jr. he loved to preach, “I’ve been to the mountain.” He had been. And once you’ve been there, once you have your life’s vision, all other visions are blackened and blocked out in the light of that vision – that life calling – and you can go on, no matter what happens – no matter who tries to shoot you down.

Transfiguration moments are mountain moments in our life. We need them. We need vacations and weekends: when we can stop to see the dawn in the morning or the stars at night – when we can slow down and smell the roses – when we play catch or read with one of the kids – when we be in church and be in communion and in prayer with Jesus and hear the words of the Father, “This is my beloved Son. Listen to him.”

Jesus invites everyone as a personal friend to climb the mountain.

5) JESUS GIVES US

THE EUCHARIST

What were the great Masses you were at?

We all eat.

We all need food to survive.

We all need to enjoy meals together to thrive.

It’s not good to eat alone.

We long for union.

We need communion.

We need to sit down together at the family table.

We all need signs of peace.

We need to be held.

Babies die if they are not held and hugged.

Marriages die if there isn’t love.

People become strange if they are not in relationships.

As the first book of the Bible, Genesis, puts it, “It’s not good to be alone.”

Hell is cold.

Hunger is hell.

We starve to death, if we don’t eat.

It’s heaven, when we enjoy a good meal together.

It’s hell, when we are stuck at a table with someone we don’t like.

When we don’t like each other, we don’t like to eat with each other.

Weddings have separate tables.

Marriages that are breaking up have separate beds.

Okay, sometimes it’s because the other snores – or is on a different time schedule – or one wants the window open and the other wants it close. Not everyone likes it hot.

When we celebrate, we celebrate with food. We can’t picture a picnic, a tailgate party, a 50th anniversary, a funeral, without food.

We can’t picture a wedding without the wedding cake and the best man making a toast holding a glass of champagne.

The Israelites celebrated the Passover with unleavened bread and the 4 glasses of wine.

Jesus celebrated his last free night with his disciples at a meal. He said some great things at his Last Supper. “Love one another.” “Wash each other’s feet.” “Greater love than this no one has than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

At that meal he took bread and wine and said, “This is my body. I am giving it to you. Take and eat.” “This is my blood. I am pouring it out for you. Take and drink.”

And we have been doing this in memory of him ever since.

THE
SORROWFUL MYSTERIES

Life obviously has its sorrowful mysteries and its sorrowful moments. Everyone has to deal with them. We see these mysteries and moments of suffering in the life of Christ and in our life. We meditate on these moments when we pray the Rosary. Here are 5 we all go through:

1) Agonies in the Garden: those moments when we agonize over upcoming decisions. How and when do I tell the kids that we are being transferred? Doctors have to tell people about tests which indicate, “It looks like cancer.” A manager is called into the boss’ office and he is told he has to tell 12 workers they are being cut. A school principal has to make a decision about dismissing a kid – knowing it’s going to be a messy battle with the kid’s parents – but the kid has been warned about ongoing disciplinary problems for months.

2) The Beatings at the Pillar: those moments when we feel tied up and beaten down by life. We feel we are totally misunderstood and people are gossiping about us all over the neighborhood or in the work place. We don’t just have one health problem; we have four of them. The competition keeps beating us and we can’t seem to generate enough sales. Another store opens up across the street. Our kids keep comparing us to parents who are “much more understanding”. Our spouse doesn’t side with us in our attempts to discipline one of our kids.

3) The Crowning with Thorns: those moments when we have a splitting headache because we can’t manage our time or our money or our lives. It’s just not a good time right now – and we can’t escape the crush of life. The phone keeps ringing and we can’t seem to hide.

4) The Carrying of the Cross: those moments in life when a cross is placed on our shoulder. A parent or parents can’t take care of themselves any more. A child gets hooked on alcohol or drugs. We lose a job.

5) The Death on the Cross: those moments in life when we have to face our own death or the death of a loved one.

1) AGONY IN THE GARDEN

When have you experience an agony in the garden?

It’s important to have places where we can hide: gardens, backyards, parks, churches, cellars, backrooms, bathrooms, inner rooms.

It’s important to have places where we can cry.

It’s a blessing to have our own garden – a place where we can grow green things – and red things – zucchini and tomatoes – tulips and roses – a place where we can cut and snip, weed and plant – a place where we can get away from it all – a place where what we are doing outwardly, is happening inwardly – cutting and snipping, weeding and planting – in the secret garden of our soul.

Rev. Robert Tristen Coffin was once asked if he enjoyed being a minister. He thought for a moment and then said something like, “I love it. Being a minister is an amazing life – especially when someone invites you into the secret garden of their soul and they tell you who they really are.”

And if we could enter into the secret garden of another, wouldn’t we see both a garden of delights as well as a garden of sorrows?

For many, the agonies in life stand out like broken branches on the grass after a storm. Family stories might sound like a novel, but they are not novel. Every family has rejections, crushing comments, broken vows, people who walked away from us, failures, alcoholism and drug addiction, loss of a job, or kids who don’t seem to care.

Jesus often felt the need to escape. He loved to slip away in the night to enter into the dark garden of God – and discover that God is a never ending garden of Delight.

On the night before he died, Jesus walked into a garden to pray. He needed space. He needed strength. He needed friends. So he asked his closest friends – the ones he climbed the mount of the transfiguration with – to stay awake and pray with him. And he prayed and cried and they slept.

And all alone, feeling rejected by both God and friends, he cried out, “Father, if it is possible take this cup of suffering away from me, but not my will, but your will be done.”

We too, whenever we feel like we’re stuck, need to escape to a garden – and when life feels like we’re in a garden of agony, if we look around, Jesus is there too – and he’s not sleeping.

2) SCOURGING

AT THE PILLAR

When have you experienced the second sorrowful mystery of life: the scourging at the pillar?

Sometimes you just can’t win.

The scourge of selfishness slaps us in the face and we’re sick and tired of turning the other cheek.

We do the work and someone else gets the credit – especially the person who sits around doing nothing.

Who said, “Life is fair?”

Sometimes we feel beat – beaten down by the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” as Shakespeare calls them in his powerful play, “Hamlet.”

Others seem to have all the luck.

Then to make things worse, others make comments like, “Stop feeling sorry for yourself!” or “Stop playing the victim game!” or “You’re a whiner instead of being a winner.” And you say inwardly, “Give me a break and just accept me as I am. Don’t you realize, I’m feeling down right now?”

And then there is the caustic remark or racial slur that slices our spirit in two.

A job turns out to be totally what we didn’t expect it to be and we’re stuck in it because we need a job and money is really tight.

The relatives have it all wrong. They judged us unfairly. They don’t have a clue to why we did what we did. And the words that sting keep coming and keep stinging for years now.

Rock throwers are still throwing rocks.

Motive guessers are still guessing without asking.

People are criticized when they work too hard or when they don’t work enough. They hear comments like, “Slow down. You’re making us look bad.” Or “Hurry up. You’re not pulling your load!”

People make comments about a woman if she is too good looking or if she isn’t good looking enough.

Where do we go when we’re experiencing whip lash from crashes and clashes with others?

The scriptures give us some of Jesus’ words in the garden and on the cross, but what was going through his mind as the soldiers tortured his body with whips?

We don’t know. However, we get glimpses of human pain and how people feel beaten down in Alcoholic Anonymous and Alananon meetings, Self Help groups, counseling sessions, or really listening to a friend who is hurting.

If we’re wise, we’ll connect with each other – especially when we’re hurting or beat.

Who needs my ear?

Who listens to me?

Whom have I told my story to?

3) CROWNING

WITH THORNS

Life has its headaches.

Life has its worries and its anxieties.

Life has its mental storms.

Life has its crowning with thorns.

When have you felt like you were being crowned with thorns?

Life takes place between our ears – as we talk to ourselves inwardly about what’s happening outwardly. We worry about the people we deal with each day – at home and at work. Then there is traffic, weather, the cost of gasoline and the cost of raising children.

When we make mistakes or wrong turns, it’s hard to shake mistakes out of our mind. Family and friends tell us to let our mistakes go, but we can’t. They tell us to smell the roses, instead of looking at the thorns. We want to reply, “Hey, there are no roses in mistakes – only thorns and they seem to keep on sticking it to us.”

And sometimes we are hurt by others ….

If someone wants to make fun of us, they will find a way. They’ll twist and turn our words or actions into thorns and stick them into us. They’ll remind us of our weaknesses. They will bring up our past mistakes. The closer we are to others, the more they know our raw weaknesses.

However, we can develop the skill in reflecting on what is sent our way and deflect it. Of course it takes time to acquire this virtue – in the deep recesses of our mind.

Who of us could deal with a crown of thorns? Who of us could stand having a crown of sharp thorns driven into our head with reeds? Who of us could then deal with being spat at, dressed in purple and then mocked with the words, “Hail King of the Jews!”?

What did Jesus think and say when this was happening? We really don’t know. Mystics, as well as the gospel writers, imagine Jesus’ thoughts.

They were doing in the palace or praetorium that night what tyrants and bullies have always done to persons they want to persecute. Forget they are persons. Make him things. Make them objects. Never see them as subjects.

Jesus mirrors the opposite. Jesus is the king. And as king he saw all his subjects – especially the poor and the needy, the stuck and the sinner, in what they were being subjected to in life.

Jesus was a king – so they crowned him with a crown of thorns – and dressed him in a purple cloak. .

Jesus was a king who washed feet and let his feet be washed by a woman whom others saw only as an object. Jesus saw people as royalty – children of Our Father – especially people whom others objectified in order to rid them from their circles – sinners, tax collectors, people with leprosy, prostitutes, the unholy.

Jesus never tried to be a king with a golden crown. Yes he talked about a kingdom, but it wasn’t one with golden streets leading to a palace. No, he only mentioned a narrow way that leads to life. This carpenter told us to build our house on rock, yet he had no place to lay his head.

4) CARRYING

THE CROSS

What have been your crosses?

Who have been your crosses?

Everyone has a cross to carry.

And the Stations of the Cross are not only on the walls of our churches. They are also along our streets, but especially along the walls of our homes.
Everyone has a cross to carry.

Sometimes it feels like we have to carry it all alone.

Sometimes others help us.

The cross is made of wood.

It has become the symbol of Christ and Christianity.

We all know how to make the sign of the cross on our bodies – because that’s where we so often experience crosses: cancer, arthritis, headaches, and the slow loss of mobility and memory.

Most crosses come in the shape of people.

Obviously, Jesus’ cross was from people and he accepted it for people. People crucified him and he turned the other cheek to stop the violence that plagues our world – ever since the day Cain killed Abel.

Most don’t experience violent violence: murder, rape and assault.

Most crosses, as Tip O’Neil said of politics, are local.

A daughter is an alcoholic or a son is on drugs.

A husband is out of work.

A car accident causes a daughter to be paralyzed for life.

A marriage breaks up.

Our kids refuse to bring their kids, our grandkids, to church.

A son or a daughter moves in with someone refusing to get married and they come to visit us. What to do? Where to sleep? What to say?

Crosses then come in the form of people – usually those who are close to us – and people are hard to carry.