JESUITS WEST PROVINCE RETREAT
FEAST OF THE TRANSFIGURATION
AUGUST 6, 2017
Most Reverend Gordon D. Bennett, S. J.
Bishop Emeritus of Mandeville
Matthew 17: 1-9
Dear Sisters and Brothers:
I think it would be impossible to escape the blessing that these readings for the Feast of the Transfiguration would coincide precisely with place we find ourselves in the retreat. In so many ways, we are being led to draw fruit from the same vision Peter, James and John were allowed to experience on the mountain.
Whatever else the Transfiguration was, it was a vision; and it a vision we have been discerning these days, individually and as a province, during these days of prayer.
Retreat is a time for renewing our vision, for adjusting it where necessary, expanding it according to circumstances; and, most of all, retreat is a time for claiming our vision, boldly and passionately. And, of course, we don’t do any of this by ourselves, we simply pay attention to and welcome and say yes to the Lord who is working, laboring, in us and for us and among us.
A few years ago, the late Archbishop George Niederauer reminded us on our retreat that the vision of the disciple is different from the vision of the church worker. The disciple’s vision entails allowing ourselves to be moved from a paradigm of “I’ll believe when I see it” to one of “I’ll see it when I believe it.” The vision of the disciple entails wholehearted surrender without sending a bill. The vision of the disciple is to develop habits of the heart, to live a life of genuine faith even as we are surrounded by a culture in which many people seem to get along just fine without God.
The is a vision which, as we read in the poem “Annunciation” that “once hailed us and, hopefully, it ever does.” So let’s let the vision hail us once again as we place ourselves on this mountain and encounter the mystery once more, remembering once more that, for us, the vision is a person, Jesus Christ.
His face shines like the sun, eclipsing all other loves, all other attachments, all other expectations. He is flanked by Moses, the icon of the law, and by Elijah, the icon of the prophets. But he does not reveal Himself as a blend of Moses and Elijah, He is something different, something more. He is Emmanuel, God-with-us. He is the about whom Pope Benedict spoke when he said: “God has a human face, and His name is Jesus Christ.” Even the thunderous affirmation from the voice out of the cloud agrees: “This is my Son, the One I love, listen to Him.”
Listen to Him.
So the only relevant question at this point in the retreat is: am I listening to Jesus? Am I listening to Him as He speaks His word to me in the gospels? Am I listening to Him as He invites me to the margins, not so much the physical margins, but to the peripheries of my own heart and soul where I can encounter that stranger in me, where I can confront the parts of me I reject? Where I can make peace with the enemy within me and open myself humbly to Jesus’ acceptance and healing? Am I listening to Jesus in the Eucharist and in reconciliation? Am I listening to Jesus as He speaks to me through my brothers, my fellow loved sinners, both in their silence and in their spiritual conversation, learning from Him that He labors not just in us and not just between us, but He labors AMONG us as well?
Am I listening to Jesus’ values and priorities: “Congratulations to the poor in spirit, theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Congratulations to the meek, they will inherit the earth. Congratulations to those who mourn, they will be comforted……love you enemies, pray for those who persecute you.” This is the sermon Jesus preached that the world today still finds confusing, and even infuriating.
Above all, do I listen to and try to imitate, Jesus’ preferential option for the lost, for those like those sons of a merciful father, one prodigal in his selfishness and one prodigal in his self-righteousness? Do I really believe Jesus when He says that it is impossible for us to lose God’s love? Am I listening to Jesus as he tells us that, for his disciple, no one not even the intractable Samaritans in our lives, is beyond God’s mercy, that, as Pope John Paul said, “mercy is for everyone, for everyone without exception?” De we hear him say that no son or daughter of God should be called “illegal” just as no son or daughter is in a “basket of deplorables.” As Pope Francis wrote, mercy is to be extended “always, everywhere, in every situation, no matter what!”
The best example of this kind of discipleship, of truly living the gospel, that I have seen probably in my lifetime occurred two years ago, and it didn’t involve our Society or any other Catholic community. It involved the community at the Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Rather than condemn or retaliate against others for the horrible crime committed against them by a young man filled with hate, they forgave him. They called him their brother and they prayed for him. Very little notice in the media was taken of this of this grace-filled act.
For the disciple, mercy is simultaneously gift and duty. Miserando atque eligendo.
St. Paul teaches all disciples of Jesus: “God has given us the ministry of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God pleading his case to the world, his case of mercy to the world, through us”
Brothers and sisters, listen to Him. Listen to Emmanuel! Listen to God’s human face! Listen to the Bread of Life, to the Vine, to the Good Shepherd, to the Resurrection. Let us not be ministers in the absurdity which Flannery O’Connor and railed against: “the church of Christ without Christ,” a lazy place powered by cheap grace.
After they heard the voice, the disciples fell on the ground, “prostrate with fear.” And Jesus, as Matthew puts, came and touched them saying what He always says when we are hailed by the holy: “Be not afraid.”
And then they went down the mountain, back into the mess, back into the noise, back into the ambivalence, back into the frantic pace, back into the pain of the poor, back into their default thinking, back to living life in tension.
But they had seen the vision, just as we are seeing the vision, the vision that “once hailed us,” that hailed us by name, the vision that promises to continue to call us back to the mountain so that it can hail us again and again. Amen