You will be reading this on the Second Sunday of Lent, the Feast of the Transfiguration. Our parish pilgrims to Israel had the gift of being able to attend Mass at the top of that mountain. For them this Gospel will never be the same.
For those of us who did not get there (me included), let me try and make the Gospel real. Jesus has left behind the beauty and safety of Galilee to go to Jerusalem, where he knows he will die. He has just predicted that he will suffer, die, and be raised on the third day. His disciples just don’t get it. Remember that only one Jewish group of the time believed in the Resurrection of the dead. Jesus goes up the mountain with Peter, James, and John. Moses and Elijah appear to them, and Jesus is transformed before their eyes. It is a promise and foreshadowing of the Resurrection to come. It is also a powerful spiritual experience for them.
You and I may also have profound spiritual experiences. I have had two of them. The reason I encourage you to tell the important stories of your life is so that those stories will surface. The reason our men’s and women’s Faith sharing groups work so well is that those groups are about sharing those stories. Most of us, however, don’t live our lives on mountain tops amidst revelations. We live most of our lives in ordinary time, looking for God in our everyday lives. The irony is that if you look for God in the everyday, you are more likely to recognize God when the divine shows up in the burning bush!
On a practical note, thank you to the food givers of these past two weeks. You have been the face of God to Fr. Rojin and me. The list for the first two weeks includes: Marianne Cassidy, Anna L’Archevesque, the Bidlack Family , the Lucas Family, Rosemary Romaniello, Suzanne Calnon, Zita Sebastian, Michelina Pisselli, the Correnty family, and Lorraine Larkin. Two other angels, Joe Licek and Len Mecca, created a ramp to get me out of the rectory. You are all transfigured before my eyes. What a great parish we have. (There are many more to thank in the coming weeks!)
One final note, this week the dean for our deanery, Msgr. Walter Orlowski, will be here for an official parish visit. He will be at the 9am Mass on Tuesday the 27th. If you want him to know anything about our parish, come to Mass that day and tell him.
Hopefully, we will have a Contemplative Mass at the 6pm Sunday Mass for the next three Lenten Sundays. The first two will have me presiding from a wheelchair and the last, God willing, from the altar.
