The Fifth Sunday of Lent [A]
Ezekiel 37:12-14  +  Romans 8:8-11  +  John 11:1-45
St. Anthony’s Catholic Church, Garden Plain, KS
March 22, 2026

There’s an interesting word in the last sentence of today’s Gospel passage.  Listen to this sentence again:  “Now many of the Jews who had come to Mary and seen what he had done began to believe in him.”  The word in this sentence that’s especially interesting is “began”:  they “began to believe in him.”

There are many different English translations of this verse.  The translation used at Holy Mass is the only translation I could find that uses the word “began” in this sentence.  Most of the other translations simply say that they “believed in him.”

You might not think that that’s a significant difference.  But in God’s Word, small things can point to large truths.  In this case, the translation we heard a few moments ago highlights the truth that believing in Jesus is a journey.

Having faith in Jesus is a journey with a beginning, middle, and end.  Along the way there are many potholes, speedbumps, detours, and forks in the road, with no Google Maps to guide you.  Faith grows and diminishes.  At times it’s weak and at others, it’s strong.  Some on the journey don’t make it to the end.

Consider some of the people Jesus interacts with in today’s Gospel passage.  In terms of faith, they range across a spectrum: each represents yourself at a different point in your spiritual life. In each case in this Gospel passage, there’s confusion in what people say about Jesus and Lazarus, even people who might be expected to have a lot of faith.  There’s even some confusion because of what Jesus does and says.  All of these show us that even people with faith who are following Jesus face challenges along the way, including both from their own lack of faith at times, as well as from the challenges that Jesus throws at them.

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Consider first some people at the short end of the spectrum.  These were people who did not know much about Jesus.  Towards the end of the passage, after Jesus weeps over the death of Lazarus, some of the Jews ask, “Could not the one who opened the eyes of the blind man have done something so that this man would not have died?”  They’re questioning what Jesus did; or to be more exact, what Jesus did not do.  Their question is reasonable, and reflects your own life as a disciple.  It’s important that you ask questions about your faith—about what God is or is not doing in your life—even if it seems like you’re challenging God and His ways (after all, God has big shoulders:  He can handle your questions and your doubts).

So now shift a bit down the spectrum of faith-bearing, and consider some people who certainly did know something about Jesus.  Toward the start of the Gospel passage, Jesus’ own disciples are confused.  Jesus speaks about Lazarus’ death, yet the disciples think that Jesus is speaking about ordinary sleep.

This sort of confusion is common in St. John’s account of the Gospel.  There’s often in John confusion—on the one hand—about the spiritual realities that Jesus speaks about, and—on the other hand—the earthly understanding that others ascribe to Jesus’ words.  The most famous example is likely the conversation that Jesus has with Nicodemus in John 3.  Jesus is wanting to teach Nicodemus about being “born again”, but Nicodemus understands Jesus in earthly terms.

The confusion that’s illustrated by Nicodemus and—in today’s Gospel passage—by Jesus’ own disciples, reflects something in your own life as a disciple.  At times you confuse the spiritual with the earthly.  At times you confuse the importance of the spiritual with the importance of what’s earthly.  Granted, if you have a family, there’s a true need to be concerned with earthly affairs:  if you didn’t, you would fail to honor the sacred vows you made at the altar when you were married.  Nonetheless, each of us, when we’re honest with ourselves, have to admit that sometimes we give earthly matters more attention than they’re due.  Sometimes this is because we confuse earthly “wants” with “needs”.  Sometimes this is because it’s easy to rest on our laurels, and enjoy the comforts of earthly life, setting aside the difficult work of following Jesus in faith.

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Then again, to be fair—both to yourself as a disciple, and to those in today’s Gospel passage—it is true that Jesus sometimes says and does things that don’t at first seem to make sense.  For example, in today’s Gospel passage, when Jesus hears that Lazarus is ill, instead of rushing to be with Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, Jesus remains for two days in the place where He was:  in other words, at a distance from the suffering of those He loved.  Later, Jesus declares to His disciples, “Lazarus has died.  And I am glad for you that I was not there.”  It would be hard to blame the disciples if they scratched their heads in confusion.  Sometimes we ourselves wonder why God does—or does not—act in our lives as we want, or as we think He ought.

Still, we might argue that these disciples were not among His closest friends, like Martha and Mary.  Here we shift further on the spectrum of those who bear faith.  In this passage, Jesus speaks at greater length with Martha and Mary, the sisters of Lazarus. The evangelist tells us that Jesus loved Mary, Martha, and Lazarus.  After the death of Lazarus, Martha and Mary were heartbroken.  However, they had faith in Jesus, just as they trusted in Jesus’ love for them and their brother.

Martha and Mary in their interactions with Jesus in this passage reveal something to us about our own spiritual lives at deeper levels of both greater closeness to Jesus, and greater suffering because of loving Him, and having greater expectations of Him.

It’s understandable that Martha and Mary, at separate points in today’s Gospel passage, say exactly the same words to Jesus:  “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”  Still, their words express a lack of faith and understanding.  Of course it is in fact true that if the Lord Jesus had been there, their brother would not have died.  Yet Martha and Mary, like yourself at times in your own spiritual life, do not see the Lord’s larger purpose.  They do not understand what Jesus meant when He said:  Lazarus’ “illness is not to end in death, but is for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”

We might wonder about Jesus saying that Lazarus’ illness was not to end in death, because Lazarus’ illness did result in death.  It just didn’t end there.  It ended with something more powerful than death.  Jesus brought Lazarus from death to life on earth again, not just for Lazarus’ sake, but also for the sake of those around Lazarus, so that they might grow in faith.  Jesus worked this miracle to help them, and yourself, to believe that the Lord’s power is more powerful than any suffering in your life.  If you remain steadfast to following the Lord in faith, He will lead you to an end that is eternal and without suffering of any kind.

The Fourth Sunday of Lent [A]
I Samuel 16:1,6-7,10-13 + Ephesians 5:8-14 + John 9:1-41
St. Anthony’s Catholic Church, Garden Plain, KS
March 15, 2026

Every year, the Fourth Sunday of Easter is called “Good Shepherd Sunday”.  But today, on this Fourth Sunday of Lent, we also hear about the Good Shepherd.  The most obvious image of the Good Shepherd in today’s Scriptures is in the Responsorial Psalm:  that is, the 23rd Psalm.

But when we first reflect upon how all of today’s Scriptures fit together, the 23rd Psalm might not seem to connect with the other three Scripture passages.  It’s true that in today’s First Reading, the young man David is described as “tending the sheep”.  David is plucked from this role to be anointed the king—that is, the shepherd—of God’s People.  Nonetheless, for the most part, today’s Scripture passages seem to focus on another theme:  blindness.

However, if we look closely, we can see a connection between the two Lenten themes of the Good Shepherd and our blindness as sinners.  This connection can help us to con-fess our own blindness more willingly, and to pro-fess our willingness to follow the Good Shepherd wherever He might lead us.

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Today’s First Reading is a good place to start looking for the connection between our blindness and the Good Shepherd.  Consider something that happens early in the passage.  Samuel searches for the Lord’s anointed from among the sons of Jesse.  Samuel does eventually find him, but it takes him eight tries to do so.  What is it that hinders Samuel’s search?  It’s Samuel’s blindness.  Yet Samuel’s blindness is not physical blindness, like the man whom Jesus heals in today’s Gospel Reading.

Samuel judges wrongly.  Why?  Samuel judges wrongly because he is blind to what God’s shepherd ought to look like.  The Lord explains this to Samuel plainly, saying:  “Not as man sees does God see, because man sees the appearance but the Lord looks into the heart.”  This is a profound statement.  In fact, this blindness that the Lord exposes lies at the root of each of your own sins.  So this is a key point for our reflection during Lent.  But we have to be careful, because in the Lord’s words to Samuel, the Lord is not just making a general statement about looking beyond surface appearances.

The Lord here in our First Reading is condemning something more specific.  The Lord is condemning the blindness that keeps you from recognizing your Good Shepherd.  Again:  the Lord is condemning the blindness that keeps you from recognizing your Good Shepherd.  With that in mind, consider the blindness on display in today’s Gospel Reading.

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In fact, we see several types of blindness in this Gospel passage from the Gospel according to St. John.  The first is more apparent because it is a physical blindness, which naturally is hard to hide.  So the man born blind takes up our attention at the beginning of the Gospel passage, before we encounter those suffering from the far worse types of blindness.

This man born blind is the object of the disciples’ accusations.  They don’t ask if the man’s blindness was caused by sin.  They presume this, asking instead whose sins caused his blindness.  Jesus has to clarify the matter by explaining that “[n]either he nor his parents sinned”.  Rather, the man was born blind “so that the works of God might be made visible through him”.  These “works of God” are the works of the Good Shepherd.  When Jesus and the man born blind meet, the two themes of blindness and the Good Shepherd come together.  But what is the result of this meeting?

After Jesus restores the sight of the man born blind, Jesus faces accusations from those who cannot see Him as the Good Shepherd.  Here’s where the deeper level of the passage comes into focus.  Jesus meets those who, like Samuel in the First Reading, cannot see the Good Shepherd for who he is.

The Pharisees say about Jesus:  “This man is not from God, because he does not keep the Sabbath.”  Then there are others who give a command to the man given sight:  “Give God the praise!  We know that this man[, Jesus,] is a sinner.”

But as Jesus’ enemies scorn Him, the man given sight by the Good Shepherd speaks more boldly.  At first this man only reports the facts of what Jesus had done for him.  A little later, he says of Jesus that “He is a prophet.”  Soon after that, he speaks out against the religious authorities, insisting that “[t]his is what is so amazing, that you do not know where he is from, yet he opened my eyes. … It is unheard of that anyone ever opened the eyes of a person born blind.  If this man were not from God, he would not be able to do anything.”  The man given sight sees Jesus for who He is:  the Good Shepherd.  The man given sight sees truly.

Yet moments later, he acts truly.  When Jesus seeks out this man to whom He had given sight, the healed man confesses that he sees Jesus as Lord, and he worships Jesus.

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Now this event—the man given sight worshipping Jesus—would make a beautiful end to today’s Gospel passage.  It would wrap up the story nicely with a pretty bow.  However, after the man given sight worships Jesus, the story continues.  It turns again to the Pharisees.

We need to look at these Pharisees, and ask whether today’s Gospel passage is a mirror, through which we can see ourselves in the Pharisees.  This is important to do, because like the Pharisees, if we don’t see as ourselves as the sinners we truly are, we won’t be able to recognize our Good Shepherd for who He truly is.

The Pharisees in fact bear several kinds of blindness.  Not only are they spiritually blind.  They are also blind to the fact of their blindness.  At least the man born blind knew he was blind!

But Jesus sees into the Pharisees’ hearts, and seeing their blindness, He loves them from His Sacred Heart.  On Good Friday, from the Cross, the Good Shepherd offers His life for the sake of the Pharisees as much as for the Blessed Virgin Mary, St. John, St. Peter, and His other disciples.  Through His death, light shines in order to illuminate, heal, and strengthen sinners.

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In these last three weeks of Lent, we must work at overcoming all three forms of blindness.  First, we need to see the sins that regularly darken our lives, as much as we like to turn a blind eye to them.  In addition to seeking forgiveness in the Sacrament of Confession, we need to carry out works of penance that target these sins:  for example, against sins of pride, works of humility; against sins of lust, serious fasting; against sins of wrath, praying Rosaries for those we despise; against sins of envy, praying Rosaries for those we falsely put above ourselves; against sins of sloth, good works on behalf of the poor.

Second, we need to recognize the sins we do not see.  Each of us is well aware of certain persistent sins in our lives.  But each of us also suffers from sins that we don’t even recognize.

But how can we get outside ourselves, so to speak, in order to see what these sins are?  Well, you could ask the most charitable of your friends to pray with you, and then speak to you about a sin that you yourself do not see within your life.  Or you could pray a Novena to the Holy Spirit, asking Him to enlighten you about the sins of which you are blind.

Third, we need to see our Good Shepherd for who He truly is.  This might seem the easiest of the three, but in fact it’s the hardest.  It’s easy to pray the 23rd Psalm.  It’s easy to call upon our Good Shepherd when we’re struggling within “the valley of the shadow of death”.

But it’s very difficult to see our Good Shepherd for who He truly is.  Why did eleven out of the twelve apostles not stand on Calvary during Jesus’ Passion and Death?  Those eleven apostles could not stand to face Jesus during His Crucifixion because they could not see their Good Shepherd in that man hanging on the cross.  They could not understand—they could not see—that Jesus’ Passion and Death are God’s revelation of His love for us, and something we need to embrace as the price of our salvation.

In these last three weeks of Lent, on Tuesdays and Fridays pray the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary slowly, and at the start of each decade, spend a minute in silence, imagining the scene which that decade focuses upon.  Watch the movie titled The Passion of the Christ, and watch it with those in your family who are junior high age or older.  Each day of Holy Week, pray the Stations of the Cross at home.  Ask Jesus to open your mind and heart to see more clearly the depth of His love for you, and the depth of His suffering for the sake of your salvation.

CLICK HERE FOR THE NOVENA TO THE HOLY SPIRIT.

The Third Sunday of Lent [A]
Exodus 17:3-7  +  Romans 5:1-2,5-8  +  John 4:5-42
St. Anthony’s Catholic Church, Wellington, KS
March 8, 2026

This year on the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Sundays of Lent, our Gospel passage comes from the Gospel according to Saint John.  Saint John’s Gospel account differs from Matthew, Mark, and Luke in many ways.  One of the unique things about John, which we will notice during these three Sundays, is that John often expresses double meanings through Jesus’ words and actions.

For example, when Jesus cures a blind man, the evangelist goes out of his way to show how that cure—besides being a physical healing—is also a sign that Jesus can cure a person’s spiritual blindness.  Also, in John Jesus speaks with Nicodemus late at night about being “born again”, which Nicodemus misunderstands.  Nicodemus goes on and on thinking that Jesus is talking about being physically “born again”, when Jesus is talking about being spiritually born again.  In fact, most of the double meanings in John occur when people confuse the worldly and the heavenly.  To be honest, that’s a lot like our lives as sinners:  we confuse the worldly and the heavenly, putting our focus and attention in life in the wrong place.  St. John is trying to shift our attention in the right direction.

So in today’s Gospel passage, St. John the Evangelist describes Jesus as He’s approaching the Samaritan town where Jacob’s well is found.  Jesus is “tired from His journey”, and so He sits down at the well.  The evangelist also notes that “it was about noon”, implying that Jesus—in His sacred humanity—was tired and hot and thirsty.  Jesus is like us in all things but sin.  His human body needed water just as yours does.  That’s why on Good Friday as He was dying on the Cross, Jesus cried out, “I thirst”.[1]  Only St. John the Evangelist records Jesus as saying that on the Cross:  Matthew, Mark, and Luke do not.  For St. John, Jesus saying “I thirst” on the Cross ties into the other teachings that the evangelist records in his Gospel account, especially today’s Gospel Reading.

Jesus, through His human need for water, leads the Samaritan woman to see that she also needs something.  Here’s where the double meaning in this passage starts to unfold.  Only a few verses at the start of today’s Gospel passage are a discussion about a drink of water for Jesus’ physical thirst.  After those first few verses, Jesus shifts the attention away from Himself, and away from His physical need.  He shifts the attention towards the Samaritan woman, and toward her spiritual need.

The spiritual thirst that Jesus describes is one that only He can provide water for.  The spiritual water that Jesus offers, He calls “living water”.  In the physical world, water is not “living” in the way that a plant or animal is.  Nonetheless, the spiritual water that flows from Jesus does bear life.  This spiritual water flows from Jesus through two of the sacraments that Jesus gave as gifts to His Church:  the Sacrament of Baptism, and the Sacrament of Confession.  The Sacraments of Baptism and Confession are similar in many ways, all of which can help us appreciate the Good News that Jesus is sharing with the Samaritan woman in today’s Gospel passage.  Both Baptism and Confession cause three changes in the person who receives them devoutly.

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In both the Sacrament of Baptism and the Sacrament of Confession, the person is first of all washed clean of sin.  In Baptism, the waters wash away all sin:  both Original Sin, and (if the newly baptized is older than the age of reason) any actual sin committed by that individual.

Unfortunately, many people—even many baptized Christians!—only think about Baptism in terms of having sins washed away so that they can get to Heaven.  They stop there when they think about Baptism.  They think of Baptism only in terms of getting to Heaven.  Getting to Heaven, of course, is one part of why we’re baptized:  in fact, it’s the ultimate reason; but it’s not the only reason.  That reduction of Baptism is what led many in the early Church to delay their own baptism until they were on their deathbed, so that they could be more sure of getting into Heaven!

It’s easy to see how self-focused this kind of thinking is:  that I receive God’s grace for me, in order to get me into Heaven.  But Jesus did not give His life for us, so that we would make our spiritual life about our self.  Instead, Jesus gave His life for us, so that we would give our lives for others.  Thinking that Jesus gave His life for us, so that we could make our life about our self is how the world thinks.  Jesus is trying to shift our attention to the heavenly way of thinking:  so that we would live by Christ’s words that, “whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, [while] whoever loses his life for [Jesus’] sake…will save it”.[2]

Similar to the Sacrament of Baptism, in a sincere, valid Confession, all personal sins—mortal and venial—are washed away.  Yet many Catholics reduce the practice of Confession to only one aim:  just getting to Heaven, or even just staying out of hell.  That’s why many Catholics only go to confession when they’ve committed a mortal sin.  But is Confession only for washing away past sins?

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The second change in the person who receives the Sacrament of Baptism or Confession is a preparation for the future.  Not just our future in Heaven, but also our future on earth:  however many days, months, and years that might remain for us here on earth.  In both Baptism and Confession, God washes something away from our souls:  namely, sin.  But He also infuses graces into our souls, for the sake of a stronger life on earth.

At the moment of your baptism, when God washed sin away from your soul, He put in your soul the graces of the three supernatural virtues:  faith, hope, and charity.  God gave these to you not only to help you get to Heaven, but also to change the shape of your earthly life.

Similarly, in Confession,  when God washes sin away from your soul, He infuses into your soul the divine gift that the Church calls “sacramental grace”.  The graces from Confession give you, in the words of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “an increase of spiritual strength for the Christian battle”.[3]  What does the “Christian battle” involve?  Consider just two its demands.

One of the more challenging demands of the “Christian battle” is standing strong in the face of temptation.  The Gospel Reading on the First Sunday of Lent described Jesus spending forty days in the desert being tempted.  We are like Jesus in facing temptation, but we are much weaker than Jesus Christ.  However, the graces from the Sacrament of Confession strengthen us for that “Christian battle” against temptation.

Another challenging demand of the “Christian battle” is forgiving others in a Christ-like manner.  When someone has deeply wronged us—especially someone in our family—there’s a temptation to whitewash over it.  We’re tempted to just mouth the words “I forgive you” without really meaning it in order to avoid dealing with the problem in a serious way.  Often we do this because it’s just too demanding to get into the weeds and really face everything involved in both the sin that caused the problem, and the reconciliation that’s truly needed.  So we just punt, and mouth the words “I forgive you.”  That’s not how Jesus forgave on the Cross.  He put His entire Self into the reconciliation of God and man, and the graces from Confession strengthen us to forgive others in the way that Jesus did on Calvary.

This latter example of the “Christian battle” leads into the third change that Baptism and Confession bring about.  This change is also illustrated in today’s Gospel Reading.  This passage is not just about the two persons engaged in dialogue, although at first the Samaritan woman might think so, just as you and I might think that our lives as Christians are about our selves.  This passage is also about those whom the evangelist mentions at the end of this Gospel Reading:  those who “began to believe in [Jesus] because of the word of the woman who testified.”

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Those words at the end of today’s Gospel passage illustrate the third change that Baptism and Confession bring about within the Christian soul.  The third change relates to being part of something larger than your own self.  In Baptism, this took place through God the Father’s adoption of you, which joined your life to the lives of your brothers and sisters in Christ.  In Confession, you are reconciled with both your God and your neighbor.  In the life of the Samaritan woman, this took place through the testimony that she gave to others because of the “living water” that she drank.

So here we can see the problem with “deathbed baptisms”.  What if the Samaritan woman in today’s Gospel passage had avoided Jesus all her life, and had waited until the end of her earthly life to drink of that “living water”?  How many people around her never would have heard her testimony, and therefore never would have come to Jesus?  The longer we wait to allow Jesus’ living waters into our lives, the longer it will be before we can be an instrument of God’s grace, helping others who may have no other way of learning more about Jesus except through our words and actions.

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[1] John 19:28;  cf. Psalm 69:21.

[2] Mark 8:35.

[3] Catechism of the Catholic Church 1496.

The Second Sunday of Lent [A]
Genesis 12:1-4  +  2 Timothy 1:8-10  +  Matthew 17:1-9
St. Anthony’s Catholic Church, Garden Plain, KS
March 1, 2026

The Transfiguration is one of the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary because it “sheds light” upon who Jesus truly is.  Who is Jesus? Part of Jesus’ identity flows from His divinity.  This is the more obvious aspect of the scene of the Transfiguration.  The glory of Jesus’ divinity shone just for a moment on Mount Tabor before Peter, James and John.

But why was the glory of the Transfiguration only momentary?  The answer to that question explains why we hear this Gospel passage during Lent, and also explains the other part of Jesus’ identity, which is His sacred humanity, which He offered in sacrifice on the Cross for our salvation.  How these two go together—on the one hand, the everlasting glory of Jesus’ divinity, and on the other, the temporary suffering of Jesus in His humanity—is the heart of today’s Gospel passage.

One of the greatest modern works of Catholic devotional reading is a work titled Divine Intimacy.  The author—Father Gabriel—was a 20th century Carmelite friar.  In one of his meditations in this work, Father Gabriel notes that the glory of Jesus’ divinity, which shone forth at the Transfiguration, would have shone fully from His birth onwards, had Jesus allowed it to do so.  But He did not allow that, just like what He does not allow at the end of today’s Gospel passage after the Transfiguration is over: Jesus charges the three apostles, “Do not tell the vision to anyone until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”  Throughout His earthly life, Jesus wanted to resemble us sinners as much as possible by appearing “in the likeness of sinful flesh”[1], as Saint Paul put it in his Letter to the Romans.

However, we need to back up. Right before the events of today’s Gospel passage, Jesus had predicted to His apostles His Passion and Death.  St. Peter refused to accept this, declaring, “God forbid, Lord!  No such thing shall ever happen to you.”  Jesus did not take this lying down, but instead replied, “Get behind me, Satan!  You are an obstacle to me.  You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”[2]

Jesus’ harshness, which He considered justified given the importance of the point, is reinforced by what Jesus says next:  “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.  For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”[3]  That leads right into today’s Gospel passage, and the glory of the Transfiguration.

Jesus followed His difficult message—both about His own impending Passion and Death, and the need for His disciples to give up their lives For Him—by revealing one glimpse of His glory to Peter, James, and John.  But as heavenly as this glory appeared to Peter, who wanted to pitch tent and rest there, Jesus was making a larger point.  Father Gabriel in Divine Intimacy makes two interesting connections between the Transfiguration on Mt. Tabor and the Crucifixion on Mt. Calvary.  “Moses and [Elijah] appeared on Thabor on either side of the Savior”[4], just as on Calvary two thieves appeared on either side of Him.  And as the thieves on Calvary spoke with Jesus about His death, so St. Luke in his account of the Transfiguration tells us that Moses and Elijah talked with Jesus about His approaching Passion.[5]

So what’s the first point that Jesus is trying to get across to us by His Transfiguration?  Jesus “wished to teach His disciples… that it was impossible… to reach the [eternal] glory of the Transfiguration [in Heaven] without passing through suffering.”  We might say that these two are intertwined:  eternal glory and temporary suffering.  “It was the same lesson that [Jesus] would give later to the two disciples at Emmaus [on the day of Jesus’ Resurrection]:  ‘Ought not Christ to have suffered these things and so to enter into His glory?’ What has been disfigured by sin cannot regain its original supernatural beauty except by way of purifying suffering.”[6]

Today’s Gospel’s first point is that we cannot avoid suffering if we’re going to follow Jesus. The second point is about how the glory of the Transfiguration is part of our ordinary Christian lives in the 21st century.  This point has to do with what theology calls “spiritual consolations”.  You could describe spiritual consolations as small gifts of grace that God gives whenever He chooses.  Spiritual consolations are above and beyond the graces we receive through the sacraments and private prayer.  These spiritual consolations may take many different forms, and God gives them for various reasons, but He always gives them as pure gifts.  They’re sort of like a husband giving his wife roses, not on her birthday, and not on their anniversary, but on a random Tuesday, “just because”.

Father Gabriel in his work Divine Intimacy explains that “[s]piritual consolations are never an end in themselves, and we should neither desire them nor try to retain them for our own satisfaction. … To Peter, who wanted to stay on Thabor in the sweet vision of the transfigured Jesus, God Himself replied by inviting [Peter] to listen to and follow the teachings of His beloved Son.”[7]  And what had that Son just taught?  That Son had just taught Peter and all His disciples that He—Jesus Himself—must suffer and die, and that each of them, and each of us, must deny himself, take up his own cross, and follow Jesus to Calvary.  That’s the only way to the glory of Heaven.

Father Gabriel continues:  “God does not console us for our entertainment, but rather for our encouragement, for our strengthening, for the increase of our generosity in suffering for love of Him.”  Then Father Gabriel turns back to today’s Gospel passage.

“The vision [of the Transfiguration] disappeared; the apostles raised their eyes and saw nothing [except] Jesus alone, and with ‘Jesus alone’, they came down from the mountain.  This is what we must always seek and it must be sufficient for us:  Jesus alone…  Everything else—consolations, helps, friendships (even spiritual ones), … esteem, encouragement…—may be good to the extent that God permits us to enjoy them.  He very often makes use of them to encourage us in our weakness; but if, through certain circumstances, His divine Hand takes all these things away, we should not be upset or disturbed.

“It is precisely at such times that we can prove to God more than ever… that He is our All and that He alone suffices.  On these occasions the loving soul finds itself in a position to give God one of the finest proofs of its love:  to be faithful to Him, to trust in Him, and to persevere in its resolution to give all….  The soul may be in darkness, that is, subject to misunderstanding, bitterness, material and spiritual solitude combined with interior desolation.  [When you reach this point, the] time has come to repeat, ‘Jesus alone’, to come down from Thabor with Him, and to follow Him with the Apostles even to Calvary ….”[8]

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[1] Romans 8:3.

[2] Matthew 16:22,23.

[3] Matthew 16:24-25.

[4] Divine Intimacy, 309.

[5] Luke 9:30-31.

[6] Divine Intimacy, 310, quoting Luke 24:26.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid., 310-311.

CLICK ON THE COVER BELOW FOR MORE ABOUT DIVINE INTIMACY.
Please note that Father Gabriel lived before the Second Vatican Council. His meditations are arranged according to the liturgical calendar used during his life.