Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Within our hearts, an abyss exists. So deep, profound, and mysterious, it is insatiable. Authors call it the divine void, a longing in our heart for a transcendent fulfillment.
This abyss exists so an interpersonal and interdependent relationship with another whose love is so immense can fill the void. Made for the other, only a person who longs for the same interpersonal and interdependent relationship can complete and complement our deepest longing. Such is marriage in which two individuals see their unique differences only to recognize the other completing and complementing. This union joins two bodies, hearts, minds, and souls into one. From this union comes the fruits of love, another person who also seeks and longs for an interpersonal and interdependent relationship.
Yet, marriage, that mysterious sacrament which induces love to begin and flourish, cannot completely fulfill. The other, with whom we share love, is finite. They too are limited. Though it seems perfect, it is an incomplete love. We desire more, an infinite love that has no limits.
Our capacity to love is an infinite desire, not finite. Finding a finite person to love awakens in us a longing for Infinite Love. We call this infinite love God, for God is Love(1 Joh 4:7). His love has the power to transform and transfigure glorifying our lowly bodies filled with unruly desires and passions. No earthly love can transfigure our finite selves into an eternal, infinite, glorified self. Yet, God’s love can.
Isaiah portrays God’s love as a young man marries a virgin, “as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride” (Is 62:5). Marriage, the physical union of man and wife, foreshadows the mystical union of God wants with his people. Man and woman long to be one, fruitful, fertile filling the earth with blessing (Gen 1:28). Their physical union opens the way for the mystical union. This mystical union transcends our natural union revealing a supernatural experience. In this transcendence, their hearts become transfigured. Transfigured by love, they radiate grace, that self-giving love which transfigures them filling the divine void.
Coming as a man, St. Paul tells us: “Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word” (Eph 5:25-26). Jesus longs to transfigure humanity making us appear as the spotless bride, “without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish” (Eph 5:27). This revelation becomes real at the transfiguration.
Appearing as just another man, Jesus transfigures, as the Greek word would indicates metamorphosizes. He radically radiates his divine power, majesty, and glory. So dazzling, no earthly experience portrays Who and What Jesus is. He is the fulness of all being. He is the Glory of the Lord. He is the perfection Who has the power to perfect. He fulfills our deepest longing with an interpersonal and interdependent relationship through which we are divinized. Divinized, our love binds with his divine love which has no limits, restrictions, or imperfections. His Divine Love transforms our natural being making us “partakers of his divine nature” (2 Pet 1:4).
The Transfiguration unveils this mystery of our divine void. As creatures created limited and finite longing for infinite love, we find it when we experience our own transfiguration into Christ. In his letter, St. John who witnessed the first transfiguration explains the transformation that takes place when we allow Jesus’ transfiguration to touch our very being.
Beloved, we are God’s children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is (1 Jn 3:2).
Becoming children of God, adopted by the Spirit given at baptism, gives us a divine identity. No longer are we children of blood, nor of the flesh, nor the will of man, but we “become children of God” (John 1: 12). As children of God, we have a new nature, a divine nature no longer fallen and corrupt but perfected by God’s grace making us new in Christ.
Jesus appears glorified and majestic upon the Mount beholding not only the giver of the Law, Moses and the prophet of prophets, Elijah, but also beholds the Beatific Vision. The Beatific Vision is more than a mystery, some sadly declare it a myth, but is the Divine Reality that penetrates the void in our hearts. Jesus fulfills our divine void with his Divine Presence. This mystery which is beyond all understanding “keeps our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus” (Phil 4:7). Minds and hearts transformed by Christ’s transfiguration; we profess Jesus to be
God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father (Nicene Creed).
Seeking to understand this mystery of the Beatific Vision, the Catechism expresses this insight.
Because of his transcendence, God cannot be seen as he is, unless he himself opens up his mystery to man’s immediate contemplation and gives him the capacity for it. The Church calls this contemplation of God in his heavenly glory “the beatific vision”(CCC, # 1028).
In the Transfiguration, Jesus constantly in contact with the Father and Son, reveals, we too have the capacity to be in constant contact with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We too behold, as did Peter, James, and John, the majesty and glory of God speaking, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him” (Mt 17:5).
By relation then, we who are born of the Spirit, baptized into Christ, partake in the transfiguration. What happens to Jesus upon the Mount, happens to us too. We receive, according to our capacity, the fullness of God’s glory, the Beatific Vision. We, as did the apostles saw, become dazzling white, whiter than snow, radiating light from Divine Light, divinity from true Divinity and share in the divine essence as much as we are possible.
Participating in the mystery of the Beatific Vision, St. Paul portrays Jesus as the “imago dei” the Image of the Father ``(Col 1:15) Who comes to restore our “imago dei”. We too receive the light, truth, and substance of God, grace upon grace, in our souls. Not consubstantial, made of the same substance of the divine nature as is Jesus, we partake or share God’s essence through adoption. Our adoption beholds God, face to face. We too experience a profound mysterious transformation when we profess Jesus as truly Divine as well as truly human.
Jesus takes upon Himself our human nature, He becomes on like us, because all of creation has fallen from its original state. It is, if I can say, de-transfigured. De-transfigured, Jesus seeks to transfigure all of creation.
St. Paul teaches that all fall short of the glory of God, but God refuses to leave us alone in our dis-grace. He comes with a deep, profound, and mysterious desire to restore what is lost because of sin. To do so, Jesus dies and in dying, Jesus unites his death with ours, but in rising, Jesus destroys our death and restores our life. He then the first born of dead has supremacy, not only as Creator, but as Redeemer Who transfigures not only our fallen humanity, but all of creation. All of creation, the whole universe., but especially us, “will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Rom 8:21).
In this resurrection, which the Transfiguration foreshadows, Jesus reconciles and restores all of humanity. For those who believe, Jesus equips with a knowledge and wisdom that accompanies our transfiguration. So eloquently put, St. Paul makes this his prayer for us who belief.
May you attain full knowledge of God’s will through perfect wisdom and spiritual insight. Then you will lead a life worthy of the Lord and pleasing to him in every way. You will multiply good works of very sort and grow in the knowledge of God. By the might of his glory you will be endowed with strength needed to stand fast, even to endure joyfully whatever may come (Col 1: 9b-11; taken from Breviary, Week 1 Monday Evening Prayer).
Endowed with the Divine Presence, our divine void receives “power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing” just as Jesus did (Rev 5:12). Now transfigured, restored in Christ, we have that infinite interpersonal and interdependent love completing and complementing us.
Fulfilled, no longer do we wander or wonder who we are or why we are. We are made in the image of Christ destined for glorification. Our glorification stemming from Jesus Who became one like us so we could become one like Him. This similitude not only reconciles our hearts with God, Our Father, but also resurrects our mortal bodies as St. Paul reveals, “Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven” (1 Co 15:49). Through the Transfiguration, we not only see our divine dignity, but as St. Augustine remarks, “Give thanks that we have become not only Christians, but Christ himself” CCC, # 795).