Genesis 12:1-4
Psalm 33
2 Timothy 1:8-10
Matthew 17:1-9
LISTEN
I love this passage and wanted to come up with all kinds of profound things to share, but the message I’m getting is simply to LISTEN to Jesus. Peter, my beloved, impulsive and big-mouth Peter, blurts out some crazy thing about what he can DO for the Lord. But God shuts him up with an overwhelming sense of presence. And all three fall prostrate, flat on their faces. It seems that I listen best when I fall flat on my face. When I hit rock bottom and [duh] finally get it that there’s only one God, and it’s not I, then I’m far more eager to listen and take suggestions. God doesn’t want me to DO anything. God wants me to listen. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that I can do that will “earn” God’s love or make me “worthy” of God’s presence in my life. I just need to listen, and when it’s time that God speaks and expects my response, then, yes, I’ll need to do whatever it is. But I’ll never be able to hear that if I don’t start now to tune in and stay quiet. God’s message to me today is simple…Shut up and listen!
With God our Creator, Savior and Sanctifier, we never get what we are expecting; we always get more than we bargained for. We are reminded of this with 75 year old Abraham and Paul’s letter to young Timothy “Bear your share of the hardship which the gospel entails”.
We are called to a holy life according to God’s design, not our designs . . . the design of God held out to us through the Paschal Mystery of Jesus. This is the heart of today’s readings and the depth charge of the Transfiguration. God has robbed death of its power and has brought life and immortality.
Today is about proclaiming the glory of God in spite of the suffering that comes before, during and after. The glory will be there. The cross will there. We must struggle to be true, to disappear into God’s plan . . . Paschal Mystery . . . so that the presence of God can be revealed.