Homily for the Transfiguration of the Lord (A)
At the end of today’s Gospel reading, Jesus tells Peter, James, and John to keep a secret. A Jesuit friend once wisely observed, “Most people can keep secrets. It’s the people they tell who can’t.”
This is just one of a number of times throughout his public ministry when Jesus asks his disciples not to tell people about the miracles they’ve seen. Since Jesus is constantly urging us to spread the Good News, this seems strange. Why would Jesus not want stories of his miracles to spread?
I suspect that Jesus does not want these miracles to distract from his mission. The miracles that we read about in the Gospels that stick with us and we love so much—the healing of the paralytic, the wedding at Cana, the healing of the man born blind, the raising of Lazarus—show Jesus’ compassion and his power, but they are nothing compared to the transformation that Jesus works through the cross. When, for example, Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, Lazarus will die again. But when Jesus rises after being crucified, he opens for us a new life, a new way of being, that will never end.
The miracles that Jesus performs before his death and resurrection—and I’d include today’s feast, the Transfiguration as one—are like the previews they show in movie theaters before the feature film. Jesus doesn’t want us to get so excited by the pictures of popcorn and soft drinks that we run out to the concession stand and forget about the movie. This is not to say that we should fast forward through first part of the Gospel. But we can’t stop halfway through; we can never be followers of Christ if we stop before the cross.
Continue reading “The Transfiguration and previews for the main event: homily for the Feast of the Transfiguration”
Tony Lusvardi, S.J. 