For this Sunday's Readings at Mass, CLICK HERE.
​
Sunday Homily 16 March
Today’s Gospel, the story of the transfiguration, is one of those big stories from Scripture. It’s a mountaintop experience of dazzling white clothes, Elijah and Moses talking with Christ, and a cloud from which God speaks.
It’s a story that can feel a bit fantastical, a bit far removed from our experience to have any meaning for us. And yet, it’s one of the few Gospel stories, maybe even the only one, that comes up twice in our Readings every year, which suggests it’s quite important and worthy of our attention.
​
I would like to concentrate on one of the words spoken by God the Father to Peter, James and John out of the cloud: this is my Son, my Chosen One, listen to him - the word Listen.
We live in an age of noise and sound, so much sound that it is difficult to listen. But the Gospel today invites us to take God’s command seriously and listen.
Listen to each other, which is not always easy. Listening is an arduous art. Many conversations are not conversations at all. Either they are monologues where one waits for the other to finish. Or conversations become debates where one listens only to disagree or find fault.
To listen effectively is to put oneself into another person’s mind and heart.
But the problem is that to listen involves cost. It costs time when often you don’t have much time to give. When you listen you take on another person’s problems when you have enough problems of your own. Listening means getting involved.
And so to listen to someone truly is an act of love. As someone else put it - to listen is wonderfully human and splendidly Christian.
In particular, today’s Gospel invites us to listen to Christ. This is the command of the Father from the cloud. Listen to Him. This is what Peter, James and John were told to do. Because here is at once God’s Son and God’s revelation to us, as St Paul writes in his letter to the Hebrews: “In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son.”
Christ is the point of personal contact between God and humankind. But how do we listen to him? A document from Vatican II reads: “Christ is present in his Word since it is Christ himself who speaks when the holy Scriptures are read in the church.”
The Psalms in the Bible often poetically declare that there is no blade of grass, no flower, no range of mountains, and no sea that does not speak of God. If I miss the message it’s because I’m not tuned into God. I’m not listening.
And so, if we haven’t yet done anything for Lent, but want to do something, perhaps leave aside the diet and the giving up. Simply try to listen. Read Christ’s word. Listen to Christ’s word. Obey the command of God, and listen.