Happy Friday Everybody,
Today begins our weekly Little Triduum and, it being Lent, I feel the triduumness (triduumity?) more sharply than I do in Ordinary Time; I suppose that is because it is ensconced in this penitential season. With heightened awareness from our sacrifices during this holy season, let us read the upcoming Sunday Gospel in the Light of the Grave:
This Sunday's Gospel is Matthew 17: 1-9 (from the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible)
And after six days Jesus took with him Peter and James and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain apart. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his garments became white as light. And behold, there appeared to him Moses and Elijah, talking with him. And Peter said to Jesus, “Lord it is well that we are here; if you wish, I will make three booths here, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.”
He was still speaking, when behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.” When the disciples heard this, they fell on their faces, and were filled with awe.
But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Rise and have no fear.” And when they lifted up their eyes they saw no one but Jesus only.
And as they were coming down the mountain, Jesus commanded them, “tell no one the vision, until the son of man is raised from the dead.”
Speaking of feeling things more sharply, in 2018 at this very time of year, I ran my left hand through my table saw.
I was transfigured.
Unlike Jesus’ transfiguration, mine did not emit a glorious light that led my companions (my wife and children) to fall on their faces. Rather, it emitted blood that led my sons, to their everlasting credit, to help me recover my missing digits in our woodshop, which we gathered up for me to bring along to the hospital. In the three days I spent there I tried to offer up my relatively minor suffering in union with Our Lord’s redemptive offering of himself.
It changed my experience of pain; through this I realized that -- while Peter, James and John were specially gifted with a glimpse of Jesus’ pure divinity on Mount Tabor -- our suffering rightly viewed makes us privy to the understanding that Christ’s victory over the grave, and ours when lived in union with him, is a way more vivid reality than the ultimately impotent specter of death.