As the community had no water, they held a council against Moses and Aaron. The people contended with Moses, exclaiming, “Would that we too had perished with our kinsmen in the Lord’s presence! Why have you brought the LORD’s assembly into this desert where we and our livestock are dying? Why did you lead us out of Egypt, only to bring us to this wretched place which has neither grain nor figs nor vines nor pomegranates? Here there is not even water to drink!” But Moses and Aaron went away from the assembly to the entrance of the meeting tent, where they fell prostrate.
Then the glory of the LORD appeared to them, and the LORD said to Moses, “Take your staff and assemble the community, you and your brother Aaron, and in their presence order the rock to yield its waters. From the rock you shall bring forth water for the congregation and their livestock to drink.” So Moses took his staff from its place before the LORD, as he was ordered. He and Aaron assembled the community in front of the rock, where he said to them, “Listen to me, you rebels! Are we to bring water for you out of this rock?” Then, raising his hand, Moses struck the rock twice with his staff, and water gushed out in abundance for the people and their livestock to drink. But the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you were not faithful to me in showing forth my sanctity before the children of Israel, you shall not lead this community into the land I will give them.”
These are the waters of Meribah, where the children of Israel contended against the Lord, and where the LORD revealed his sanctity among them. Numbers 20:1-13
As the world around us looks like it’s falling apart, today’s Feast of the Transfiguration is a welcome reminder there’s glory ahead. Let’s climb that holy mountain to see far and wide. On the mountain of the Transfiguration, Jesus revealed God’s plan for saving the world. “This is my Son, my beloved, listen to him,” God says.
“It is good to be here,” the disciples say in the gospel story, and they invite us to join them. The mystery of the Transfiguration anticipates in a transitory way the glory to come in God’s kingdom. Yes, it will come, beyond anything we know here.
When Jesus is transfigured before the eyes of his disciples on the mountain, two figures talk with him: Elijah and Moses. Why are they there?
They were prophets told by God to free others from slavery, yet they suffered to do it. Appearing with Jesus they’re reminders that glory calls for sacrifice. Jesus suffered so God’s kingdom will come.
Church of the Transfiguration
On the mountain Jesus proclaims that all creation will be transfigured, but first the Messiah must suffer before it takes place.
Garden, Church of the Transfiguration
Years ago I visited Mount Tabor in the Holy Land, traditional site of the transfiguration. Outside the church was a beautiful garden with plants and flowers from all over the world. All creation waits to be transfigured, they say.
The Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord is celebrated by Christian churches all over the world, in the Ukraine, Russia, Syria and the Middle East. Can we bring to that holy mountain today places of war and violence, poverty and homelessness, where glory seems so far away? You will be transfigured too.
” Therefore, since each of us possesses God in his heart and is being transformed into his divine image, we also should cry out with joy: It is good for us to be here – here where all things shine with divine radiance, where there is joy and gladness and exultation; where there is nothing in our hearts but peace, serenity and stillness; where God is seen. For here, in our hearts, Christ takes up his abode together with the Father, saying as he enters: Today salvation has come to this house. With Christ, our hearts receive all the wealth of his eternal blessings, and there where they are stored up for us in him, we see reflected as in a mirror both the first fruits and the whole of the world to come.”
Sermon for the Feast of the Transfiguration, Anastasius of Sinai, bishop
On the summit of the Esquiline Hill, a short distance from the Lateran Basilica, is the church of St. Mary Major, begun in the early 5th century and completed by Pope Sixtus III (432-440.)
Salus Populi Romani, c 5th century
Mary, the mother of Jesus, is honored here as the Mother of God. . In 431, the Council of Ephesus repudiated Nestorius, the patriarch of Constantinople, for refusing to call her “Mother of God.”
The title is important because it safeguards Christian belief in the mystery of the Incarnation: Jesus is God and man, the council said. For the Christian world Mary is the defender of Jesus, her son, who was both human and divine.
Devotion to Mary ran high in the Christian world after the Ephesus council, and churches dedicated to Mary arose everywhere. In the city of Constantinople alone, 250 churches and shrines in her honor were built before the 8th century. Pictures, icons of Mary holding her divine child multiplied, especially in churches of the East, where they became objects of special devotion.
Mary’s title, Mother of God, does not make her a goddess, otherwise how could she have given birth to Christ who is truly human? Yet, she can be called Mother of God, because Jesus who is truly her human son is truly Son of God from all eternity as well.
The 5th century, however, was hardly a good time to build a church in Rome. In 410, Alaric and his Goths shocked the Roman world by sacking a city all thought invincible. In 455 the Vandals under Genseric vandalized Rome. Twice more in the century other barbarian tribes invaded.
In far off Palestine St. Jerome cried out in disbelief at Rome’s misfortunes, which he saw heralding the end of the world. In Africa St. Augustine wrote “The City of God” in response to the followers of Rome’s traditional religions, who said Christian weakness caused the city’s devastation. Christians were not the cause of the city’s misfortunes, St. Augustine wrote; two loves are at work in the world building two cities. One love builds an evil city; Christianity builds the City of God, promoting love and justice.
The English historian Edward Gibbon called this period a time of decline and fall, the end of the Roman Empire. God’s plan does not lead to decline and fall, they say, but to triumph in Christ. God’s plan does not lead to decline and fall, they say, but to triumph in Christ. God’s plan does not lead to decline and fall, this church says. On the walls of St. Mary Major has stories from the Old and New Testaments calling for courage and hope.
In the church of St. Mary Major, Mary appears as Jesus’ mother and closest disciple. To use a phrase of St. Pope John Paul II, this church is “a school of Mary” who teaches mysteries she has learned. A noticeable number of women from the Old and New Testaments surround her: she represents those who seem powerless, but are empowered by God.
The great 13th century mosaic in the church’s apse of Mary crowned by Jesus Christ as heaven’s queen proclaims God’s triumph in her, but also his triumph in the church as well. She is taken up to heaven “to be the beginning and pattern of the church in its perfection, and a sign of hope and comfort for your people on their pilgrim way.” (Preface of the Assumption)
It shouldn’t surprise us that many of the mysteries in which Mary had a special role were first celebrated here as liturgical feasts. The Christmas liturgy, especially the midnight Mass on December 25th , began in this church in the 5th century and spread to other churches of the west.
A replica of the cave under the church of the Nativity at Bethlehem, the traditional site of Jesus’ birth, was constructed here early on.. After the Muslim conquest of the Holy Land in the 7th century, Christian refugees placed relics here purported to be from the crib that bore the Christ Child and relics of St.Matthew, an evangelist who told the story of Jesus birth.
Relics of the Crib from Bethlehem
Besides the Christmas liturgy, other great Marian feasts, such as her Immaculate Conception and Assumption, developed their liturgical forms in this church.
Built on a hill where all could see it, near Rome’s eastern walls so often threatened by barbarian armies, St. Mary Major affirms Christianity’s ultimate answer to its enemies. It is not military might, but the power of faith and love that triumphs in the end.
Visiting St.Mary Major
The church’s 18th century façade was built to enhance the appearance of this important church at a time when many visitors, especially from England and Germany, were traveling to Rome on the Grand Tour to visit its classical and religious sites.
The church’s interior, with its splendid 5th century mosaics along the upper part of the nave, retains its original form better than any other of the major basilicas of Rome.
The Sistine Chapel at the right hand side of the nave was built to house a silver reliquary with relics of the crib brought from the Holy Land in the 8th century. Two popes, Sixtus V and Pius V are buried there.
The Borghese Chapel at the left hand side of the nave honors the ancient icon of the Virgin and Child,”Salus populist Romani”, that Roman Christians have reverenced for centuries. A reproduction of the icon is a nice remembrance to bring home. Pope Francis has requested to be buried here.
The magnificent 13th century mosaic in the apse of the basilica presents the Coronation of Mary in heaven. It’s surrounded by 5th century mosaics depicting scenes from the birth of Jesus and the life of Mary.
August 4th is the feast of St. John Vianney, (1786-1859) the patron of parish priests. Born in Lyon, France, he wanted to become a priest but had to wait because of family obligations. He struggled to become a priest because of his limited education.
Once ordained he was made pastor of a small parish in an out of the way place called Ars. “He cared for this parish in a marvelous way by his preaching , his mortification, prayer and good works,” his biography says. He was especially good hearing confessions and soon people were coming from everywhere to Ars.
Good to pray for parish priests, struggling to minister in the church today as it goes through difficult times of change and questioning.We need more John Vianneys.
John Vianney knew the value of prayer. He wanted to become like St. Francis of Assisi and St. Colette who “used to see our Lord and talk to him as we talk to one another. How unlike them we are! How often we come to church and have no idea what to do and what to ask for. We know how to speak to another human being, but not to God. “
His simple sermons challenged and changed those who heard him. Hurray for simple sermons and priests who preach them.
A Catechism on prayer, by St John Mary Vianney
The noble task of man, to pray and to love
Consider, children, a Christian’s treasure is not on earth, it is in heaven. Well then, our thoughts should turn to where our treasure is.
Man has a noble task: that of prayer and love. To pray and to love, that is the happiness of man on earth.
Prayer is nothing else than union with God. When the heart is pure and united with God it is consoled and filled with sweetness; it is dazzled by a marvellous light. In this intimate union God and the soul are like two pieces of wax moulded into one; they cannot any more be separated. It is a very wonderful thing, this union of God with his insignificant creature, a happiness passing all understanding.
We had deserved to be left incapable of praying; but God in his goodness has permitted us to speak to him. Our prayer is an incense that is delightful to God.
My children, your hearts are small, but prayer enlarges them and renders them capable of loving God. Prayer is a foretaste of heaven, an overflowing of heaven. It never leaves us without sweetness; it is like honey, it descends into the soul and sweetens everything. In a prayer well made, troubles vanish like snow under the rays of the sun.
Prayer makes time seem to pass quickly, and so pleasantly that one fails to notice how long it is. When I was parish priest of Bresse, once almost all my colleagues were ill, and as I made long journeys I used to pray to God, and, I assure you, the time did not seem long to me. There are those who lose themselves in prayer, like a fish in water, because they are absorbed in God. There is no division in their hearts. How I love those noble souls! Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Colette saw our Lord and spoke to him as we speak to one another.
As for ourselves, how often do we come to church without thinking what we are going to do or for what we are going to ask. And yet, when we go to call upon someone, we have no difficulty in remembering why it was we came. Some appear as if they were about to say to God: ‘I am just going to say a couple of words, so I can get away quickly.’ I often think that when we come to adore our Lord we should get all we ask if we asked for it with a lively faith and a pure heart.
The Lectionary Readings this week from the Book of Numbers and the Book of Deuteronomy continue to describe the journey of the Israelites to the Promised Land led by Moses. Not an easy journey, not an easy people.
They grumble, they/re jealous, they doubt. They’re hardly heroic as they journey on. Listen to their laments: “Would that we had meat for food! We remember the fish we used to eat without cost in Egypt and the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. But now we are famished; we see nothing before us but this manna.”
Moses is hardly a secure leader. unaffected by them:
“Why do you treat your servant so badly?” Moses asked the LORD.”Why are you so displeased with me that you burden me with all this people?Was it I who conceived all this people? Or was it I who gave them birth, that you tell me to carry them at my bosom, like a foster father carrying an infant,to the land you have promised under oath to their fathers?Where can I get meat to give to all this people? For they are crying to me, ‘Give us meat for our food.’ I cannot carry all this people by myself,for they are too heavy for me If this is the way you will deal with me, then please do me the favor of killing me at once, so that I need no longer face this distress.”
Exhausted by the journey, Moses has hqd enough.
Are the new people of God so different from their ancestors in the desert? Are its leaders better than Moses?
One reason we read the Old Testament is it’s a mirror for the New.
For this week’s homily please watch the video below.
( I preached this homily today at the Maritime Academy in Kings Point, NY)
For the last four Sundays our readings from St. Luke describe the journey Jesus takes from Galilee to Jerusalem where he’ll suffer and die and rise again.
He calls people to follow him, some don’t want to follow him at all. Some don’t understand what following him means.
Two weeks ago in our Sunday gospel, for example, a teacher of the law asks Jesus
“What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus tells him to love God and love his neighbor.
You get the impression the teacher of the law isn’t really interested in Jesus’ answer. Rather he’s trying to make a point. He wants to discredit Jesus, or perhaps he just wants to show off what he knows. Some people today are like him.
Today’s gospel is about another person who approaches Jesus: “Someone in the crowd said to Jesus “Teacher, tell my brother to share the inheritance with me.”
He’s not interested in following Jesus either, he just wants Jesus to back him up. He’s interested in money. He’s fighting with his brother over an inheritance–not an unusual story, by the way. A lot of families fight about money.
Jesus tells the man “I’m not here as your lawyer or financial advisor.” Then, he cautions him about greed. “Life is not about all the things you have.”
He continues with the story of a rich farmer feverishly building barns for storing his wealth and his harvest: “This will do it! I can eat, drink and be merry for the rest of my life.”
“You fool,” God says. “You and your wealth can go in a night.”
The rich farmer only thinks about himself, not about others or the land he farms.
Now, suppose the parable became a parable about a fisherman who makes his living on the sea, or about someone like you pursuing a career on the sea. How do you look at your role as maritime people. Just a job? The sea just a place to make money?
Or do you have a call to care for the sea?
Tomorrow some friends and I are going up to Auriesville and Fonda, two towns along the Mohawk River that centuries ago were Indian villages. Auriesville was where a Jesuit priest, Isaac Jogues, and three companions were martyred in the 17th century. St. Kateri Takakwitha was born in the Indian village of Auriesville and lived for 24 years in nearby Fonda.
The native peoples in those villages on the Mohawk River centuries ago likely came to fish and trade in the waters here around New York City. The waters teemed with fish then. New York Harbor was home to some of the largest oyster beds on the planet. The early European explorers marveled at our harbor, its rivers and waterways, a place of paradise.
What are its waters like now? Mostly polluted. Still a trading place for ships great and small, but no fish and or oysters worth eating. Greed and human ignorance have taken away valuable water resources from our city. We made water a commodity.
Greed and human ignorance threaten the waters of our world today. So many regard them only as commodity to be plundered for whatever minerals we need.
“If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.”
Is God’s word meant for you? Today’s psalm says it is. The native peoples long ago delighted in the waters you look at every day. They cared for them better than we do.
Your life is more than making money and eating, drinking and making merry. Learn about the waters of the earth. Care for them. They need caring for.
Alphonsus Liguori (1696-1787) was born near Naples, Italy, into a noble family. He began life as a lawyer but gave up law to become a priest and devote himself to bringing the gospel to the poor. His sermons and instructions were simple. “I never preached a sermon that the poorest old woman in the congregation didn’t understand,” he claimed. In 1732 he founded the Redemptorists, the Congregation of the Holy Redeemer.
A prolific writer, poet and musician, Alphonsus authored a series of devotional books on Mary and important works on moral theology. He advocated leniency and mercy towards people, steering a course between severity and laxity. In hearing confessions, he said he never denied anyone absolution. We can see why he’s an example for pastoral workers today.
In 1762, he became bishop of Sant Agata dei Goti, a small diocese near Naples, where he worked to reform the clergy and renew its people in their faith. In 1775 he resigned his bishopric because of his health, but continued writing religious and devotional tracts till his death in 1787. In 1816 he was canonized by Pope Gregory XVI. Pope Pius IX declared him a doctor of the church in 1871.
“Hasn’t God a claim on our love? From all eternity God has loved us. ‘ I first loved you. You had not yet appeared in the light of day, nor did the world yet exist, but already I loved you. From all eternity I have loved you.’
God gave us a soul endowed with memory, intellect and will; he gave us a body equipped with the senses; it was for us that he created heaven and earth and all things. The truth is the eternal Father went so far as to give us his only Son.
By giving us his Son, whom he did not spare precisely so that he might spare us, he bestowed on us at once every good: grace, love and heaven; for all these goods are certainly inferior to the Son. He who did not spare his own Son, but handed him over for all of us: how could he fail to give us along with his Son all good things?”
The prayer for his feast day points out it’s our turn to do what Alphonse’s did:
O God who constantly raise up in your church new examples of virtue, grant that we may follow so closely in the footsteps of the Bishop Saint Alphonsus in his zeal for souls as to attain the same rewards that are his in heaven.
Conversion experiences of saints like Ignatius Loyola are important. His conversion came about as he was recuperating from a serious battle wound in his family’s castle.He was looking for something to read, and the only books his sister-in-law had available were a Life of Christ and Lives of the Saints.
The Life of Christ, by Ludolph of Saxony, was likely the book he read. It invites the reader to enter the gospel story, and so Ignatius, the battle hardened soldier who already knew the basics of faith from the time of his Baptism, began to know Jesus in another way. The soldier who showed no mercy, learned mercy. The man trained to be hard and unfeeling, became tender by knowing Jesus in his Passion. He became a soldier of another kind.
The Passion of Jesus was the gospel story Ignatius reflected on most . Go in and stand with someone there, the book said, and see what they see and listen to them. Most likely Ignatius the soldier would stand with the soldiers there, familiar as he was with those hard, efficient men finishing the job and anxious to head back to the barracks Yet the day Jesus was crucified, one of them, the one in charge, suddenly saw Another hanging on the cross with the criminals of the day.”Truly, this man was the Son of God.”
Everything, everyone else on that dark hill changed then: the leaders shouting for death, the soldiers finishing up, the curious passing by, the women looking on from a distance. . Everything, everyone changed. The earth quaked and the tombs were opened. The Son of God saw them all as his Father’s children.
Too much to take in? Too much for the mind and moreso for the heart. That’s why the mystery of Jesus, especially his Passion, became a never-ending school for Ignatius. “Truly, this man was the Son of God,” who humbled himself to come among us, accepting even death on a cross. God loves us so.
It’s a school for our feelings too. Feelings of inferiority or superiority, resentment and judgment, futility and denial. The hard soldier and the women looking on learned compassion together. The passion of Jesus is a school of compassion, where we learn to see things and feel things as he did.
The antiphon for morning prayer for his feast sums up his experience. “Would that I might know Christ and the power of his resurrection and that I might share in his sufferings.”
The saints, from every time and place, invited Ignatius to be a disciple of Jesus too. You didn’t have to be a fisherman from Galilee to follow Jesus, they said, or a learned scholar. Just follow him day by day, And so Ignatius, the soldier, accepted the daily graces he was given.
Born in Spain, Ignatius Loyola was a soldier, severely wounded in battle, who experienced a remarkable conversion during his recuperation. He became the founder of the Jesuits. Here’s the story of his conversion described by an early follower :
Ignatius was passionately fond of reading worldly books of fiction and tales of knight-errantry. When he felt he was getting better, he asked for some of these books to pass the time. But no book of that sort could be found in the house; instead they gave him a life of Christ and a collection of the lives of saints written in Spanish.
By constantly reading these books he began to be attracted to what he found narrated there. Sometimes in the midst of his reading he would reflect on what he had read. Yet at other times he would dwell on many of the things which he had been accustomed to dwell on previously.
But at this point our Lord came to his assistance, insuring that these thoughts were followed by others which arose from his current reading. While reading the life of Christ our Lord or the lives of the saints, he would reflect and reason with himself: “What if I should do what Saint Francis or Saint Dominic did?” In this way he let his mind dwell on many thoughts; they lasted a while until other things took their place. Then those vain and worldly images would come into his mind and remain a long time. This sequence of thoughts persisted with him for a long time.
But there was a difference. When Ignatius reflected on worldly thoughts, he felt intense pleasure; but when he gave them up out of weariness, he felt dry and depressed. Yet when he thought of living the rigorous sort of life he knew the saints had lived, he not only experienced pleasure when he actually thought about it, but even after he dismissed these thoughts, he still experienced great joy. Yet he did not pay attention to this, nor did he appreciate it until one day, in a moment of insight, he began to marvel at the difference.
Then he understood his experience: thoughts of one kind left him sad, the others full of joy. And this was the first time he applied a process of reasoning to his religious experience. Later on, when he began to formulate his spiritual exercises, he used this experience as an illustration to explain the doctrine he taught his disciples on the discernment of spirits.
From Ignatius loyola’s own words, taken down by Luis González
The Victor's Place 