733 James I. Harrison Jr. Parkway East - Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35405

Browsing Father Michael Deering's Sunday Homilies

After the Struggle, Glory awaits ... Victory will be Sweet!

Homily originally presented on March 8, 2020

 

After the Struggle, Glory awaits ... Victory will be Sweet!

 

It’s common in Sports, for the coach to give his or her players a pep-talk

right before they enter into a big game.

The purpose of the pep talk is to get the team focused on the task at hand ...

and to reassure them that they are quite capable of attaining victory.

 

High schools and colleges go even further - having “pep-rallies” before big games.

This is where the students, the faculty, the parents, the band and the cheerleaders ...

gather together to commend and inspire the players, and cheer them on to victory.

 

Pep rallies help in several ways:

  1. they get the players to hear the support that they have from the home crowd,

               

  1. they get the players to visualize the prize that comes with victory, and to

think how sweet it will be to bring home a new trophy or hang a new banner.

 

  1. they get the players motivated and filled with resolve ...

to go forward and attain the victory they desire

 

Yes, Pep talks and Pep-rallies really work to motivate players to do their best.

 

Well, can you imagine getting a Pep Talk not from a Coachbut from God?

 

That would be mighty special indeed ...  

and that is exactly what we hear take place in two of our Readings today …

people getting Pep talksfrom God!

 

In our First Reading from Genesis, God tells Abram to go forth from his land to

a land that He will show him. And He promises him what victory would look like

saying : “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you.”

 

Wow, what a wonderful reward! Scripture says,

      “Abram went as the Lord directed him.”

 

And in our Gospel today, Jesus is transfigured before His Apostles to show them what victory will look like for Him and them … having a glorified, radiant body.

 

And the voice of the Father announces to Peter, James & John, what they must do,

“This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.”

 

Short and to the point, the Apostles heard this pep-talk from the real Head Coach, God the Father in Heaven, who first of all affirmed that Jesus was the Son of God, and then encouraged them to listen to His guidance.

 

 

 

Tradition has it that Jesus’ death took place 40 days after His Transfiguration, which is why we proclaim the Transfiguration early in the 40 days of Lent.  

 

Knowing that His Crucifixion was coming, it makes sense that Jesus would want

to reassure and motivate his lead Apostles for the challenges they would experience in the days ahead … from the scandal of the Cross to ...

the persecution of Believers ... and eventually to their own Martyrdom.

 

Jesus, the Son of the Head Coach, also gave His Team Captains, the lead Apostles, a strong boost of hope and reassurance by letting them to see Him in conversation with Moses and Elijah ... showing them that Moses, who died 1200 years earlier ...

and Elijah who died 800 years earlier ... were not really dead to God!

 

No, no, no!    They were very much alive ... and they were ... talking to the Lord!

 

This was solid proof that Jesus’ pledge of rising from the dead was the truth ...

and therefore ...  if they listened to Him ... and remained faithful to Him ...

they too would be able to live on after death ... and converse with Him!

 

So you see, the 3 Apostles, Peter, James and John,

actually took part in quite a Special Pep-rally that day, high atop a mountain.

 

It’s there that they experienced the ultimate Prize ... The Trinity!

 

They saw Jesus, the Son, reveal his divine glory,

They saw the bright cloud indicating the presence of the Holy Spirit, and

They heard the voice of God the Father!

 

How blessed they were to see and hear God with their own eyes and ears.

 

To appreciate how special this was,  we need to recall that neither Moses nor Elijah

were blessed to see the face of God in their day!

 

Scripture says,

Moses hid his face when the Lord passed by and all Moses got to see was His back.      

And, Scripture says,

Elijah covered his face when he experienced the still-small voice of God …

so, he never saw God’s face.

 

Both had supernatural experiences, but both were incomplete!

 

But here at the Transfiguration, Moses & Elijah actually got to see God’s face

as they were both in conversation with Jesus, the Son of God!

 

And what were they conversing about? The New Exodus! Jesus’ upcoming departure ... not from Egypt ... like the Exodus of Moses ...... but from Jerusalem!

 

Jesus knew He would leave His Apostles after His Crucifixion and death.

And after He rose from the dead,

Jesus  knew He would leave His Apostles once again by His Ascension.

 

So, the Apostles would be left on their own with the task of

gathering and growing the Church ... all the Believers in the Risen Lord!

 

Jesus knew they would be persecuted for their belief in Him ...

and that they would be martyred for their allegiance to Him.

 

So He wanted to show them what was on the other side of their struggleglory!

 

Pope St. Leo the Great said, “The great reason for this transfiguration

was to remove the scandal of the cross from the hearts of his disciples,

and to prevent the humiliation of his voluntary suffering from disturbing the faith

of those who had witnessed the surpassing glory that lay concealed.”

 

Moreover, Pope Leo says,

“(Jesus) was providing a firm foundation for the hope of holy Church.

The whole body of Christ was to understand the kind of transformation

that it would receive as his gift. The members of that body were to look forward to

a share in that glory which first blazed out in Christ their head.”

 

Jesus spoke of this when he foretold the splendor of his coming saying,

“Then the just will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.”

 

St. Paul would later say, “I consider that the sufferings of the present time are nothing compared to the future glory that is to be revealed in us.”

 

As any couch might say, the game will be tough, but the victory will be sweet.”

 

The Transfiguration was a very special grace for those Three Apostles.

Mere men got to behold the glory of God!

 

They had to be beside themselves with joy, which is why Jesus had to rein them in

as they came down the mountain and instruct them

to not say anything to anybody ... until He was raised from the dead.

 

The way the Apostles felt that day … full of hope and confidence and enthusiasm

is the very way that we should feel every time we leave Holy Mass!

 

 

After all, Mass is a kind of Pep-Rally of sorts

In Mass, the Liturgy of the Word leads into the Liturgy of the Eucharist

so that we hear God’s reassuring voice and taste His promised glory.

 

His voice is veiled in the voice of the Lectors, the Deacon and the Priest,

And His glory is veiled in the Eucharistic bread and wine.

But He is here just the same!

 

You know, you could even say that the Mass is a two way Pep-Rally.

 

On one hand, we’re gathering to cheer for God by affirming our belief in Him, which we do through our prayers and our songs of: worship and praise and thanks.

 

And on the other hand, God is cheering for us … by affirming His belief in us,

which He does through His word proclaimed and preached ...

and by nourishing us with His Son, The Bread of Life, in Holy Communion.

 

By taking part in this two-way Pep rally ...

we should leave every Mass energized, excited, hopeful and renewed.

 

God knows us well and He knows that we need to be strengthened to overcome the struggles of life that come our way.

That’s why He commands us to gather in Church every week to be reminded of the His Game Plan, His Ground Rules, and His victory, that will be our victory too.

 

What’s essential is that we listen to our Coach. He knows best what we should do!

The Father emphasized this when He announced,

“This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.”

 

That’s how it’s supposed to work, God speaks and we listen and respond.

God guides us and we follow his guidance.

 

Faithfully following God’s will is the reason why Abraham is revered to this day. In our First Reading from Genesis, God says to Abraham,

Go forth from your land … to a land that I will show you.”

 

Now Abraham didn’t have a clue where God was taking him and yet Scripture says,

Abraham went as the Lord directed him.”

 

God said go ... and Abraham went.

 

That happened because Abraham had faith in Goda faith that

God would come through on His promise to make of Him a great nation.

 

 

God makes promises to us too and He wants us to believe in His promises.  

He promises that if we listen to and follow His Son, Jesus,

we will shine like the sun forever in the Kingdom of the Father.

 

St. Paul referred to this promise in our Second Reading,

explaining that Jesus, though his death and resurrection,

destroyed death and brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel.”

 

So life and immortality are available to all of us.

 

What a great promise that is … that even though our bodies die,

we can go on living ... in the presence of the Lord!

 

It’s a promise that we never want to forget, which is why our Holy Father of happy memory, John Paul II, established the Transfiguration as one of the new Mysteries of the Rosary, for our prayer and contemplation.  And how appropriate that he called these new Mysteries, the Luminous mysteries or the Mysteries of Light!

 

When we pray the 4th Luminous Mystery and contemplate the Transfiguration of Jesus, we reflect on the supernatural encouragement that God gave to the Apostles and to all of us.  The Transfiguration was a great spiritual Pep-rally.

 

There, God allowed us to hear His voice and to see the glorified Resurrected Jesus.

That’s the trophy that all of us want … to one day have a glorified body like Jesus,

and be in eternal communion with Him.

 

We will win that prize if we listen to Him.

That means not just hearing the words of the Gospel,

but living them out in our daily lives.

 

That’s why this season of Lent is so important.

It’s during these 40 days prior to the celebration of Jesus’ victory over death that we get the chance to look at our lives and take note of how closely

we’re “listening to the Son of God.” as the Father commanded. 

 

As we enter this 2nd week of Lent,

let’s continue to pray and fast and sacrifice and ask ourselves the questions:

 

How can I listen more closely to Jesus in my life?

 

What do I need to turn away from?    What do I need to do?

 

Let’s hear and follow the words of our Head Coach, who said

Listen to My Son!

 

That means faithfully coming to Church every week to hear the word proclaimed,

 

It means praying every day … listening to his promptings in our heart.

 

Let’s respond like Abraham, who when God told him to go, he went!

 

Listening to our Head Coach, is sure to make us victorious in the game of life.

Comments

There are no comments yet - be the first one to comment: