Beautiful Image of the Transfiguration

My Dear Parishioners,

One of the most beautiful images in all of Scripture is the image of the Transfiguration. Just picture it. Picture the mountain. Picture the trees. Picture the sky. Picture the sound of the birds. Picture how Jesus looks. Picture how He sounds. Picture the faces of the Apostles.

Now picture Our Blessed Savior clothed in splendor. Picture His interior Glory revealed! Also picture that miraculous moment when Moses and Elijah appear.

As you imagine them, what do they look like? What do their voices sound like? Can you see that they symbolize all of the Holy Ones of the Old Testament—all of the Holy Ones who remained faithful to the Covenant and now wait for Jesus take them to Heaven.

Can you also see that Moses and Elijah represent the Law and the Prophets? Can you see that the Law and the Prophets are God’s great gifts to us to teach us how to love?

Now imagine the beautiful voice from Heaven, the voice of God the Father Himself. Imagine that you are there, and you are hearing those words for the first time: This is my chosen Son; listen to Him. Can you see that by believing in Jesus and by listening to Him, we too will share in His Glory.

Can you picture yourself clothed in Jesus’s Glory? Go ahead, picture it! Picture yourself clothed in Heavenly Glory.

Now, this weekend, as you approach the Altar, picture the Sacred Host clothed in Glory. Now picture the Glory of the Sacred Host transferred to you. Go ahead, picture it. This is exactly what happens every time we worthily receive Holy Communion. Jesus transfers His Glory to us. Praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever!

As we reflect on this beautiful image of the Transfiguration, we are reminded that our Lenten disciples of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving are really gifts. These Lenten disciples are gifts that help rid one of the noisy distractions of life. Prayer, fasting, and almsgiving allow us to truly “listen to Him.”

Our Lenten disciples, most importantly, help us to form a “healthy detachment” to the things of this world. A healthy detachment of earthly things allows us to stay focused on the Voice that leads to Glory in the next world.

This week I am including an article by author Russell Shaw on “Understanding Detachment” which appeared in one of my favorite blogs, “The Catholic Thing,” seven years ago.

This coming week we also celebrate the Feast of St. Patrick and the Feast of our Patron, St. Joseph. May we all have a blessed Triduum of St. Joseph.

St. Joseph, our Patron, pray for us! St. Patrick, pray for us!

Fr. Michael J Pawelko, Pastor

 

Understanding Detachment Russell Shaw

SUNDAY, JULY 31, 2016 Understandin Detachment – The Catholic Thin

Detachment has been a central theme in Christianity from the start. Recall the story of the rich young man, found in all three Synoptic Gospels. He asks Jesus what he must do in order to be better. Jesus answers, “Go, sell what you possess and give to the poor. . .and come, follow me.” The young man goes away sad because, the evangelist tells us, “he had great possessions.” (Mt 19. 21-22) He wasn’t detached – he needed to practice detachment about something big, and couldn’t bring himself to do it.

Not just for rich young men, but for all of us who would like to imitate Christ and live by his teaching, detachment is of crucial importance. But what is it? And why is it so important not just for people who have “great possessions,” but also for those whose possessions are quite modest? Let me offer a definition that may lead to an answer.

The definition is mine and carries no authority. Accept or ignore it:

To be detached, to practice detachment, is to establish and maintain a relation to everything and everybody in one’s life according to which all things are valued by how much they help or hinder us in our relationship with God, the imitation of Christ, and the service of other people.

A mouthful, I admit. What follows may help explain what it means.

By the late Middle Ages, the best thinking on detachment took the form of what is usually called contemptus mundi – contempt for the world. You find this in a pure form in The Imitation of Christ, a spiritual classic (1419) usually attributed to Thomas à Kempis, although others may have had a hand in it. It preaches the message of contemptus mundi throughout, starting with Book One, Chapter One:

• This is the highest wisdom: to despise the world and to aspire to the kingdom of Heaven.
• It is vanity, therefore, to seek riches which must perish, and to trust in them.
• It is vanity also to be ambitious of honors, and to raise oneself up to a high station.
• It is vanity to follow the desires of the flesh, and to desire that for which you must afterward be grievously punished.
• It is vanity to wish for a long life, and to take little care of leading a good life.
• It is vanity also to attend only to this present life, and not to look forward to those things which are to

And so on.

The message of the Imitation is perennial wisdom that has been crucial to the spiritual lives of countless good people for six centuries, and remains so now. Still, there’s no denying that its view of life in the world is in contrast, not to say conflict, with the view expressed in “Passionately Loving the World,” a famous homily by St. Josemaria Escriva, the founder of Opus Dei:

God is calling you to serve him in and from the ordinary, material and secular activities of human life. He waits for us every day, in the laboratory, in the operating theatre, in the army barracks, in the university chair, in the factory, in the workshop, in the fields, in the home and in all the immense panorama of work. Understand this well: there is something holy, something divine, hidden in the most ordinary situations, and it is up to each one of you to discover it.

There is an obvious tension between that and contemptus mundi. So what are Christians who want to practice detachment supposed to do: regard the world with contempt or love it passionately?

The tension is resolved, I believe, in a little-noted but extremely important text of the Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes (“The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World”). Theologians don’t seem to have known what to make of it. But in my judgment, it could make a huge difference in the way Christians view life in the world.

The Council is discussing the meaning of human activity in the perspective of faith. Recalling the scriptural teaching that “the form of this world, distorted by sin, is passing away and. . .God is preparing a new dwelling and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.” And continues that, rather than “diminishing our concern to develop this earth,” that expectation of a final fulfillment to come, but already begun should “spur us on,” inasmuch as it is here and now that the yet to come makes its first, tentative appearance:

When we have spread on earth the fruits of our nature and our Enterprise – human dignity, brotherly communion, and freedom. . .we will find them once again, cleansed this time from the state of sin, illuminated and transfigured, when Christ presents to his Father an eternal and universal kingdom.

Here on earth the kingdom is mysteriously present; when the Lord comes, it will enter into its perfection. (GS 39)

Clearly, this means at least that the human goods for which we labor now and which we sometimes realize, though imperfectly, will not disappear in the next life. There is a real continuity. The human goods will be present in heaven, too, in a perfected and fulfilled form. And although this passage doesn’t say so, I suspect the model for what the Council Fathers had in mind is the resurrected humanity of Christ.

Here, then, is the starting point and foundation for a true detachment that cherishes and works to realize human goods, and uses them in serving God and one another, without attaching to them, in their imperfect form, the permanent value they will only have in their perfected form in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Passionately loving the world, means we can bear to let go of it thanks to the promise of resurrection and eternal life, confident that we will find in heaven the best of what we have labored to realize on earth. That is the heart of detachment.