In today’s Gospel reading, which recounts the Transfiguration of Our Lord, we hear the voice of God saying: “This is my chosen Son; listen to him.” The divine voice in this episode is imperative. It is not merely an observation, as it was at the baptism of Our Lord: “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased” (Mt 3:17 – and a similar tenor is found in Lk 3:22, and Mk 1:11). No, in this case, it is an imperative, listen to him.
When faced with divine imperative, so dramatically articulated, what does one do but listen and obey? Empowered by the fact that they then saw the dead man rise and eat with them, these men, the apostles, listened and spent their whole lives proclaiming the Good News of Our Lord Jesus Christ: that sin has been vanquished, physical death is not the end, and that an eternal life in glory is a possibility. And this was not merely an idea they were preaching. They preached and all, save one, suffered martyrdom because they saw, and believed. Herein lies the Christian difference. We do not die for an idea, but for a fact – that there is life after death and the resurrection of the body, or in the words of St. Paul to the Corinthians, our reading from the epistle today, our lowly bodies will be conformed to His glorious body.
Contemporary life offers us very many ways in which we can live, and die. The verses of the 19th century Urdu poet Ghalib (1797-1869) come to mind:
Hazaaron khwahishen aisi ke har khwahish pe dam nikle.
Bahut niklay mere armaan, lekin phir bhi kam nikle.
A thousand desires that I expend my life on each
Many were these desires, and yet I remained unfulfilled.
In this verse Ghalib captures the essence of the consumeristic world we live in. We spend our lives chasing tantalizing dreams, and yet, no matter how many of these desires we fulfill, we remain unsatisfied. I should point out that not all these dreams and desires are necessarily seen as excessive. Some of these dreams are, in fact, those that contemporary society deems worthy and noble. And yet, as St. Paul indicates they are eventually about making our stomach our God. Think, for example, of how material success, or success in the school and university exams, are the only things that our children are prepared for. Everything else falls by the wayside. I have heard some in this parish indicate that their children cannot be altar servers because they must go to tuitions even on Saturdays when the altar servers meet. As someone who has benefited immensely from the graces of being an altar server, I can only pity those whose extra-curricular lives continue to revolve around the school curriculum. All of this while appreciating that tuitions can be necessary.
In his letter to the Phillipians, St. Paul also castigates those whose “minds are occupied with earthly things.” In this context I must share with you that I have noticed a peculiarity among those who come to the Mass in English. People continue to stroll in, after the Mass has begun, such that the congregation can sometimes so much as double halfway through Mass. This is not something that I have noticed as much among those attending the Masses in Konkani. I wonder why this is. Could it be because our minds are not attuned to the Cross of Christ that we bind ourselves to during the Mass? That we are more attuned to earthly things? If so, then perhaps the Lenten exercise we can embrace is to ensure that we are at the Church a good half hour before Mass is scheduled, not waiting to arrive dot on time. The extra half hour could well be spent in silent prayer that we often do not get the time for in our busy daily lives. Once again, I appreciate there are reasons why some may arrive late for Mass, but given that we are in the season of Lent, this is an opportunity for us to take stock if our relationship with Christ is merely perfunctory, and if so, to do something to change it.
St. Paul has one more grain of advice which we might do well to consider this Lent:
But our citizenship is in heaven,
and from it we also await a saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ.
St. Paul offers us two guides for our political lives. First, our citizenship is not of this earth, but of heaven, and secondly our only saviour is Our Lord Jesus Christ, there can be no other saviours, political or otherwise.
But if our citizenship is in heaven, what of our loyalties to earthly citizenships? St. Paul’s caution offers us a way to develop a Catholic understanding of our political activity, distinguishing between nationalism on the one hand, and patriotism on the other. In these times, both in India, and without (and we are living in some pretty crazy times internationally), the nation seems to have taken on the aspects of a god, demanding everything from complete obedience to the sacrifice of life itself. Such demands are completely unacceptable to the Catholic because though they do not appear so, these demands are in fact demands for worship, which is due to God alone. But this should not necessarily upset Catholics or nationalists, because in their pursuit of the common good, every Catholic is called to be a patriot! Directed towards the common good of all, and not just those within the nation, the potential refusal of a Catholic to do things that are unjust will still amount to patriotism, because it is directed toward the long term common good, the health and well-being of all. Thus, even though nationalists may hate you in the short term, they will change their minds in the long term, and especially at the end of time, when:
He will change our lowly body
to conform with his glorified body
by the power that enables him also
to bring all things into subjection to himself.
All things already are, and will soon be more completely, subject to Christ. If we live, therefore, it is Him we must live for, if we die, it is for His name that we must die. The temptations to turn away from Him are subtle, and many, but we must persevere, and our exercises of abstinence and fasts this Lent will strengthen our wills to resist temptations in the future. Join with others, therefore, in being imitators of St. Paul who modeled himself on Christ.
May St. Paul, apostle to the gentiles, intercede for us. Amen.
(A version of this homily was first preached to the faithful at the parish of Our Lady of the Rosary, Fatorda on 15 March 2025.)
(Image reference: “Crucifixion of St. Peter” detail, Caravaggio, 1601, Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome.)
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