Transforming our LIves

Raphael's Transfiguration

As winter changes to spring, the Lenten season calls for a similar change within ourselves: letting our life be transformed into a more God-centered, other-centered life.

Last Sunday, we were in the wilderness, in the presence of Jesus and the tempter. This Sunday we are on a mountaintop contemplating Jesus and his transfiguration.

But first, the word of God takes us back almost four thousand years. Because Abraham trusted God completely, he set out for an unknown land. Many of us can relate to this: going to a new place? A new job? You may have been anxious. I’m sure Abraham was. Yet he trusted in God's unconditional love. God calls us to be people of faith, as we journey through happy days and uncertain days to our heavenly dwelling place.

Paul’s letter to Timothy speaks about God’s tremendous love for us. God became one of us in Jesus so that we could become like God. Paul urges us to live a holy life now. Yes, “Let us go forth to love and serve God.”

In the Gospel according to Matthew, the disciples experienced the unique and awesome presence of God in Jesus. As described, Jesus’s face became as dazzling as the sun, his clothes as white as light, an allusion to the tunic early Christians wore after they were baptized. The disciples glimpsed the “glorious” Jesus beyond the flesh and blood Jesus they knew. They also saw their own future in the transfigured Jesus.

Jesus lived by faith, completely trusting in God's unconditional love for him. That faith made Jesus a transformative person, ushering in the kingdom of God. That faith was tested to the breaking point on the cross. Jesus surrendered himself unconditionally. He died as he lived: with faith in his heavenly Father, with hope of life forever. In the mystery of death God transfigured Jesus into a new kind of spiritual embodiment.

And just as Jesus became a transformative person ushering in the kingdom of God, Jesus calls us to become transformative people. As co-workers with God, we have to do our best to transform injustice and prejudice into fairness and tolerance; to transform hate into peace, indifference into compassion, sorrow into joy and despair into hope.  Yes, we have to transform self-centeredness into other-centeredness so that God, like the risen Christ, can transfigure us into a new spiritual embodiment.

Notre Dame coach Lou Holtz recognized that attitude determines how well one performs any task. One of his many pointers: “Set goals at every stage in life and work hard to achieve them. When negative thoughts arise, start thinking, ‘I can.’ It works better than ‘I can't.’ "

Surely that can-do attitude helps the Grand Prix race drivers in St. Petersburg this coming weekend.

For Lent, let us be transformative: forgiving those it’s hard to forgive; exercising compassion and mercy; making peace; caring for those in need; carrying our crosses; persevering when we are exhausted; and loving when the last thing we can muster is love. Amen.

Lent: Getting Our Priorities Straight

Rembrandt's Sketch of Jesus in Wilderness

We have begun our Lenten journey. It is a time to slow down and remember our purpose in life and get our priorities straight.

This weekend, many of us heard the Grand Prix cars racing through downtown St. Petersburg. In our high-speed world it’s a challenge to slow down, remember our purpose and get our priorities straight.

Last Wednesday we had our foreheads smudged with ashes and may have heard a prayer,  “Remember, you are dust and to dust you will return.” Dust symbolizes nothingness. It’s commonplace. Yet God became dust in Jesus of Nazareth. And Jesus charged dust with the grandeur of God through his death/resurrection.

Lent tells us that it is time to get our priorities straight. It's a time for prayer; a time for doing without unnecessary things so the needy can have what’s necessary;and a time to reach out with a helping hand.

The word of God carries us back to the early history of ancient Israel. Deuteronomy focuses on identity, reminding the Hebrews of their roots: they were once at-risk nomads; exploited as cheap labor in Egypt; brought to a place of abundance; and now grateful to the God who saved them.

And our Christian identity? In baptism, we were branded and transformed into a “new creatures,” sons and daughters of God our Father, called to live a god-like life. That’s our identity.

Paul, in his letter, proclaimed fundamental truths: Jesus is our Lord to whom we owe our allegiance. Through faith, we have eternal life.

In the Gospel according to Luke, the devil appears as a seductive voice in the wilderness, tempting Jesus with earthly power and prestige. In some form, these are temptations that many human beings face. God’s word may be asking us how true we are to our identity as baptized Christians.

Yes, Lent is time to consider again our priorities. Leo Tolstoy can be a good resource. Many of us know of Anna Karenina and War and Peace. But Tolstoy also wrote shorter, profoundly religious novels. A Confession, for example, expresses his search for meaning and purpose.

Perhaps Tolstoy’s masterpiece was the 75-page novel The Death of Ivan Ilyich. A man on his deathbed realizes he wasted his life. In exchange for luxury and status, he sacrificed his authenticity and integrity. The result is a spiritual barrenness. Now he faces a mortality he never acknowledged, and he's terrified.

Avoiding thoughts about death, in favor of superficialities, is not reserved to nineteenth-century Russians. It's the story of everyone.

20th American writer Frederick Buechner gives us an examination:

 If you had only one last message to leave to the handful of people who are most important to you, what would it be in twenty-five words or less? Of all the things you have done in your life, which is the one you would most like to undo? Which is the one that makes you happiest to remember? If this were the last day of your life, what would you do with it?

It can be depressing business, Buechner notes, “but if sackcloth and ashes are at the start of it, something like Easter may be at the end.”

As we enter the Lenten season, let us ask God for the grace to pursue single-mindedly the priority in life: eternal life in relationship with God and one another.