1 Corinthians 4:9-16; Matthew 17:14-23
It is always easier to identify other
people’s weaknesses than to take a close look at our own. That is primarily because of our pride, our
addiction to self-centeredness that makes us not want to give up whatever
exalted illusions about ourselves have taken root in our souls. It is perhaps the most subtle of temptations,
for we can become proud even of how well we think that we confess and repent of
our sins.
St. Paul blasted the pride
of the factions in Corinth by reminding them what a true apostle looked
like. Instead of basking in religious
glory, true servants of the Lord looked like fools, weak and dishonored by
earthly standards. Just think for a moment
about St. Paul’s life, from his astounding conversion to Christianity to his
constant suffering for the Church and ultimately his death as a martyr. He must have appeared insane to most people
in his time and place. But it was
because of the true humility of putting faithfulness to Jesus Christ first in
his life that St. Paul could say with integrity to the Corinthians that they
should imitate him.
In our gospel reading
today, the Lord challenged the wounded pride of the disciples, who were
disappointed that they had lacked the spiritual authority to cast out the demon
and heal the boy. Imagine how humbling
it must have been for them to hear the Messiah say, “O faithless and
perverse generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you?” He set
them straight by saying that they had no faith, not even as much as a tiny
mustard seed. Instead of wondering why
they could not work miracles, they needed to humble themselves through prayer
and fasting if they were to be transfigured such that they would gain authority
over the powers of evil.
As we conclude our
celebration of the Transfiguration of the Lord today, our Scripture readings remind
us of the dangers of presuming that we already shine brightly with the light of
Christ. Too often we assume that
success according to some worldly standard is the same thing as holiness. But when we take a close look at the lives of
the saints, we do not see merely a good life according to passing cultural
expectations of whatever kind. Instead,
we see people who embody humility in ways that should make us all earnestly confess
and repent of our pride.
Since we are preparing through fasting to
celebrate the Feast of the Dormition of the Mother of God, it is especially
fitting today to remember her extraordinary example of humility and
obedience. The Theotokos agreed to
become the Virgin Mother of the Son of God, something that made absolutely no
sense according to normal ways of thinking in our world. She became His Temple in a unique way when
Christ was in her womb, and then she loved and served Him throughout His life
and ministry, including through His death and resurrection. She is the first
and model Christian. At the end of the Mother of God’s
earthly life, the Apostles were miraculously assembled in her presence. St.
Thomas, however, arrived three days late. When her tomb was opened for
him to pay his last respects, her body was not there. Even as she was the
first to accept Christ into her life, she was the first to follow Him as a
whole, complete person into the Kingdom of Heaven. She leads the way for
us as Christians in this world and in the world to come.
We pray and fast in preparation for
the Feast of the Dormition because we want to become more like her. There is surely no better way to become
transfigured by the gracious divine energies of our Savior than to imitate His
Mother. She grew up in purity in the
Temple at Jerusalem, where she was fed by angels. She is the epitome of the prayer and fasting
that the Lord said His disciples needed in order to open themselves to His
divine power. That is how she developed
the spiritual clarity and strength to say “yes” to the astounding message that
she was to become the Virgin Mother of the Son of God. Of course, her story makes no sense according
to the conventional standards of the world.
Even more so than St. Paul, the Theotokos is a “fool for Christ’s sake”
because many people then, as now, scoff at her virgin conception of the
Savior. The same is surely true about
the miraculous characteristics of her Dormition.
The question that we all face is whether we
will proudly cling to our own illusions about ourselves and our place in the
world as we stand before the holy mystery of Jesus Christ, the Son of God Who
shines eternally with brilliant light that we do not yet have the eyes
behold. His glory is not yet obvious to
us. That is why it requires faith to
fall before Him in humble repentance as we open ourselves to His gracious
healing power from the depths of our souls through prayer and fasting.
In order to turn away from
self-centeredness to Christ-centeredness, we must become fools who devote time
and energy each day to commune with a Lord we do not see with our eyes in the
world as we know it. So we must
pray. We must go against society’s
expectations and our own desires by regularly refusing to indulge our taste
buds and stomachs with the richest and most satisfying foods. In other words,
we must fast. We must act in ways that will appear crazy in
the eyes of many people today, such as reserving sexual intimacy only for marriage
as blessed in the Church and refusing to consume pornography or any other media
or entertainment that inflames our passions.
We must give generously to the poor, forgive our enemies, welcome the
stranger, and refuse to allow stupid distinctions between people—such as
politics or race-- to keep us from treating every human being—from the womb to
the tomb-- as one created in God’s image and likeness. No matter what may be popular or appealing, we
must sacrifice to live as those being transfigured in holiness by God’s grace.
We must come to terms with the fact
that doing so is never easy and will always be a struggle. There is much in all of us that prefers the
darkness of sin to the light of holiness.
We would often rather be miserable in prideful isolation than embrace
the healing mercy of Christ in humility. We would often prefer forms of religion
accommodated to worldly success and well-being than to the kind of sacrificial
obedience that we see in the Theotokos, St. Paul, and all the saints. But at the end of the day, we have to decide
whether we would rather be part of a “faithless and perverse generation” that
cowers in fearful weakness before the corruptions of evil in our lives or like
the young Palestinian Jewish girl who changed the history of the universe by bravely
saying “yes” to a calling that seemed, and still seems, insane by the standards
of the corrupt world.
Let us conclude our celebration of the
Transfiguration by opening ourselves to the strength and holiness of our
Savior, which shone so brightly throughout the life of the Theotokos. In order to do that, we must humbly focus on
uniting ourselves to Christ as we disregard temptations to self-centeredness in
any form and to worrying about the conventional wisdom of our society. If we want, by God’s grace, to shine with
holy light, we must first become fools who, through prayer and fasting, simply
want to love and serve our Lord with every ounce of our being. In other words, we need to become like His
Mother, the first and model Christian who has shown us how to welcome the
Savior into our lives and to follow Him into the glory of the heavenly
Kingdom. Remember this: To follow her example is to be transfigured.
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