We’re now a week and a half into Lent.  With God’s grace, we have attempted thus-far to find ways to enrich our prayer, to deny ourselves some worldly pleasures, and to live the spirit of self-generosity known as almsgiving.  We have focused on Christ’s journey toward Jerusalem, and we remember the many sufferings he endured on that bitter road.  In the midst of this annual recollection of these most important events, we pause along the road to Calvary, to consider this incredible, brilliant and vivid mystery of the Transfiguration.  Christ brings his three principal apostles up the Mountain with him, and gives them an experience of his full glory, of his true identity as the Son of the eternal Father.  Christ knows what’s coming; he knows how much the upcoming events will challenge the Faith of his friends.  And so, in this incredible experience, the Lord makes a promise to Peter, James, and John. He wants his apostles to know that His Passion and Death will not be the end.  Not the end, but a beginning: a path to his glory and our salvation.  This experience on the Mountain would strengthen these three men in preparation for the Passion, in preparation for their own failures, so that they could believe, could keep believing that Christ was the Son of God, even when he appeared to have been destroyed by the hands of men. 

In this incredible mystery, the Lord makes a promise to us as well.  The promise that, if we stay close to Christ, if we try to follow him, if we take up our cross and endure our sufferings with faith, even those sufferings we don’t understand, then one day, perhaps not until the end of all things, he will shine for us more brightly than the sun. This time of year reminds us that Our Lord knows how difficult life can be sometimes, because he experienced it himself.  He gives us hope though, that none of our trials can defeat us in the end.  Christ gives us that assurance today, through this incredible mystery.  This assurance will come to its full meaning in the Resurrection.  In hindsight, in light of the Resurrection, we see how true and meaningful this expression of Christ’s transfigured glory really is.  The Resurrection proves that he is everything he claims to be, everything he shows himself to be on the Mountain that day.  In the meantime, before the Resurrection, Christ gives his apostles, gives Peter, James, and John, a glimpse of that glory that he would show forth in full on Easter morning. 

We don’t experience the Resurrection fully in our own lives yet.  We know the reality of God’s love certainly, but we still experience suffering; we still experience loss; we still experience the pain of our own sins.  So this mystery is for us as well, for our strength in the trials that we experience.  For most of us, God will never make himself known in such a dramatic way as he did that day on the Mountain.  But the truth is: we do have a Transfiguration experience, every time we come into contact with the Holy Eucharist.  At Mass, God brings us to the moment of his greatest glory, his passion and death on the Cross.  “This is my body which is given up for you.”  In that instant, we’re not just sitting here in Nashville in 2022 anymore.  We kneel before the cross of Christ and are present for his greatest glory: we are present as he willingly gives up his life, as he willingly enters into death so that he can destroy it from the inside.  In the sacred host lifted up by the priest, the entire mystery of Christ’s life is here, the entire glory of his death and resurrection, here, today.  And since our Lord is a King clothed in humility, thorns his crown, and a cross his throne, he shines forth for us therefore in the most humble of appearances, the simple gifts of bread and wine.  In the Mass, God reveals his full glory to us, shows us the depth of his love, and gives us an experience of his Resurrected presence which will carry us through our lives until we see him face to face.  If you ever wondered why coming to Mass is important, that’s why.  And that’s simply being present at Mass, just being here.  When we receive Holy Communion worthily, with care and piety and good preparation, we are filled with the grace of this full and true presence of the glorified Christ.  And he begins the process of our transformation, our transfiguration, from within.  He doesn’t leave us when Mass is done.  The Holy Eucharist does not turn back into bread and wine when Mass ends.  This is what the Church means by the term “transubstantiation.”  It means that he remains with us; he doesn’t leave or abandon us.  The consecrated host, that little circle of bread, is a window to heaven.  We look at it, and we see heaven shining forth for us, and Lord reaching out to us.  As we continue through this Holy Season, let us draw closer and closer to the source of our salvation and the summit of our life, the Most Holy Eucharist.  Let us ask God to fill us with Faith and Love in this most deep and sublime mystery of our salvation.