The only job where you can be wrong half of the time and still get paid is the weatherman. We can’t control the weather or even predict the weather. There is another joke about weathermen, “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me, fool me 3,684 times, shame on the weatherman.
There is a weatherman in Chicago who began to weave in words. Remember that Wordle game where you had to pick five letters? He would sneak those into his news stories. Then he started getting song requests. One time he Rick Rolled everybody, and he inserted into the weather, “Never going to give you up Chicago, never going to let you down.” He snuck it in there.
In the Gospel today, in the scriptures, Jesus is sneaking a lot of important things for us, and He is revealing something beautiful to us.
Today we celebrate this Feast of the Transfiguration, where Jesus was transformed and became like light. Three images are reflected today.
The first image was when The Lord appeared to Moses. He would climb up a high mountain, and the mountain would be surrounded by clouds and smoke, and it was there that The Lord would come to Moses. He could never see His face, but The Lord would come to Moses and speak to him, and He would come down from the mountain. That is why we use incense today to symbolize that cloud of smoke.
That is the first image of the Transfiguration – Moses going up and the Lord speaking to him in the clouds.
Then, today, there is the Feast of Transfiguration when Jesus goes up and takes the other disciples with Him, and He is surrounded by these clouds. When the Lord speaks, a beam of light comes through the clouds, and He says, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”
When is the other time that we hear that phrase? The Baptism of the Lord. When He was baptized, there also was a cloud, and through the cloud came a beam of light; the Holy Spirit descended upon Him, and God said, “This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.”
First, you have Moses, then today, you have The Transfiguration, and then you have The Crucifixion.
In The Transfiguration, Jesus had Moses and Elijah on each side. When we go to The Crucifixion, who did He have on each side? The good thief and the bad thief. When Jesus died, what happened from noon to three? Darkness covered the whole land. God controls nature. God created nature. God also created us and continues to create us.
When you were Baptized, from that moment on, you were Baptized into Jesus, and so any time the Father looks at us, He looks at us and sees the glory of His only Son, Jesus. He looks at us as sons and daughters and says, “I am well pleased with you. You are my beloved, with whom I am well pleased. He says this to us when we are Baptized.
Then we come forward today as we celebrate the Eucharist, and the altar is always supposed to be at the highest part of the sanctuary because you climb up these steps to the altar, and it’s symbolic of climbing up the Mountain of God. On this altar, the gifts of bread and wine are placed in their incense, and we’re surrounded by this cloud.
We experience not only Transfiguration but we also experience what Saint Thomas Aquinas would call Transubstantiation. Transubstantiation is an even greater miracle than the Transfiguration because, in the bread and wine, they will be completely transformed into the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus. So, it’s no longer bread and wine; it is the Body and Blood, the true Flesh and Blood of Jesus.
Our eyes can’t see it. Our eyes see bread. Our eyes see wine. We taste bread and wine, but it is the Precious Body and Blood of Our Lord, and when we receive Jesus into us, we become transfigured. We become bearers of the Light of Christ. So when we go out into this world that is so out of control, we bring the light to the darkness.
I know that there are a lot of other connotations right now in our culture with trans, and I think a lot of that lies at the heart of not knowing who we truly are.
I am sure any of us grew up during our lives and, at different points in our lives, felt uncomfortable with ourselves. Maybe we even had time to where we couldn’t stand ourselves or wondered, “Why did God create this mess?” But He looks at us and sees our beauty. He looks at you, and He sees you as His beloved sons, His beloved daughters in whom He is well pleased.
When we celebrate this Mass, the Father also says, “This is My beloved Son; listen to Him.” When we come to Mass, we have to listen. We have to try to hear the hidden message that Jesus is trying to reveal to us so that we know our identity in Him and that we know when we go out into this world, we will carry the Light of Christ.
On this Feast of Transfiguration, try to hear the voice that the Father says, “You are My beloved Son, you are my beloved daughter, in whom I am well pleased.”
When we come forward to receive this Eucharist, may we receive that grace to know truly and believe that we are receiving Jesus into us. His very Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity so that we can be transformed and transfigured as we go out into the world.
