March 1, 2026 This homily will have no audio as it will not be delivered.
I shall be serving the Maronite Mission of Naples this particular weekend.
Genesis 12: 1-4 + Psalm 33 + 2 Timothy 1: 8-10 + Matthew 17: 1-9
This is the seventh day since, Peter declared his belief that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God. When that number appears in our Sacred Scriptures, we should perk up because it means something is complete. At that time, Jesus told the disciples what is likely to happen to him in Jerusalem, and Peter, unable to reconcile his idea of the Christ with what Jesus has shared gets into trouble for suggesting that it can’t be true. With that, Jesus takes them for a walk up a high mountain. What happens there is more about the disciples than about Jesus because after it is all over, Jesus is the same as before, but they are not. Fortified, as it were by what they saw, ready or not, they all now set out for Jerusalem
On that mountain those three disciples were suddenly able to look at their friend and master and see something more than what their eyes perceived. They looked past or through the physical presence of Jesus and came to see the unique and precious relationship Jesus had with the Father. They saw him in a new and different light.
As I have prayed with this passage into Lent’s second week, I have set aside all the theological issues and the Biblical parallels of this mountain experience and that of Moses on Sainai with clouds and voices and radiant faces. All of that is important for understanding the Word of God, but sometimes the Spirit may move us to something more personal and more appropriate for our own time.
I have begun to wonder what it would be like if all of us could look at each other in a new and different light. I think that is what those three disciples did. On that mountain, God gave those disciples the power to see what otherwise was invisible to those who were not believing disciples. I wonder what might happen if we could see more deeply with the eyes of faith into the lives of the men and women with whom we live. I believe that if we would look at each other as those three looked at Jesus, we might see what they saw. We might see divine life, and we might be so awestruck as to want to keep hang on to that vision because it would bring us such great and wonderful peace.
I want to hope that all of us who know that Jesus is the Christ and Son of the living God have been granted the same power by which Peter, James, and John saw more than just their friend and master from Nazareth. I wonder why we sometimes seem reluctant to use that gift. We ought to be able to see what is invisible to others. We ought to be able to see that every human life is precious in the sight of God. It may not seem so to some, but for us, when we choose to really look beyond the surface of things we could see what God sees, what God loves, and what God calls God’s own.