Eve of the Transfiguration

       On this eve of the Transfiguration, I am reminded of my commentary from yesterday ( Wife beaters and believers ). It spoke of how our actions are the true voice of our beliefs. In fact, what we believe will transform us, especially and more so if we are attentive enough, if we listen enough and if we search our own souls enough. The result is the stuff of the Yogi's, of inner peace and dare I say, the likes of the Dali Lama.

       People are transfigured by their beliefs. Will we be a shining beacon or a  mangled presence?  

       All my life I felt called to God. I searched through a full twenty years of Catholic school education including the Seminary and countless classes and workshops. Part of that calling was to make myself worthy, feeling inside that somehow there was something inside me that I had trouble accepting. Once I realized and accepted that I was gay, I was transformed, transfigured into more of the glorious being God had created me to be. No, I am certainly no Dali Lama or Yogi. Far from it. But the acceptance and peace of cooperating with God''s plan for me was a stunning beacon to those who know me. I was a new man, a more peaceful and joyful person. Wow. If such a small level of acceptance of God's plan can yield that kind of results, then what would happen if we fully cooperated and gave ourselves totally to God in love? 

        The transfiguration seems to me a blend of accepting who you are and allowing God to work through you. God is the potter, we are the clay.  Perhaps we are the raw sand and faith and love transform us into stunning crystal glass. 

        Cooperation.  Acceptance.  How we act.  

2 Corinthians 3:1-9,18

Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Surely we do not need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you or from you, do we? You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all; and you show that you are a letter of Christ, prepared by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.

 Such is the confidence that we have through Christ towards God. Not that we are competent of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our competence is from God, who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of letter but of spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

 Now if the ministry of death, chiselled in letters on stone tablets, came in glory so that the people of Israel could not gaze at Moses’ face because of the glory of his face, a glory now set aside, how much more will the ministry of the Spirit come in glory? For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, much more does the ministry of justification abound in glory! And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.