When God Manifests

This is a computer-generated transcription that has been included to make the homily searchable.  It has not been verified by the author. 

“While He was praying, His face changed in appearance, and His clothing became dazzling white.” In this gospel, we have an example of these special moments, like transcendent moments, in which a person like there’s a window opened to the mysterious world beyond and what is usually hidden from us as we stumble along in our daily life, suddenly there’s a manifestation of the presence of God. And this, that the apostles experienced, Jesus being transfigured, gloriously, luminously transfigured. And then the Apparition of Moses and Elijah. And then this cloud, this cloud which meant so much for the Israelites, there had been this mysterious cloud, guiding them and manifesting the presence of God in the in the Old Testament with Moses and a cloud. It’s a God manifest in this cloud, which is interesting, because it’s both manifesting that God is there and yet it’s also hiding him. And then they hear the voice, the voice that speaks to them. So there’s this whole series. I mean already that they have the grace of being walking with Jesus. But now this is a very different type of experience, where they don’t just see Jesus as a normal person, but as transfigured. And we have a different type of example in the first reading, which talking about Abraham, who, at that point, his name still had not changed. He was being called Abram, and it says, “as the sun was about to set, a trance fell upon Abram.” So at that beautiful time of day, when the sun is setting, a trance falls upon him.  And it says, “a deep, terrifying darkness enveloped him,” deep, terrifying darkness enveloping him. “When the sun had set and it was dark, there appeared a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch which passed between those pieces.” Remember Moses had sacrificed a series of animals and put one half on one side and one half on another, making kind of like a path. And it said, so this mysterious torch and smoking fire pot passes between them. “It was on that occasion that the Lord made a covenant with Abram.” So this is a very significant moment when God is making a covenant with Abraham, “saying to your descendants, I give this land from the water of Egypt to the great river the Euphrates.” So these are two examples of what very great spiritual experiences of people often call mystical experiences, and what are called theophanies. Theophanies for the word meaning a manifestation of God, theophanies. And so it’s a good occasion for us to reflect on what is the place of theophanies, of these manifestations in our life, in the life of the Church, and to have a balanced understanding. And to summarize that this balanced understanding, we could say that because there’s two extremes. One extreme is to reject them, and one to be closed to them, and another extreme is to be seeking and demanding these type of signs. And so the balanced understanding is always according to God’s will, when God wills to give them to us, to be open to them, and when it’s not God’s will not to be seeking them. And so let’s look at these points. Three points. The first is this openness when God chooses to give them, because there’s a lot, even a lot of priests, who think that these things are extremely rare, they only happen with great saints, and since most of us are not great saints, they’re not going to happen And lot of times they’re dismissed as just weird things, just weird stuff that people want to stay away from, or things which are unimportant, that they’re just, you know, just someone’s imagination. And so a lot of times when people experience these, and we’ve heard this from a lot of people, they don’t know who to share it with, because people, what other people might say. People think I’m crazy, right? So they don’t know who to share that with. And I can say that here at the Mission of Divine Mercy, we have some experience of people thinking you’re crazy, so we can understand that. But if the Word of God, of Scripture is the basis, the guide for us, Scripture is full of them. There’s all sorts of manifestations of God in Scripture. From the beginning to the end, there’s all sorts of manifestations. We just had this one from Abraham, and Exodus is full of them. And there’s the gospel like we just had. There’s a lot in the Gospel, the Acts of the Apostles and so forth, all the way up to the book of Revelation. So Scripture doesn’t present them as extremely rare or weird or unimportant, especially not unimportant. And some will say, yeah, they’ll say, Well, yeah, but those were exceptional times. So first of all, Scripture is not just one time, right? It’s 1000s of years that it covers, but those are exceptional times. So these are exceptional times too, that we’re living very difficult times, very challenging, confusing times. But where, as St Paul says, where sin abounds, grace over abounds. As Jesus has talked about, these being times of His special mercy, so these are the, we’re living exceptional times. And our experience, I think our experience, even here at the Mission of Divine Mercy, is that they’re a lot more common than people think. I mean, just for instance, when we for many years, we are doing our Encounters with Jesus, and a lot of times during the encounters, or at the end of the encounters, people would share with us special experiences that they had had, like experiences of God. And we hear a lot also from people here at the mission and just in this poor little St Joseph’s chapel, which is not going to be on any Architectural Digest, but a lot of people share with us experiences they’ve had right here. And a lot of people, especially since we began publishing and messages, are contacting us to share the experiences that they had. But maybe we, probably most of us have never had an experience like the transfiguration, something that majestic. But maybe we have had moments where we’ve sensed like a special closeness, a special grace of God. So they’re kind of like little transfigurations, maybe during a retreat, maybe time of prayer or adoration, maybe during Mass, maybe a time out in nature, maybe just in kind of a what seems to be a random time. And so this gospel helps us to be attentive whether it happens in our life, or when it happens in someone else’s life, that to be open when someone shares an experience like this with them. So what should our attitude be? So the key thing is always, if it’s God’s will, if God chooses to share these then we should be open to them. Again, the key point is when God chooses, but when God chooses, like these examples, we should receive them with gratitude and also, of course, with discernment because there can also be false manifestations. So there’s always discernment needed, but, when they’re authentic, to be open with gratitude, because God knows why. So when God chooses, that’s the key point. When God chooses to give them, we shouldn’t be closed to them. I mean, and again, I’m saying this because I’ve met a lot of priests who are pretty close. I mean, they’ll admit that the transfiguration happened, but they’re not open to it happening today. They don’t say it that way, but practically speaking, they’re not. And that’s not a good attitude. So to be open when God chooses. So that’s the first point. The second point is that, like in the transfiguration, it was great, it was powerful, it was intense, but it was passing, and it didn’t last long, and then they had to come down the mountain. You know, Peter says to Jesus, “Master, it is good that we are here. Let us make three tents, one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” It must have felt so amazing, such a beautiful stay there. Let’s build some tents, and let’s stay in this experience, because it’s like a foretaste of heaven. And when a person experiences something like that, and even without, without it being, as I say, that as big as the transfiguration, but even the smaller experiences, like we might have a certain moment, everything seems changed. Everything seems, everything makes sense. Everything is luminous. God’s presence is felt so strongly. And it feels like, oh, everything’s going to be different from now on. But these powerful graces, though, on this earth, they’re passing. And like this experience of the Transfiguration, they give us a taste of what is to come. but then we have to go back down the mountain. And that in this gospel that says that Jesus was talking with Moses and Elijah, and what was he talking with them about? It says they were speaking of His Exodus, His departure, and what would Jesus departure be? It would be His departure through His passion and cross. So they were preparing the apostles, for in this moment of glory, this like taste of glory, was to prepare them, when they wouldn’t see Jesus transfigured in glory, but they would see Him tortured and humiliated. And so the apostles, but they’re not aware of that. This is trying to prepare them for that. But then they have to go back down. They have to continue the path from the Transfiguration with Jesus to on the transforming path of the cross and His passion and cross to lead to His resurrection. And that’s very hard to accept. I mean, it’s even very hard. For instance, if a person has a retreat or something, they have this beautiful, what we people call a spiritual high, it’s very hard for them to come back down right? And for maybe for a couple of days, everything seems so wonderful. But then little by little, you know, life is life with all its problems and God’s presence doesn’t feel so strong anymore, and sometimes it doesn’t feel it at all. And so the danger is that from that spiritual high, when a person come has to come back down and kind of crashes. Then the danger is to call everything into doubt. Well, maybe everything I was experiencing that was just my imagination, I was just a passing good feeling. And so they can, they can reject it all and just kind of completely lose faith. But if we realize, that’s why it’s important to realize this, that these experiences are giving us like a glimpse. It’s kind of like a walking on a dark night in a place that you don’t know and there’s maybe there’s a moment in which maybe there’s like a lightning flash, which permits you to see more where you’re going, but then that lightning flash is just very brief, and then you have to continue walking in darkness. And so to appreciate these graces when God gives them, but to realize that they’re real graces, they’re important graces, but they’re passing because we, we’re not yet in glory. So we have to go back down and continue the path of the difficult path of following Jesus. And so that’s the second point, that we have these graces, from these graces, we then have to come back down and to realize that, so that we don’t lose faith, and we don’t reject whatever graces we received at that point, But what if a person hasn’t? What if a person says, Well, I haven’t experienced anything like that? What’s wrong with me? And so that leads us to the third point, that these graces are not essential. The essential thing is not these type of graces. For instance, think of it even with these graces, two of those three apostles who saw Jesus transfigured, abandoned him at the cross. One of them denied him. Peter denied Him, and James also abandoned Him. And there were other people who hadn’t received these graces. They weren’t in it at the Transfiguration, and they were able to be faithful with Jesus at the cross. And so there’s a danger also in these graces. They’re graces of God, but like other gifts of God, there’s also dangers. With a lot of gifts of God. There’s one of the greatest dangers is the danger of pride, spiritual pride. Well, because when you receive a grace like that, you feel so spiritual. Oh, I’m so holy, and I’m so illuminated. I’m so far above all these other miserable people and so that’s very dangerous. And so the essential, Jesus teaches us, the essential is not these graces, but the essential is doing the Father’s will. And He reveals that the Father’s Will is love, divine love, not these graces. And so Jesus is leading us to union with the Father, union with God in the essential thing. For union with God is not these graces. They’re beautiful graces when God gives them, but they’re not what’s essential. What’s essential? That’s what St Paul says. When St Paul says he’s talking about all these great spiritual graces, he says they’re good, but they’re not what’s essential. And what does he say is essential? He says it’s the greatest gift, which is the gift of divine love, of agape. And there’s a lot of people today who are wanting spiritual experiences. I mean, from this has been going on for centuries, since man wants to experience something greater, something transcended, something spiritual. I was talking about this yesterday, and so in a time of St Paul in the gospel, that there was what were called mystery religions. And mystery religions were pagan religions in which people wanted to be part of the special select elite group who were initiated into the great secrets, the special hidden knowledge, which would give them access to divine powers, to divine knowledge, divine lights. And so people wanted this special knowledge and oftentimes, and I’m saying it back then, but I mean this is still going on today, or people seeking magic, these special magic rites and rituals that can introduce them to be more powerful, to get what they want, or people seeking special meditation practice like transcendental meditation, or other types of meditation practice, maybe linked with yoga and so forth, to try to have a transcendental experience.  They always show people wanting to go to some Buddhist Zen monastery in Nepal or Tibet, high up on a mountain, to have a spiritual illumination. Or people seeking in that spirit, like of extreme asceticism, to have these Illuminations. Or people, also today, seeking very intelligent people wanting to use substances like mushrooms and so forth, like to have special spiritual experiences when they feel much closer to God or to the divine energy or to spiritual presences or whatever. And so one thing that’s good to remember is that satan is a spirit. He can give us spiritual experiences which can feel very illuminating. We can feel so lifted up by special knowledges, by special powers, which can be also very dangerous. So Jesus teaches us not to seek spiritual experiences, but to seek God. And it’s different. If we seek God, the path that Jesus shows is the path of following and obeying His will, and His will is divine love. That’s the path, that’s the sure path of union with God, which will give us the greatest possible, authentic spiritual experiences beyond any imagination, which is the beatific vision of God in heaven. But if we seek spiritual experiences, we can go down the wrong path. And so again, so this balance. So the third point is not, not to seek these experiences. So to summarize this, it’s what is essential is God’s will. When God chooses to give these experiences, we should be open to them, and He does. He’s giving them a lot today, but they’re not what’s essential. If He doesn’t give them, He knows why, and that’s not what’s essential. What’s essential for union with Him is His will in love. And so finally, just to speak of just in this Mass that we’re in right now, we know that in the host that will be consecrated. The little host will be consecrated on this altar will be the Lord of Glory, and we might sometimes, He’ll give us special manifestations to sense His presence in like in a more felt way. But many times we won’t. Many times, all we’ll see or will taste is that little, that little wafer, that little host. And remembering what Jesus says, “Blessed are those who do not see and yet believe.” The apostles had this great experience on Mount Tabor, but Jesus doesn’t say, but remember Jesus words to Thomas, “blessed are those who do not see and yet believe.” That’s an even greater blessing, because it’s an act of greater faith. And so in this Mass, we can adore Jesus, present in the Blessed Sacrament, accepting when He gives us special graces to feel that, but also thanking Him when He doesn’t, because of the blessing of making a pure act of faith without seeing. And so with our Blessed Mother in this Mass, let us Adore Jesus Christ, our Lord of Glory.  Amen. 

KEYWORDS / PHRASES:
Luke 9:28-36
Genesis 15:5-12, 17-18