Fast-Tracked

Nobody likes a long sermon, or "homily" if you prefer that euphemism.  It follows that no one wants to read a lengthly piece about a sermon.  With that in mind I will keep this post on the short side.

This past Monday, August 5, the Catholic Church celebrated the feast of the Transfiguration.  As church holidays go, the Transfiguration gets scant attention.  For example, it is not a holy day of obligation, so attendance at Mass is not mandatory.  In 2002 Pope John Paul II decided that the three traditional sets of mysteries of the rosary (Joyful Mysteries, Sorrowful Mysteries and Glorious Mysteries) which had been in place for decades did not suffice, and he therefore added the Luminous Mysteries.  Until that proclamation the Transfiguration was not a mystery of the rosary at all.  There are not as many parishes named in honor of the Transfiguration as there are for other other mysteries such as the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Resurrection or the Ascension.  According to my crack research team, the number of parishes named for the Incarnation easily surpasses the number for the Transfiguration, even though most Catholics view the two events as commemorating the same thing, i.e., the human nature of God.

In all honesty, when I attended Mass at Our Lady Of Lourdes last Monday, I did not know it was the feast of the Transfiguration until the celebrant, Father David Haschka, S.J., who is the parish's senior associate pastor, announced it at the start of his five minute sermon.  I'm often guilty of tuning out sermons, but his intro caught my attention and it turned out to be five minutes well spent.  Any time a priest or minister has a personal experience to tie into a scripture reading, that's a plus.  Father Haschka's little talk has stuck in my mind all week, so I want to memorialize it here before I forget.

He started by stating he wanted to tell us a short story going back to his days as a young student at the Jesuit seminary in St. Louis.  At the beginning of spring break he made a cardboard sign that indicated his home destination, Omaha, and went out to the highway to thumb a ride.  "In those days you could do that sort of thing," he wistfully lamented.  As one who hitchhiked hundreds of miles in the sixties, I had to agree.  It certainly was a different time, in many ways.

Young Haschka wasn't standing on the side of the road long before a car picked him up.  The driver told him he was headed to Des Moines.  This was great news for Haschka, as Des Moines, 340 miles from St. Louis, was only 130 miles from Omaha.  Thus, a good chunk of his odyssey would be taken care of in one ride!  But about fifteen minutes into the trip, the driver pulled into the St. Louis airport.  "I thought you said we were going to Des Moines," the seminarian protested.

"We are," came the reply.  It turned out the driver owned a private jet and sure enough, he flew Haschka to Des Moines.  It took less than forty-five minutes!

"I guess you could say my journey home was fast-tracked," recalled Father Haschka from the pulpit.

He then recounted the story of the Transfiguration.  In a nutshell, the Transfiguration occurred when Jesus took three of his apostles, Peter, James and John, to the top of an unnamed mountain, ostensibly to pray.  While there, the face of Jesus changed brilliantly, his clothes became dazzling white, and two Old Testament figures, Moses and Elijah, stood next to him and conversed with him.  Shortly thereafter, a voice from an overhanging cloud proclaimed, "This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.  Listen to Him."

Keeping in mind that these three apostles were simple fishermen, you can imagine how astonished and terrified they were.  Up until that point they had witnessed a few miracles, but those were performed by Jesus, not to Jesus.  He had spoken of his Father, but this episode on the mountain was a first-hand experience for the three hand-picked followers.  They were seeing something previously unseen by any other human.  The Church considers this event, the Transfiguration, as a key to establishing two of its principles, the dual nature of Christ, human yet divine, and the existence of "God the Father."

The twelve apostles were selected by Jesus to spread his word.  To do that effectively, they had to believe in their hearts and minds that Jesus was truly the son of God.  Although all of the apostles (excluding Judas) and many other disciples were willing to follow Christ, the degree to which their faith was steadfast probably varied.  But for Peter, James and John, having been present for the Transfiguration and seeing it first hand, the challenge of acquiring the requisite faith was made easy.  As Father Haschka put it, "Their faith was fast-tracked."