Listen to him.
As a benefit
of my job, I frequently got to attend daily Mass in a lot of different towns
throughout the central valley of California.
Because a lot of the towns are farming communities relying heavily on
migrant labor, many of the Masses are celebrated in Spanish. One particular church in a community right
outside of Bakersfield is an old-style, obviously poor parish. It is simply constructed and not very ornate,
but it does have a very "Mexican Peasant" flavor, down to the dollar
bills and rosaries that are "tucked" into the arms of the statue of
Our Lady of Guadalupe, reminiscent of the churches I’ve seen in Mexico and
South America.
I was
privileged to attend a daily Mass in this church several years ago. As I read the Gospel of Saint Mark, and his
account of the Transfiguration of Jesus [Mark 9:2-13] today, I was reminded of
one particularly special day.
When I
arrived, there was no one in the church, but the doors were open. I entered a pew a few rows back from the
altar and started to pray my rosary, since I was about 20 minutes early. I had my eyes closed (it helps me concentrate
if I'm not letting my eyes wander) and I guess I was so into it that I didn't
hear the church filling up. When I was
finished, I saw that almost every seat was filled! I definitely felt out of
place! My sense of humor being what it
is, I chuckled softly and said to myself, "This must be what Custer felt
like at Little Big Horn! One white guy
in the middle of all those ‘Injuns’!” I
had a definite advantage over Custer, however—I knew I was among fellow members
of the Body of Christ. I noticed the
priest looking directly at me and smiling as if he knew what I was thinking!
The Gospel
was read, followed by a fifteen-minute homily—all in Spanish. I must have looked confused as I tried to pick
out words I knew in Spanish and make sense of them, because when he was
finished with his homily the priest looked directly at me and asked, "How
much Spanish do you know?" To which
I replied, "Practically, none." He said, "Then I will give you the
abbreviated version of what I just preached so you can have something to take
with you." I told him I appreciated
his concern and listened to a homily that obviously came from his heart. When he had said it in Spanish, he was pretty
animated—I got the watered-down version, but the ‘spirit’ was still there. To this day, I’m grateful that he noticed my
discomfort at having to strain to find words I understood and made something
cohesive out of it and gave me a "personal" homily I could not only
‘hear’, but ‘listen’ to. After Mass, I
had several parishioners thank me for coming that day. What a great experience!
I have often
wondered, likely as have many others, what it must have been like to listen to
Jesus. I wonder about His voice, His
mannerisms, and His tone. I wonder what
it would have felt like to be in a crowd and for His eyes to rest on me, even
for a moment. What if He were speaking
only to me, one-on-one? For reasons like
this I envy those who had the chance to walk with Him and hear Him.
Mark’s
account of the Transfiguration and Saint James’ Epistle [James 3:1-10], at
first, seem to be about speaking; more specifically, humanity's misuse of
speech. We have a knack for taking
extraordinary gifts and misusing them, don't we? As James tells us, this need not be so.
As it turns
out, the verses aren’t about speaking at all. At least, not about our speaking. After seeing Jesus transfigured, Peter spoke
although He hardly knew what to say, they were so terrified. Then came the Father's voice from the clouds: “This
is my beloved Son. Listen to him.”
Listen to him.
Unlike
Peter, James and John we didn’t see Jesus transfigured. Unlike Jesus' contemporaries, we haven’t heard
His voice with our own ears. Is it a
taller order for us to carry out the Father's command here and now than it was
for Peter, James and John who saw and heard these things? I don't know. But I'm inclined to keep trying.
I think the
message of the gospel for us today is to take the words of God the Father from
the Transfiguration as addressed to ourselves.
Just as He called the apostles long ago, God is calling us today to
listen to the words of Jesus. He’s
asking us not merely to hear the words of Jesus, but to really and truly listen
to them. God wants us to listen very
carefully to the words of Jesus that we hear in sacred scripture and in the
teachings of the Church. He’s calling us
to imitate the apostles in our devotion to the following of Jesus.
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