Christ Offers a Way Out from Beneath the Weight of the World
Transfiguration of the Lord
I was in New York yesterday morning at St. Patrick’s Cathedral for the final vows and consecration of seven Sisters of Life. I went to college with one of those sisters and was grateful to be there at her invitation.
Being in St. Patrick’s reminded me of a sermon once given by Fulton Sheen in that same Cathedral on Good Friday, in which the bishop focused on the stark contrast between the Cross of Christ inside the church and the bronze statue of Atlas, directly across 5th Avenue from the Cathedral’s front doors. Atlas holds on his shoulders the weight of the world, and with his right knee bent, he genuflects in a kind of mockery of the Cathedral on the other side of the street.
Of these two men, Atlas and Christ, Fulton Sheen said this: “No one will get out of this world without carrying some burden. Atlas will never get out from under that world; the Man who carried the Cross will get out from under it, for it leads to the Resurrection and a crown in Life Eternal. This is the choice before us: either try to revolutionize the world and break under it or revolutionize ourselves and remake the world.”
On this feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord, the Church encourages us to embrace the Cross of Christ. We are used to hearing today’s Gospel read during the season of Lent; and thus, being a Sunday in August, we might miss the connection between the Lord’s Transfiguration on Mount Tabor and the Passion he will soon endure on Mount Calvary. The preceding chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, however, puts this passage in just that context. Peter has just made his confession of Jesus as the Christ; Jesus indicates for the first time that he will have to die, to which Peter obstinately objects; and Jesus makes clear that those who wish to be his disciples will also have their lives demanded of them. Jesus’ ministry, to this point filled spirited preaching and miraculous healings, has taken a darker turn, as the inevitable reality of the Cross starts to come in fuller view.
The Church has always seen this mystery of the Transfiguration as being for the sake of confirming or strengthening the faith of the disciples — and us —through the trial of the Cross Christ is soon to undergo. Peter, James, and John are given a window into the true glory of the Eternal Son, hidden beneath his humanity, which being beaten and torn will only further conceal his divine nature. They are meant to hold onto this vision as they descend Tabor and return to accompanying Jesus on his journey to Jerusalem, that they would firmly believe that the man they follow is God.
Returning to the choice Bishop Sheen set before us between Atlas and Christ, it is our instinct as fallen creatures to take the world and all its burdens on ourselves. We in our pride want to believe that we are capable of managing and mastering all the factors of our reality. This leads us to one of two conclusions: either we convince ourselves that we are, in effect, God and become neurotically obsessed over controlling every last detail of our life; or we realize that we are not and can never be God, yet because the burden still sits on our shoulders, we sink into the depths of despair. Christ, in his Transfiguration, teaches us there is another way out, the way he himself has trod.
In becoming human, God took on the fullness of our humanity, which means that though Jesus did not sin himself, he carried in himself the sins of the entire world. His humanity, sanctified and perfect, has our humanity, fallen and broken, folded within it. By baptism, our lives are inserted into Christ’s, so that we are united to his death and resurrection, and that by result our life would take on the qualities of his. Whatever we endure, whatever we bear, whatever we suffer, no matter how great, no matter how heavy, is meant to be borne with Christ and in Christ, in the one who has already taken away the sin of the world.
In the Transfiguration, we see what lies on the other side. Rather, we see what is ours in the present — glory, salvation, and victory — for Christ has already been raised and made us victors with him in his resurrection. We Christians worship the Cross and display and wear it proudly, not because it is a symbol of death and defeat, but because of the life that conquered it and the life that is ours as its fruit. This lovely little parish church might boast the largest cross in Baltimore, maybe the largest in Christendom. May our faith in the Cross be so great!
To confirm and strengthen our faith, Christ from time to time calls us up the mountain and pulls back the veil that we would see him reigning victorious. We need these ‘Tabor’ moments, for the world has plenty of Atlases, and they are not only found on 5th Avenue in New York but on every street and in every city. Yet we know these moments don’t come often, and their memory fades all too quickly. But we must not ignore or fail to respond to the invitations the Lord extends us every day to spend time with him in prayer, for even in the briefest instant, he can show us a great deal.
We shouldn’t expect that every time we come to Mass, or every time we go do Adoration, or every time we sit down with Scripture or the Rosary that we will be caught up in rapture like Peter, James, and John. But woe to us if we don’t give the Lord the opportunity. Even if nothing seems to ‘happen’ when we pray, prayer still does a great deal: we are changed, we are transfigured. Over the course of time — days that turn to weeks, that turn to months, that turn to years and beyond — time with the Lord gradually, and not always perceptibly, molds us and refashions us to bear a greater image of Christ the Eternal Son, and destroys within us the Atlas we have made ourselves to be.
In this Eucharist, may the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, take once more our humanity from off our shoulders, so that on his we may be united to his Cross and redeemed by its power.
Homily preached August 6, 2023 at Saint Thomas Aquinas, Hampden.