Are you waiting to be transformed?
We long for transformation. Before the Christian era, Psalm 24 pointed to a human desire for transformation through a powerful encounter with God: Lord, this is the people that longs to see your face, the psalmist sings. Christians would read back into Psalm 24 a longing for transformation through our own death and dying; death and resurrection represent the ongoing transformation of our lives. And it is through our own ongoing death and resurrection that Christ is revealed in us, as he is revealed in the saints whom we celebrate this weekend on the Solemnity of All Saints. In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus reveals the Beatitudes to his disciples after going up a mountain, a place of transformation and of revelation. The Beatitudes define our existence; they explain how our relationship with God is lived out in the context of one another. Our success in so doing is to be cause for rejoicing, for, as Jesus tells the disciples, our reward will be great in heaven.
The early Christian community hoped for that reward even as they knew what it meant to struggle to maintain their faith against forces pushing against that faith. In the Book of Revelation, the servants of God are marked for Christ, and bear a seal on their foreheads. They have been transformed inwardly by the pain and suffering of life – this is the journey of the Christian. The community addressed in 1 John is looking forward to that same reward: what we shall be has not yet been revealed; we do know that when it is revealed, we shall be like him. This is the ultimate transformation, to be like him, a transformation that results from our entering more deeply into relationship with the Lord, from our becoming children of God, true to the will of the Father, open to every expression of God’s love in our lives, and willing to be transformed by it into its very source, in anticipation of seeing that face we long for in perfect union with God in heaven.
This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com
No comments:
Post a Comment