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| The Transfiguration Lodovico Carracci 1594 |
As one could surmise, the
whole story presented in Bible is that of man searching for God, and that of
God going out to meet man halfway in order to endow him with his grace. This,
in other terms, is none other than the history of salvation. The First Reading
of this Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time shows this desire in man to meet God in
a more intimate way. Within Israel is that yearning to see God face to face, to
hear His word as it comes from His lips, and to know Him as He is. This
knowledge, in the understanding of the people of Israel, is that which is
precisely meant by salvation. But on the other hand, Israel knows that this
sanctity of God is too much for them to bear; certain death results from gazing
on His face, and that is how one could understand the importance of
intermediaries in the faith of Israel: on who would speak the words of God to
His people, one from whom Israel would feel the firm hand of the Lord. With
this context in mind we could understand the God’s promise of a prophet through
whom the Lord himself would address His people: “I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their kin, and
will put my words into his mouth. He shall tell them all that I command him.
Whoever does not listen to the words that he speaks in my name, I myself will
make him answer for it”. The prophet, in the context of the history of
Israel, is the one who communicates the word of God with respect to the actual
situation; he is the one who makes known His will. But it is also known that
between the message of God and His people, no other barrier exists but that of
a hardened heart. Examples of how these walls impede the reception of the word
of God and their sad consequences abound in the history of salvation, found in
the Bible, and present even in our days. This is the reason why our
understanding of the fact that it is God who speaks to us through His
messengers and that we should Him is reinforced by what we have heard from the
Psalm: if today you hear his voice, harden not your
hearts. This is indicative of that which we have already said a while ago: there is no barrier between God and man
other than a hardened heart. A hardened heart is one that has not only
refused to do what God wills in one’s life (which is always willed for the
good); to have a hardened heart means to refuse to take heed and to accept the
word of God. Here we can make two considerations: on one hand, the heart does
not accept God’s word because it is hardened; on the other, since it refuses to
listen, the more it gets hardened.
The prophecy made to Moses
and through Moses in the Old Testament finds its fulfillment in the person of
Jesus Christ. In the Gospel we see Him teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum,
and we see people being astonished by his teaching. People are taken aback by
the richness that flows from his words, and by the authority with which he
teaches. The power of his words are made evident by the fact that even unclean
spirits do what they are told, when Jesus commands them to go out. Jesus is the
one who teaches with authority. His words have life and power. This isn’t the
only time in the gospels that we see people listening to him and drinking in
his words. He is the cause for Mary’s preference to sit by his feet and listen
to Him while at Bethany, in the house of Lazarus (cfr.Lk 10:38-42); we should
remember that one of Peter’s most meaningful declarations was this: “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the
words of eternal life”(Jn 6:68); in other parts of the gospels, we see the
same disciples awed at the fact that Jesus speaks with such power that even
inanimate nature listens to him, as was the case of the calming of the storm
(cfr. Mk4:35-40 and other parallel accounts).
But Jesus does not only
speak the words of God: he utters as someone who is not only sent by God, but
he speaks as one having the same authority. When we listen to the words of the
Master, when we heed his words, we heed the same order of the Father whose
voice resounded over the heights of Tabor: This
is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him” (Mt 17:5).
Accepting the words of the Son of God allows us to share in the very life of
Jesus. This is the life that all of us share, by virtue of baptism, by the
power of that identification with the Son of God, which is a prime effect of
this sacrament.
What moral repercussion
could this Word have for us? In the first place, this would lead to consider
the importance of going back to God again and again: the life of conversion. We
have hardened heart that could only be soften by the Spirit, whose action has
been likened to the dew fall (as we may hear in the words of the Second
Eucharistic Prayer of the revised translation of the Roman Missal), that wets
and refreshes the parched earth. Only a heart made of flesh is capable of listening
to the Word of God, Jesus Christ.
Another consequence we can
get from the admonition of the Apostle Paul to the Corinthians (the Second
Reading). In a nutshell, in mentioning the excellence of the consecrated life
over the married one, he was pointing towards the fact that the human heart was
created to love God totally. Love could only grow deeper when it is always open
towards the Other; our Christian vocation, which ultimately consists in loving
God above all things and persons, cannot flourish and grow if it does not
receive the Word. Our love should directed
towards God, but this is not possible if we choose to remain deaf to His Word,
obstinate with regards to His law, and hardened with respect to his Love.
As a consequence, it would be very difficult to love others as God Himself
would love them (as Openign Prayer of the Sunday Mass would say: Lord, help us to love you with all our
hearts and to love all men as you love them…), which I think is the best
way to love people: not even with the strength of our own love, but with the
love of God Himself. The grace to love the Lord our God with an undivided
heart: this is the grace that all of us have to ask!!!
May our struggles and
efforts this week and in our live be directed to this end. AMEN.
FIRST READING: Dt. 18: 15-20
SECOND READING: 1 Cor 7:32-35
GOSPEL: Mk. 1:21-28
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