Genesis 12:1-4a
2 Timothy 1:8b-10
Matthew
17:1-9
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Remember
that popular 70s song, “Blinded By The Light? The rest of the song’s refrain was almost
unintelligible -- until the advent of internet-based lyrics websites.
“Blinded
By The Light.” This is what’s going on here in today’s Gospel message. Jesus is
transfigured and radiated light, blinding his disciples to the reality before
them. The three disciples are just as
bewildered about the experience as we were about those song lyrics.
In
the transfiguration, we have proof Jesus is the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets.
He’s the new Moses. He’s the Suffering Servant; a person we should listen to.
Filled
with good intentions, Peter proposes what could be a religiously significant
idea, the creation of three tents for Jesus and his two famous friends
(commemorating the Jewish Feast of Booths).
“While he was still speaking, behold, a bright cloud cast a shadow over them, then from the cloud came a voice that
said, ‘This is my beloved Son,
with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.’ When the disciples heard this, they fell
prostrate and were very much afraid.”
How many of us are afraid as we walk through this
valley of the shadow of death? How many of us are living in the shadows unable
to see the light of Christ?
Perhaps we, too, are “blinded by the light.” Or perhaps we need to do a few things before
the light can shine through to our souls.
Lent is a good time to reflect on our spiritual
blindness, these feelings of darkness, of fear, of abandonment, of our own
sinfulness, and draw closer to the light of Christ.
From the life of St. Teresa of Calcutta, we
discovered there are two kinds of shadows. One form of shadow can be divine (as
found in today’s Gospel reading and St. Teresa’s life). The other form of
shadow is more sinister (like when we sin while operating in the shadows).
Our prayer life can help us discern between the
two shadow worlds as we find our way back to God. But even the greats struggle with this.
Archbishop Sartain sent us deacons a
beautiful book about St. Teresa of Calcutta called, “I Loved Jesus in the
Night,” soon before she became a saint.
A Dominican priest from Ireland, Fr. Paul
Murray, penned this beautiful, short and easy-to-read book.(Click HERE to order the book on Amazon)
On the cover the book claims “a secret
revealed.” The secret is really no secret to most Catholics who’ve heard about
Mother Teresa’s letters or read the book “Come Be My Light.”
Mother Teresa had a transfiguring encounter with
Christ while on a train in India headed on spiritual retreat in September
1946. At the time she was head mistress
at a private girl’s school.
Her encounter with Christ illumined her heart
to the needs of the poorest of the poor in India; the people she saw each and
every day, living in the streets, just outside her comfortable and cloistered
community.
Jesus called Mother Teresa to go to the
darkest place in the world and “be my light.” Go into the slums of Calcutta, minister
to untouchables and leave behind everything comfortable and safe.
It took her several years to convince her
Bishop, Sisters of Loreto superiors, and the Vatican to let her do what Christ ordered
this humble woman to do. But eventually
her persistence won out.
As she went about her new ministry and
started recruiting young women to join her (many her former students), Mother
Teresa began to experience a terrible darkness in her spirit. She could no longer feel Christ or God’s
presence in her prayer life. This went
on for the remainder of her life. The revelation surprised and shocked many when
it came out years after her death.
How could this woman so filled with Christ
that it radiated from her very being not feel Jesus or God in her prayer life? Was it a mysterious paradox or a troubling contradiction?
This was the secret revealed in Fr. Paul’s
book, and in the book “Come Be My Light.”
Fr. Paul believes Mother Teresa was
experiencing the Dark Night of the Soul, referred to by Spanish mystic St. John
of the Cross.
Fr. Paul says the darkness was not depression
or despair. “Rather it was the shadow cast in her soul by the overwhelming
light of God’s presence.”
God was “utterly present and yet utterly
hidden” to Mother Teresa for most of her ministry leading the Missionaries of
Charity.
As Fr. Paul put it, “His intimate, purifying
love (was) experienced as a devastating absence and even, on some occasions, as
a complete abandonment.”
Could it be Mother Teresa, too, was blinded
by the light?
Maybe you’ve experienced similar feelings of
abandonment by God?
Catholic author and priest Henri Nouwen wrote
THIS about the overwhelming power of the light of Christ:
"We
only know that we're in darkness when we come into the light of God's
love. It is only in the light, in the
fullness of the sun, that we know there is a shadow."
Many
times these shadows are places where we do things that are less than holy… like
slander our neighbor, or post Islamophobic or other racist messages on
Facebook, or look at things we shouldn’t look at online, or bad mouth homeless
people, immigrants, the poor or people who speak on their behalf, or cheat on a
spouse?
St.
John of the Cross challenges us to see our souls as windows and our sins as
smudges on those windows.
“A
ray of sunlight shining on a smudgy window is unable to illumine the window
completely and transform it into its own light. It could do this if the window
were cleaned and polished.”
So,
how do we clean and polish the smudges off the windows of our souls?
Through
counsel, one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. Counsel is the gift of right judgment where
we come to understand the difference between right and wrong, choose the right,
avoid sin, and live out the values taught to us by Jesus.
Counsel builds on both wisdom and understanding. It comes from the Holy Spirit, mostly through prayer, reading sacred scripture or the
catechism, or is found in the confessional.
As
St. John of the Cross reminds us, “A soul makes room for God by wiping away all
the smudges and smears…, by uniting its will perfectly to God’s (will). … When this is done the soul will be illumined
and transformed in God.”
The
Sacrament of Reconciliation and absolution are the best way to wipe away these
smudges.
Mother Teresa knew this perfectly well. It’s why the only people who knew about her
suffering in darkness all those years were her confessors and spiritual
directors.
In
the second letter of Timothy we heard today,
“He saved us and called us to a holy life, not according to our works but according to his own design and the grace bestowed on us in Christ Jesus before
time began.”
What
expectation has Christ bestowed on us? Are we listening to his voice? Have we
united our will with the will of God in our lives? Perhaps this is the reason for so much
darkness in the world today.
For
Mother Teresa, this darkness, these shadows, were her suffering (50 years of
suffering!). This suffering united her with the suffering of the poor in their
desolation, and the suffering of Jesus on the Cross.
Franciscan Fr. Richard Rohr shared something
enlightening about suffering, and it definitely applies to St. Teresa, and all
of us:
“If suffering is ‘whenever
we are not in control’ then you can see why some form of suffering is
absolutely necessary to teach us how to live beyond the illusion of control and
give that control back to God. Then we become usable instruments because we can
share our power with God’s power.”
St. Teresa of Calcutta was a usable instrument
in God’s hands and radiated the light of Jesus to the world. She’s now a saint
to those living in darkness; those who feel bewildered, abandoned or lost, but
who are determined to keep walking the path of faith.
As we walk on our Lenten journey, may we each
grab a bottle of Windex and starting cleaning the smudges on the windows of our
souls, and let Christ’s light shine through before all.
May we discern if our darkness is a sign of
our own closeness to Jesus or something else.
May our spiritual sight be made pure by
Christ.
Then, and only then, we will no longer by
blinded by the light, but transformed by it.
