(Mark 9:2-8)

(Msgr. Magee did not preach today, but offers the following reflections)

Some six days before the Transfiguration, Jesus tried to make it very clear to the Apostles that being the Messiah meant being betrayed, beaten and executed. But he also told them straight up that, in the end, it meant rising from the dead. While the Apostles understood what suffering and death entailed, they had great trouble understanding the meaning of rising from the dead. Only a limited school of thought in the Judaism of the time accepted the idea of resurrection. But the Apostles were not scholars. They were practical men; avoidance of death meant more to them than rising from it. This explains, at least partially, why Peter had been intent on dissuading Jesus from allowing himself to be killed. For Peter, as for the other Apostles, it was inconceivable that there should exist in human life any certainty that was more certain than death. There is an unspoken skepticism in their hearts and minds which might be expressed as follows: “Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, but he’s a little bit naïve to think that he can overcome death. So we need to help him understand better the cruel reality that death gives back no-one.” This skepticism is not even completely overcome by their witnessing the Transfiguration, because after it, they still wonder what rising from the dead can mean ...

For his part, Jesus knew only too well what ailed his Apostles. They were victims of Satan’s deceit which rendered them prisoners of the idea that his power over death was unchallenged and unchallengeable. The diabolical dogma is that the human person cannot escape sin and its definitive consequence, death. The Satanic sphere is, as the Devil might put it, impenetrable, either from the inside out or from the outside in. The human experience of sinful weakness would seem to confirm this law, and so any talk of breaking the stranglehold of death or of achieving a sinless life comes across as nothing more than wishful thinking. Despite the fact that the Apostles have professed their faith in Jesus, and have seen with their own eyes his miracles, and have heard with their own ears the “gracious words that fall from his lips”, and have experienced the utter goodness of his forgiving heart, they are still locked into Satan’s logic. They do not see that the sinless Jesus, because of that sinlessness, will indeed penetrate the impenetrable, and reveal the Devil’s lying deceit for what it is. Not only has Jesus penetrated the Satanic sphere from the outside by becoming man; he will again penetrate it from the inside by his death and resurrection. And in penetrating it, he will not just leave a hole in it, like the hole in the ozone sphere, he will remove it altogether for every human person who believes in him. As the Letter to the Ephesians puts it, “he will take captivity captive.” He will take those held captive by Satan and make them captive of God, that is, free in the glorious liberty of the children of God, free from sin and free from death, free for love of God and free for love of one another.

To help the Apostles, then, Jesus takes the three who would be with him in Gethsemane, and had been with him at the resurrection of Jairus’s daughter. By being transfigured before them he lets them see what the Resurrection will mean. He is telling them, “This is the certainty greater than death. This is the death of death. This is the destiny of human existence as foretold by the law and the prophets because it was preordained by the Father before the beginning of time. As you look at me, see what you will be if you believe in me. You who fear death, see in me your own eternity, see why you need fear no more, see the reason for your everlasting hope, your everlasting joy and your everlasting peace!”

No wonder Peter wanted to stay on Mount Tabor! His eyes were drinking in the beauty of God which alone can quench the thirst for life and completeness which parch the human heart! He is given a foretaste of the Beatific Vision which is not a static gazing upon a static God, but the engaging of the whole being of man by and in the whole being of God. Peter must have felt his very bones flourishing, his flesh energized. There come to mind a number of lines from the psalms which we can easily put on Peter’s lips:

“O god, you are my God

for you I long,

For you my soul is thirsting.

My body pines for you, like a dry, weary land without water.

So I gaze on you in the sanctuary,

to see your strength and your glory” (Ps. 63)

And again:

“What else have I in heaven but you?

Apart from you I want nothing on earth.

My body and my heart faint for joy;

God is my possession for ever” (Ps.72)

And again:

“There is one thing I ask of the Lord,

for this I long,

to live in the house of the Lord,

all the days of my life,

to savor the sweetness of the Lord,

to behold his temple” (Ps.26)

And yet again:

“O Lord, it is you who are my portion and cup;

it is you yourself who are my prize.

The lot marked out for me is my delight:

welcome indeed the heritage that falls to me!” (Ps.15)

There are other texts of Scripture which speak of the prophetic vision of the Son of Man and describe him in terms similar to those of the Transfiguration: there is the vision of Daniel (Dan. 10,5-21) which so overwhelms him that he falls to the ground and loses consciousness at the sound of the voice of the Son of Man (see also Dan. 7, 9-17); there is the vision of Ezekiel (Ez. 1,26-2,2) at which again the prophet is overcome until the Son of Man gives him the strength to look at him; and then there is the vision of St. John in the Book of Revelation (Rev. 1,12-19) with similar traits as those of Daniel and Ezekiel. It must be said, however, that the Transfiguration was not a vision in the sense of these other instances in which the apparition might well have taken the form of a dream or some other psychological phenomenon. No, Peter, James and John actually see the objective reality of Jesus transfigured “out there”, not “in their heads.” This objectivity is verified by the apparitions of Moses (the representative of the Law) and Elijah (the representative of the Prophets), and by the Voice of the Father which, apart from anything else, reassures the Apostles that what they are seeing is no trick of the Devil, but the hidden truth of the glorious divinity of the man they know simply as Jesus. Peter later testifies to this whole experience in his First Letter:

“For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received honor and glory from God the Father when that voice was conveyed to him by the Majestic Glory, saying, ‘This is my Son, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’ We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven, while we were with him on the holy mountain.”

The Transfiguration, then, is not a subjective fantasy of the Apostles. It is not a metaphor or a way of saying something. It is as true as the Resurrection itself. And it is what our eyes too are promised. Through our faith in the words of the Apostles as contained in the Scriptures and handed on to us by their successors in the Church, we too are on Mount Tabor.

But how shall we come to see the Beatific Vision for ourselves and no longer have to depend on the witness of the Apostles?

The Apostles are like astronauts without cameras who have visited a wondrous place and have come back to tell us about it. A place where no war is possible, where no sin is possible, where no death is possible. A place where we do not have to wait with patience and monotony on the fulfillment of our needs and desires, but where to be is itself to be fulfilled. A place where the human face and body are not screens which hide our hearts and souls from one another, but where the body itself is transparent with the transparency of our sinless hearts. A place where there is no exclusion or class or prejudicial differentiation, but a fullness of the mutual embrace of each by all and of all by each. A place where the fullness of joy and love is not limited to each heart, but in which the joy and love of all fills and overfills the heart of each. A place where, in one’s own mind and heart, one is not alone, but in which the mind and heart of each is co-shared with the mind and heart of every other. A place where the body is not an unfortunate side-effect of being human, but in which the body itself is permeated with the universal love of all and thus finds its exaltation and its definitive integrity. A place, in a word, where the Creator-Trinity, the Redeemer-Trinity and the Sanctifier-Trinity recapitulates the whole of humanity and of the universe in the sacred communion of their own life and love. A place called heaven.

How are we to get to such a place? The answer is given to us, not by the Apostles, but by the Father: “This is my Beloved Son. Listen to him.” Perhaps this answer disappoints you. “Oh, that!” you might quip. “The same old story: obedience!” In today’s world, and in today’s Church, obedience is not a popular or even a welcome word. It goes against the grain. “Ours is an era of freedom, not obedience!” we might say. “We are a people of rights, of justice and of law (law being formulated to suit our freedoms, of course)!” Rightly or wrongly, there is a perception in the Church that Vatican II did away with obedience, institution and rules. “We are a Church of the freedom of the Spirit, not of hierarchy and laws!” Then there is the question of conscience. At times, one has the impression that it too has been given a new, “enlightened” meaning whereby it is judged to be the only source of morality, a source which itself is sourced from one’s feelings or thoughts. We have “in-sourced” the conscience. Although we still call it the “vox Dei” (the voice of God), because that suits our purposes very well, it has actually become the “vox mei” (my voice).

A freedom which recognizes no authority above itself than that authority which it has itself delegated upwards has effectively claimed absolute autonomy for itself. This is the condition of freedom resulting from original sin: it is quite simply a refusal to “listen to him.” A conscience which passes judgments only on the basis of the judgments that its bearer forces on it, is a dead conscience. It would be like telling a judge that he must rule in accordance with what one wants. Again, such a conscience is refusing to “listen to him.”

What, then, does it mean to “listen to him” according to the Father’s wish?

First of all, it means that I must truly believe in him. Belief is a matter of the heart before it is a matter of the head. To believe means to cling with utter abandon to the person who speaks to me before it means to accept the truth of what he says. You do not believe someone you do not trust. In the case of Jesus, then, to believe means that I trust him utterly as true, and loyal and desirous only of my eternal good. Faith in Jesus means that I entrust all I am and have, my entire life in all its aspects and dimensions, including death, to him. It means that I trust with absolute certainty that he will make good on his promises, that he will save me from death, that he will love me beyond death. From this it follows logically that I will do anything he asks of me; I will consider his every word as true and as a source of life and light. Not only will I listen to him: I will be unable not to listen to him. Not only will I hear him (“audire” = to hear) but I will go out of my way, knowing that life itself depends on it, to do what he says (“obaudire” = to obey). Obedience, then, is far from being a servile, weak-charactered, weak-willed attitude: it is the “must” of a heart which is utterly given over to Jesus. It is the imperative and uncontainable response of a soul filled with the strength and freedom of limitless trust in Jesus. Obedience is the first and immediate response of faith to the loving advance of the Savior. Obedience executes out of sheer love what the believing heart has perceived to be the desire, the will of the Beloved. Obedience directs and conforms the freedom, the heart, indeed the very person of the believer to the shape which he or she understands to be the one desired by the passionate love of God. Such was the obedience of Abraham and, especially, of Mary. As the Word of God calls each one of us into existence, that same Word continues to call each of us to the fulfillment of our existence. To believe in that Word as the living Word who is Jesus, and to listen and obey the Word he continues to speak to us, is not to lose our freedom, but truly and fully to find it!

It is not, then, obedience which is the enemy of freedom, but disobedience, notwithstanding the fact that so many disobey in the name of freedom! When freedom is “emancipated” from God, it is enslaved to arbitrariness, to the fashionable philosophy of the time, or else to disobedience, which is, and has been from the beginning, plain old sin. There is no greater enemy of freedom than sin. There is no greater friend of freedom than obedience, that is, than to “listen to him.”

Some object: “Yes, I will listen to Jesus and obey him, but not to the Church. Remember all the sinful Popes, the mistaken judgments about science and culture, the male domination, the moral scandals.” No-one can or should deny the “sins of the fathers.” Let them be known, admitted and confessed. But let them also be forgiven. Let the motive of their being known not become an ideologized rampage of vengeance or hypocrisy. Let their apparently endless parading in the public eye not be an orchestrated campaign whose aim is to exacerbate the alienation people already feel from the Church. Let not this phenomenon, which sometimes borders on the morose, be a deliberate or unwitting collaboration with the real Enemy of the Church and of mankind itself.

But to reject the errors and sins of the fathers, mothers, sons and daughters of the Church must not become an outright rejection of the Church itself. For the Church is not of human origin. Peter is the rock on which the Church is built, but it is built by Christ, not Peter. Indeed, the Church is the Mystical Body of Christ himself. To believe in Christ and to reject the Church is a contradiction in terms. The Church is One, not because of brilliant organization, but because Christ is One. The Church is Holy, not because of decadent Popes or holy Popes, but because Christ alone is Holy. The Church is Catholic, not because of aggressive missionary efforts, but because Christ is Catholic, that is, in Him resides the plenitude of all that exists. The Church is Apostolic, not because the Twelve decided it was a good idea to talk about Jesus, but because Christ Himself is the Apostle of the Father to humanity.

How can we know, then, that the Church is not misleading us when it teaches certain things, since we know it has been mistaken in the past on certain questions? Here, again, we must “listen to him.” There are many texts in the Gospel which make it clear that Jesus confers upon the Apostles his very own authority, an authority given for the same purpose as the mission of Jesus Himself. Bringing it to its essentials, the authority of the Apostles and their Successors is an authority for salvation. Their task is to conserve, to investigate more deeply, to announce faithfully and to expound the truth revealed by Jesus for the salvation of the world. Jesus has graced them with a special grace of the Holy Spirit so that they cannot err in matters which pertain to the faith and to the moral law. Faith here means doctrine; moral law means the rightness and goodness of what people actually do in their behavior. Faith must be lived (remember obedience!), and the living of the truth is another way of speaking about morality.

Whenever, then, the Church teaches us what is necessary for our salvation, either in terms of what must be believed (faith) or what must or must not be done (morality), it is Christ himself who thus teaches us. That is why Vatican II, to the dismay of those who interpret it as “liberal”, requires of the conscience of the faithful that they show “religious docility” to the Church’s teaching. Let me quote you an important phrase from Vatican II in this regard:

“Bishops who teach in communion with the Roman Pontiff are to be respected by all as witnesses of divine and catholic truth; the faithful, for their part, should concur with their bishop’s judgment, made in the name of Christ, in matters of faith and morals, and adhere to it with a religious docility of spirit. This religious docility of the will and intellect must be extended, in a special way, to the authentic teaching authority of the Roman Pontiff, even when he does not speak ex cathedra, in such wise, indeed, that his supreme teaching authority be acknowledged with respect, and that one sincerely adhere to decisions made by him conformably with his manifest mind and intention, which made known principally either by the character of the documents in question, or by the frequency with which a certain doctrine is proposed, or by the manner in which the document is formulated” (from n.25 of the document “Lumen Gentium”, on the Church).

“Religious docility of the will and intellect”: in other words, a deep and firm willingness to accept the teaching because it ultimately proceeds from Christ (religious) and therefore deserves the trust of both our minds and our wills. The Pope and Bishops are not the enemies of our happiness, of our freedom, of our dignity: they are the servants of all of these, because, and primarily because, they are the servants of Christ whose whole desire is that we come to the fulfillment of our entire being in the Vision of His Glory. The enemy of our dignity, etc., is much more likely be what Christ calls the “hard-hearted” and the “unteachable”, those who must always be challenging and find fault with what the Bishops say, why they say it, how they say it and even when they say it. Is this true freedom? One thing is to say, “I don’t understand what the Church is teaching. Help me understand! Answer my questions born of love and desire for the truth!”; but quite another is to say with solemn self-assurance, “I don’t agree with what the Church says, and that’s the end of it ... unless, of course, the Church changes its views to agree with me.” Some people put themselves above the Church in that they make themselves the arbiters of when the Church’s statements (in matter of faith and morals) concur with the Gospel and when they do not! In the name of freedom, such people have become like the Pharisees who attributed to themselves the judgment as to when the deeds and words of Jesus conformed to their interpretation of the Law.

In matters of faith and morality, who hears the Church hears Christ. Who does not, does not. Christ comes to us through and in his Church and we must go to him through and in his Church. There is no dichotomy, no alternative and no contradiction. No service is done to people when the clarity of Christ’s will in this vital question is muddied by human philosophies, no matter how respectable they may be in their own right and context. The integrity of human reason and of human freedom is preserved and elevated by a loving and obedient heart that is open to Christ-in-the-Church. And while the sins of Churchmen and women may often be the chief culprits in alienating people from Christ, it is the radiant and burning heart of Christ which purifies that same Church and draws people back to himself in her and never without her.

And what of conscience? I asked my students one day to answer me the following question: If we were to assign conscience to one of the three constitutional powers, to which would it belong? The answer must be to the judicial branch. The conscience does not create the moral law, nor does it execute it; it makes an intellectual judgment in a specific case as to how the moral law must be applied. It is the will (i.e. freedom) which executes that judgment. So where does the moral law come from? There are two principal sources of morality which we can call objective: one is what we call the “natural law” which, according to Judeo-Christian tradition (and others besides), is “written in the heart of man.” Its classical formulation is the Decalogue, but it is also found in broad moral principles such as “do good and avoid evil”, “never do evil so that good may come of it” as well as the “golden rule.” The conscience (which is a function of moral reason, therefore, pertains to the intellect) perceives the natural law as a given in the deepest heart of the person. The natural law reveals to the human person the deepest meaning of their existence from a natural perspective: we exist for what is right and good, not for what is wrong and evil.

The second source is divine revelation which, as Vatican II makes clear, must be seen as Scripture as it is authentically taught by the Magisterium of the Church down through the centuries in the Church’s Tradition. The same Spirit who inspired the Scriptures preserves the Magisterium from error and inspires the deeper and fuller understanding of the Scripture through Tradition. In the first place, then, we must look to the teaching of Scripture, but especially of Jesus and of the whole New Testament as inspired by his Spirit, handed on to us (Tradition) through the Apostles and their successors (Magisterium). We can point particularly to the Sermon on the Mount which presents morality in an interior and positive way, “Blessed are the pure in heart ...” This means that those who are not pure in heart are not blessed! It is important also to notice that Jesus does not list the things which define purity of heart. Jesus speaks in broad principles. Some people may think this makes morality easier, because the principles are vague. But in reality it makes it more demanding, because it does not just focus on external “do’s and don’ts.” The principles actually embrace much more than a precept does, unless the precept is itself a principle, e.g. “do not sin.” So it is mistaken to search the New Testament for a definitive statement of Jesus or St. Paul on every single moral question and expect to find it; and if I don’t find it, it is equally mistaken then to conclude that it means that it’s okay to do what I like. Morality is more than law. If a law about some behavior does not exist, then one can do it without risking illegality - but not necessarily without risking immorality! Morality embraces the whole person, while law often remains on the level of externals. The one who hates is a murderer: he is condemned by his immorality. But, unless he kills, he will not be condemned by the law.

The conscience of a Catholic must therefore take into consideration both the natural moral law and the moral law revealed by Christ, again and always as it is taught and interpreted in and through his Church. This ought not to be for a Catholic a tremendous burden, but a tremendous liberation! We ought to be grateful to God that we are given such full and clear guidance on what is wrong and what is right since it makes the job of our conscience easier, even if at the same time it can make the job of our freedom more difficult. When a situation arises in which I know the Church teaches that a certain behavior is wrong, then my conscience need not exert itself too much, unless it is being told by my freedom (the executive branch) that it must find a way to come to a particular judgment which is out of step with what the Church teaches. Even if my conscience sees clearly what must be done and what must be avoided, my freedom can over-rule it. If it does, then I sin. Then my freedom is diminished by deceit instead of being rendered freer by the truth. Then my conscience will judge against me and urge me to repent, if, that is, I have not silenced it altogether.

What if my conscience is mistaken in its judgment? If the mistake is made in good faith, then no moral fault is incurred, but the judgment itself continues to be mistaken. The person must always be seeking what is truly good and informing himself as to what is so with a willingness to conform his life to that same good. But mistaken conscience can also be the result of bad faith, that is, of negligence in seeking the moral truth, or of a heart hardened by the habit of sin which remains closed to a change of life. Here are some sentences from the Catechism on erroneous judgment of conscience:

1790 A human being must always obey the certain judgment of his conscience. If he were deliberately to act against it, he would condemn himself. Yet it can happen that moral conscience remains in ignorance and makes erroneous judgments about acts to be performed or already committed.

1791 This ignorance can often be imputed to personal responsibility. This is the case when a man "takes little trouble to find out what is true and good, or when conscience is by degrees almost blinded through the habit of committing sin." In such cases, the person is culpable for the evil he commits.

1792 Ignorance of Christ and his Gospel, bad example given by others, enslavement to one's passions, assertion of a mistaken notion of autonomy of conscience, rejection of the Church's authority and her teaching, lack of conversion and of charity: these can be at the source of errors of judgment in moral conduct.

1793 If - on the contrary - the ignorance is invincible, or the moral subject is not responsible for his erroneous judgment, the evil committed by the person cannot be imputed to him. It remains no less an evil, a privation, a disorder. One must therefore work to correct the errors of moral conscience.

1794 A good and pure conscience is enlightened by true faith, for charity proceeds at the same time "from a pure heart and a good conscience and sincere faith." The more a correct conscience prevails, the more do persons and groups turn aside from blind choice and try to be guided by objective standards of moral conduct.

Therefore, conscience is far from being a simple rubber-stamp of one’s preferences. Either it is a call to make a judgment, or else it will be a call to judgment. Through their moral decisions for the truth revealed by God in the human heart and in the person of Jesus Christ, a person’s faith in Christ will intensify or fade away. There can ultimately be no contradiction between the truth of the natural moral law and that of Christ, since he alone is both Creator and Redeemer of human nature. Moral decisions inspired by that truth are the choices Christ’s love demands that we make so that our freedom may be transformed, indeed transfigured, into the image of the freedom of Christ himself.

“Listen to him.” In persevering obedience to the “Christus Totus”, to the “whole Christ”, a phrase used to denote Christ-in-his-Church, lies the key which will open to us the door at which the Transfigured Christ knocks in our hearts so that, in our opening, he may bathe us in his own glory. By allowing our consciences to be informed and thus formed by the Truth of the same “Christus Totus” and by allowing the judgments we then make to guide the exercise of our freedom, that Truth will set us free and that freedom will in due course explode in glory and carry us to the Mountain of God. There we “will see the Lord face to face, and his name will be written on our foreheads. It will never be night again and we will not need lamplight or sunlight, because the Lord God will be shining on us. We will reign for ever and ever” (Rev. 22,4-5).

Msgr. Peter Magee

Sunday, March 12^th, 2006