Thursday, August 6, 2020

The Transfiguration Of The Lord Jesus Christ

The Transfiguration Of The Lord Jesus Christ is remembered today, 6 August.  The Gospel reading is Matthew 17:1-9.  Big C Catholics  has this to say [1]:

The Transfiguration embodies Jesus as the [O]ne in [W]hom human nature meets God: the union of the temporal and the eternal, with Christ as the bridge between Heaven and earth.

The "human nature" referred to above must be the type tainted with Original Sin.  Without Original Sin, there would be no death and therefore existence would be eternal, not temporal.  In the Garden of Eden, God admonished Eve and Adam [2]:

But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

Back to Matthew 17, verse 5, in which God said [3]:

“This is my beloved Son, with [W]hom I am well pleased; listen to [H]im.”

Eve and Adam did not listen to God.  How well have their descendants listened to the Son of God?  Not that well.  Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus Who was then scourged, mocked and crucified.  As the years pass, hardly anyone listens to God's beloved Son Who said [4]:

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind.

This is the greatest and the first commandment.

And the second is like to this: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

Nowadays, loving God is often seen being played a drama for public consumption; and loving one's neighbor seems only possible when the neighbor belongs to the same economic class and social status, or higher, and when the neighbor shares the same culture, belongs to the same religion, the same political party, the same racial and ethnic makeup.

While Christ may be somewhat disappointed, Satan is delighted seeing many people of different races, ethnicities, political affiliations, religions, cultures with vastly different assets (if any) and societal standings unite together in envy, greed, lust, pride, and wrath.

In the end, death unites all as God promised in the Garden of Eden [5]:

 ... for dust thou art, and into dust thou shalt return.

Does the Transfiguration of Christ allow every person to realize what one could be, a transfigured being after death that can either exist in the eternal Light and Love of Christ or suffer the unending agony of death and darkness without Christ, as opposed to mere dust that feels nothing?



[1] https://bigccatholics.blogspot.com/2020/08/feast-of-transfiguration-of-christ-2020.html
[2] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+2%3A17&version=KJV
[3] https://bible.usccb.org/bible/matthew/17?1
[4] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+22%3A37-39&version=KJV, quoted without references.
[5] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+3%3A19&version=DRA, quoted without references.

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