Faith-Transfiguration-St Polycarp

HOMILY WEEK 06 06

Faith to Die For – Memorial: St. Polycarp

(Heb 11:1-7; Ps 145; Mk 9:2-13)

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How strong is your faith? Can it lead you on a personal journey of healing and transformation that will help change the world?

The first reading highlights the importance of faith in our lives. There is actually a pattern to faith: faith leads to hope, and hope leads to the ability to love.

The gospel account of the transfiguration is a powerful description of what faith in Jesus is all about. First Jesus takes Peter (the first pope), James (the leader of the Jerusalem community), and John (the last apostle to die and our last link with the apostolic age), with him. These are the three key New Testament witnesses to what will transpire.

It is significant that Jesus takes them up a high mountain. That is a physical indication that a theophany will take place – an encounter with God. That is why most pilgrimages take place where two realities meet – either earth and sky (on a mountain or hill), or earth and water (by a lake). That physical action is in itself a prayer, an expression of a desire to encounter God in a personal way.

Jesus is then transfigured, as white as lightening. This transformation is not only a hint at the glory that awaits us in heaven, it was also to serve as an encouragement and strengthening for the apostles for the suffering and passion that awaited Jesus, but also for those who believe in and choose to follow Jesus. As activist Daniel Berrigan once said, before deciding to follow Jesus, we better consider how good we look on wood!

For a second time in the scriptures, Jesus is blessed by the Father who, from the cloud signifying divine presence, proclaims his love for the Son, and exhorts us to listen to and obey him.

Peter then does something that is very human – he wants to freeze the moment, and cling to this sensational experience, this supernatural high. There are many people who in their journey, out of weak faith and fear of change of the unknown, try to cling to the present status quo and cheat themselves of their potential should they ever set out on a healing journey.

The bible is very clear that renewal, change, transformation, is at the heart of our faith. St Paul puts it this way, “And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.” (2 Cor 3:18)

However, the bible is also very clear that glory will come to us through the cross. Moses and Elijah (the great Old Testament witnesses) were speaking to Jesus about his passing, his passion that awaited him in Jerusalem. And immediately after this theophany, Jesus predicts his coming passion to the apostles. And later, Jesus will bluntly tell his disciples to take up their cross and follow him, to lose their lives so they can save them.

The message is clear – joy, peace, the experience of the glory of heaven, will come to us even now while we are on earth through the acceptance of some kind of suffering and experience of pain.

That is where faith comes in. A strong spirituality deals with pain; a weak spirituality avoids pain, tries to medicate it – the root of addiction. We are invited to accept some pain, suffering, inconvenience for the sake of the gospel, as Jesus did – without bitterness or resentment, and I would add, without fear. That is the key to the kingdom of God.

Even nature proclaims the message of transformation. The 12 Step Pilgrimage movement uses the metaphor of a butterfly to symbolize a new life of happy, free sobriety. A caterpillar enters into a cocoon or chrysalis, and then, mysteriously, emerges as a beautiful butterfly.

That is our call – to have faith, to have the courage to go on a personal healing journey where we stop running away from ourselves, stop denying our need for healing, and open ourselves up to the healing that only the power of the Risen Lord can accomplish in us.

There are many movements and programs to help us – the Christopher Leadership Course, the 12 Step Program, Cursillo, Marriage Encounter, Returning to Spirit, Trauma Recovery and Grief Support, 12 Step Pilgrimages, and Men’s Rites of Passage, to name a few.

Gina and Rose were two elderly religious women who had a rather dysfunctional relationship – one talked all the time, while the other was shy, had a stutter and hardly talked at all. At the encouragement of their pastor, they actually dared to take a Marriage Encounter as an “odd couple” and were provided special questions for religious on which to dialogue. The process, the love in the room, the sharing of the team, and their own sharing of their feelings for the first time in their lives, broke them wide open and transformed their relationship.

After the weekend, they met with the pastor every Friday night to “trialogue.” They would read a passage of scripture, share a word that struck them, share their feelings, pray for each other’s needs, and then play a board game. Rose also took the Christopher Leadership Course, which gave her a new confidence. She lost her stutter, became a Christopher instructor, began to lead the singing in a large church, and took on the role of coordinator of catechetics! Their religious community saw this transformation as a miracle.

Polycarp, whom we honor today, is one of the Fathers of the early Church, and his letter to the Philippians is one of the early pieces of Christian writing in existence today. A disciple of the apostle John, he was a leader of the second generation of Christians, the first Christians who were not eyewitnesses to the death and resurrection of Our Lord. Extremely influential in the catechesis and initiation of new Christians, he was named bishop of Smyrna, located in modern-day Turkey. Polycarp was martyred for his faith about the year 155, at the age of 86, partly because Caesar held the titles “Lord and Savior” and would tolerate no rivals to this claim. That Christians would call Christ, who had died at the hands of Roman power, their “Lord and Savior” was an affront to Caesar’s status and authority. St Polycarp is a patron of those suffering from earaches.

May our celebration forgive us, heal us and strengthen us to make our lives into healing journeys of transformation that will have a ripple effect on others around us and help transform this world into the Reign of God.