Fr. McDonald at Southern Orders offers a homily on the Transfiguration and how it sheds light on our understanding of the Mass.
Our lives as Catholics are intimately bound to not only the glory of the Risen Christ, but also His passion and death. We are not yet in heaven. We will continue to get sick, suffer, sin and die because the work of redemption while complete in heaven is not yet complete in this life on this side of our Lord’s Second Coming. All the suffering, sins and deaths of those who ever have lived, are living or will live, are placed on Jesus during His entire earthly existence in the Flesh, beginning with the Incarnation through His passion, death and resurrection. Yet, not until the last person to be conceived will the Lord return, for He suffered and died for everyone who was ever or will be conceived. So we will continue on this side of life to need to be awake not only for the Glory of Christ in the Sacraments and in our lives, but also for the Passion of Christ in the Sacrament of the Most Holy Eucharist and in our lives and the lives of others.
This has ramifications for the manner in which we celebrate the Ordinary Form of the Holy Mass. Is it a transfiguration experience for us, where we are filled with wonder, fear and awe, wanting to remain with Jesus or is it like the Garden of Gethsemane for us, where like Peter, James and John, we can't stay awake and drift into oblivious sleep? Maybe our eyes are open, but our hearts far from Jesus' passion, death and resurrection.
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