Faith in Fear

Once in a while, someone will say to me, “Father, I want to read the Bible more. Where should I start?” While there are lots of responses to that question – lots of great places to begin reading more Scripture – often I will say, “Read the psalms.” Why? Because unlike other parts of the Bible that recount a story or expound on a theological point, the psalms immediately show us how to pray to God. The Book of Psalms contains 150 prayer-hymns that fit every kind of human circumstance. Joy, sorrow, praise, fear, indignation, gratitude – there’s a psalm for every condition of the human heart. And because we believe that God is the author of Scripture who inspired its human writers, then we can say that the psalms are really examples of God showing us human beings how he wants us to pray to him.

On Sundays, the responsorial psalm often gives us a clue or insight into the theme of the readings of the Mass. For example, today the psalmist says, “Lord, let us see your kindness and grant us your salvation.” Those words tell us that the psalmist’s prayer was being made in difficult circumstances. Maybe the psalmist was going through a difficult time personally, or maybe the whole Israelite people were facing some calamity, but you only cry out to God to show his kindness and salvation when those things are not at that moment readily apparent.

We might well imagine that the words of this psalm – “Lord, let us see your kindness and grant us your salvation” – were on the minds of the disciples in today’s Gospel. They are in very dire straits: caught in a storm, their boat being tossed about on the rough sea, and Jesus not with them. And this story is perhaps symbolic of inner turmoil that was going on within them at the same time. Shortly before this story in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus and the disciples receive word that John the Baptist had been beheaded. The death of Jesus’s cousin, whom some of the disciples had followed before they followed Jesus, surely filled them with sorrow and grief. And it probably also gave rise to fear – fear that perhaps a similar fate awaited Jesus and perhaps even themselves.

So, turmoil, distress, fear – our Scriptures today focus upon those realities. And that’s a good thing, because those realities are our realities, too – each of us, in some way, because of one or more circumstances in our lives, face something that is causing inner turmoil, or filling us with fear, or giving us anxiety. The question is how do we respond? Often, we are tempted to act based solely on the way we are feeling in that moment. Because we are feeling afraid, and because we don’t like that feeling, we are tempted to alleviate our fear in any way possible – by denying it, or rationalizing it, or numbing it.

Christ Walking on the Sea, Currier & Ives, 19th cent.

What our readings today invite us to consider is how fear and turmoil, as unpleasant as they may be, are also an invitation into a deeper faith. To do so, sometimes we have to enter into our fear and wait. Sometimes the Lord does not alleviate our fears right away – not because he wants us to suffer, but because he wants us to recognize our total dependence on him. And fear has a great way of doing that. In the midst of fear, there is a temptation to abandon faith altogether; but there’s also the chance to see more clearly what is true. There’s an opportunity to make the prayer of the psalmist our own – “Lord, let us see your kindness and grant us your salvation.”

Friends, like the disciples, our boats are at times tossed about on rocky seas. In those moments, let’s turn fully to the Lord, leaving behind our own devices and self-made ideas. Let’s offer a prayer – our own words, or perhaps the words God has given to us in the Book of Psalms. And may that prayer help us to know that the Lord will surely come, just as he did in the Gospel, just as he does in this Mass. When he does, may he find us with deepened trust in him – not having tried to sort things out ourselves, but rather seeing our turmoil and difficulty as the instruments by which he invites us to a new level of faith.

“Lord, let us see your kindness, and grant us your salvation.”

Big Words

Our Catholic faith uses a lot of big words. For example, after this homily, we will recite the Creed, during which we will use words like “only-begotten,” “consubstantial,” and “incarnate.” And in our broader tradition, there are even bigger words like “hypostasis,” “perichoresis,” and “transubstantiation.” These words might seem unwieldy or confusing, but learning what they mean helps us to understand what we believe.

Today we celebrate the Feast of the Lord’s Transfiguration – another big word. We probably know “transfiguration” refers to the event in Jesus’s life that we just heard about in the Gospel, but it’s worth looking at the word itself and understanding what it means. A transfiguration is a change in outward characteristics only; the underlying thing remains what it has always been while the figure and appearance change. Standing on the mountaintop, the apostles Peter, James, and John beheld the same Jesus they had always known, but in a radically different way, with his face shining like the sun and his clothes white as light.

Luca Giordano, The Transfiguration (1685)

We celebrate today’s feast in the context of our Sunday Mass. And at every Mass, there is another change which occurs – one for which we use another big word that I mentioned before: transubstantiation. Transubstantiation is the word that explains what we believe happens in every Eucharist. In a certain sense, you can say it is the opposite of a transfiguration. In transfiguration, what something is stays the same while its outward appearance changes. But in transubstantiation, the outward appearance remains the same, but what it *is* changes. During the consecration of the Mass, the elements of bread and wine appear to remain unchanged; but what is present there on the altar – the substance – is no longer bread and wine but the Body and Blood of Jesus. All of the outward characteristics remain the same as before – the appearance, the taste and smell, even the biochemical makeup would suggest that it is still bread and wine present. But we believe, by faith, that on the altar is no longer bread and wine at all but instead the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Both of these changes – transfiguration and transubstantiation – tell us something important. In the Transfiguration, Jesus showed the disciples his own true identity as God’s Son and gave them preview of the glory he would have in the Resurrection so that they would not be afraid when he began his journey toward the Cross. By the transubstantiation of the elements at Mass, Jesus shows us disciples here at Mass his nearness to us, the closeness of his abiding Presence that reaches down from heaven to be with us continually in the Eucharist. Like Peter, James, and John, we are witnesses to this change – a change not in appearance that we can see, but a change in substance that we believe by faith.

And in faith, the Real Presence of Jesus under the appearance of bread and wine is our food for the journey of life. Like Jesus, we too must journey toward Calvary. We must take up our Cross, as he did, but thanks be to God that he comes to be with us, to nourish us with presence. By receiving him in the Eucharist – he who was begotten of the Father before all time, who was born of Mary into our world, who was transfigured on the mountain, who died and rose again and sits at the Father’s right hand – by receiving him, we pray that we might one day be brought to share in the glory of the Resurrection ourselves.

Luca Giordano, Communion of the Apostles (c. 1659)

I have been following this week some of the coverage of the events of World Youth Day. Around one million young people have gathered from around the world in Portugal to deepen their Catholic faith and to pray with our Holy Father Pope Francis. On Friday, the pope prayed with the youth before they began a Way of the Cross, and he told them that the Cross is “the sacred sign of the greatest love, the love with which Jesus wants to embrace our lives. The Cross shows us the true beauty of love.”

Friends, I think we see the truth of those words in both transfiguration and transubstantiation – in the event that happened on the mountain two thousand years ago, and in the event that will happen here on the altar, at this and every Mass. The apostles beheld the Lord Jesus in glory; we behold him under sacramental signs. But for both of us, it’s the same Jesus who comes to encourage and strengthen us. Let us ask him in this Eucharist to not be afraid by our sufferings, but to be sustained by our faith – faith in the glory that we pray awaits us in the Resurrection and faith in his very Presence here on the altar. And let us say with grateful and believing hearts, “Lord, it is good that we are here.”