Fr Robert Hendrickson

Dear Friends in Christ,

Today our Gospel draws us to the Transfiguration — it is the moment when we perhaps get a clear glimpse of the Christian life and vocation. Few of us will have a moment when we become dazzlingly radiant. We won’t glow or stand on a mountaintop drawing all eyes to us. However what we do all have is the mark of baptism — that moment when God says of us, “this is my beloved child.”

What Jesus doesn’t do is as important as what he does after the Transfiguration. He does not then use his super-luminous presence to go and startle folks into obeying his every word. He does not become Zeus. Instead, he tells his disciples that they could not remain on the mountaintop, in the bliss of the moment, because he was fixed on getting to Jerusalem.

He was fixed on going to the Cross.

This is a lesson for us too — being named the beloved children of God does not mean that we will not suffer. It means that we are called into the suffering of the world. Those who are changed by the light of Love are no long able to rest blissfully unaware of or unconcerned about suffering. We are called to go from the comfort of the light to the cross — to find those places where people long for hope.

As we enter Lent and the next several weeks which take us to the foot of the cross and to the empty tomb as well may we remember that we too are God’s beloved children and that we too are called to fix our hearts and to walk in the way God has set before us with faith, hope, and love.

Robert