What is the horizon of the mind and heart of Jesus?  How would you describe it?  What is the horizon of the Christian faith?  These questions come into central focus on this Holy Thursday which opens the Triduum.  Foundational to Christian faith is love, the primacy of love, the love of God fully revealed in Christ.  Today’s liturgy focuses on two rituals: the sacrament of the Eucharist and the washing of the feet.  Woven into both is the transformative power of love…love is the reality, the motivating force, behind and within these rituals, one a Christian sacrament and the other sacramental in conveying Divine love, mercy, and grace.

The Divine cry: ‘Lazarus, come out’ (Jn 11:1-45).  The cry of God calling us all out of the tombs of death.  Yes, we will all physically die someday.  But here we are the so-called ‘living’ who in many ways live like we are entombed, diminishing ourselves, diminishing the gift of life that God has graced us with. 

That we may see…That we may see as God’s sees…Do we ever pray for this?  In personal situations, in situations of community life and beyond into the larger Church and world, do we pray with the whole of our heart to see as God sees?  This is precisely where the rule of the ego, its domination needs to be toppled.  In a striking story of today’s gospel of the man born blind (Jn 9:1-41), we see the Jewish religious leaders claiming at all costs that they see, that they know.  Their supposed seeing falls flat before Jesus’ healing of the man’s sight.

Commenting on the Transfiguration, Fr. Hans Urs von Balthasar indicates the reality of what it will mean for Peter and the other disciples to follow Jesus: “To truly hear and really be overshadowed will be their lot only after Easter” (Light of the Word, p.55).  The ‘not understanding’, the ‘not hearing’ of Peter and the disciples is vivid in this gospel of the Transfiguration.  It takes time does it not to understand deep spiritual truths.  That we have resistance is part of the struggle to understand and to truly hear…And our struggle is not unlike what the disciples went through.  What creates the light of understanding?  What helps us to ‘truly hear’? What is this overshadowing?  Overshadowed by what?  Remember where we first hear this image of ‘overshadowing’?  Mary, at the Annunciation, was overshadowed by the Spirit.  Today’s gospel of the Transfiguration (Mt 17:1-9) reveals the overshadowing of Jesus by the Spirit…and then he is transfigured, bathed in Divine light.  And we hear, like at his baptism, the Divine voice saying to the disciples and to us: “Listen to him”.

What began as a beautiful dusting of snow, soon became a blizzard.  It is taking days turned into weeks to recover.  We are all fine and most of the trees are too, though there are many branches and small trees down.  We thank all those in emergency services for their diligence and pray for their safety.