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”.

“Let your hearts be broken, not your garments torn” (Joel 2:13).  What is the prophet Joel saying?  Clearly it is a poetic metaphor: God does not desire to hurt us…this is about enlarging the heart…converting the heart, making the heart as wide and deep as that of the heart of Christ.  The heart is to be broken open for love, for love to increase, for forgiveness and mercy to lead over a critical demeanor, over a hardened heart. 

There is no Christianity without love and forgiveness!  There is no true Christian love that does not include mercy and forgiveness.  In the gospel parable of the so called ‘Prodigal Son’, Jesus reveals the nature of God as unconditional love and compassion.  And this revelation is what he incarnated in his life, death, and resurrection…He continues to incarnate this love now, within our hearts as they are converted, meaning changed, to being opened wider than wide!