Category: Transfiguration

So you want to be a celebrity!…or at 1east special.

I write this on the Feast of the Transfiguration.  “Come again?” you well may ask, ‘What is that?”  This is a day in the Church’s year when we celebrate that time in the life of Jesus when his divine glory shone through in his human flesh and the Father’s voice was heard declaring that Jesus was his beloved Son and that he found his delight in him.  His disciples were simply blown away by the glory of it all.

So what has that to do with you, with your parenting, with the challenges you may have at work.  A lot.  We are made for glory.  Made in God’s image we desire greatness, we desire full and passionate love, we desire someone to find delight in us.  And God wants this for us as well.  But this isn’t something we can just take – we have to learn how to receive it from the hands of others.  When we grab, when others grab, all sorts of problems come about. People become selfish and demanding, thoughtless and rude.  The result may look like power but it certainly is without glory.

My grandfather was a man whose glory shone through.  He was very old when he died, 96 years, and many people, especially young people were at his funeral …, “because he was so good to us.”  He was a poor man so he had nothing to give except interest, courtesy, love, conversation.  His life had been spent in love and care of his family and friends.  He knew the way to true glory – love of those that God had given him.

Loving Father, you showed your love and delight of Jesus your Son when glory radiated through him.  Send us your Spirit to shine through us as we love our family, friends and wider community.  You know how restless our hearts can be, may they rest in your love.  We ask this in Jesus’ name, confident that you will hear us.

Sr Kym Harris osb

Made for Glory

Flick down a Facebook feed or through a magazine in a waiting room and you will come across at least one or two pieces on ‘self-improvement’: how to lose weight, get great hair or find a better lover.  You are also likely to find an article or two on a ‘celebrity’, someone who had achieved fame motor-racing, novel-writing or even just by being outrageous.  These writings reveal something very deep about us: we want glory and we want to give glory to others…and that is a good thing.  

On Monday of this week, the Church celebrated the Feast of the Transfiguration.  ‘The what?’, I hear some of you saying.  This is the event, when for a few moments, Jesus revealed his glory to three of his disciples, Peter, James and John.  The glory of heaven radiated out of the body of Jesus and the disciples were gob smacked.  Overcome at what they saw, they wanted in.  They wanted to stay. Of course, it didn’t happen that way.  The glory passed and they went down the mountain to lives as ordinary as before…but they were changed.  Writing years later, St Peter described what had happened and showed how it changed him and directed his life. 

Our desire for glory can direct our lives as well.  Sometimes our passions and desires can seem silly, or dangerous or unimportant but if we sift beneath the surface, they can reveal hidden depths to our hearts.  Take the desire to be admired.  We are made for this.  It is just that it gets side-tracked onto things like ‘great hair’ or ‘summer body’.  The God who created us and continues to create us, wants his glory to flow through us.  He desires to admire us, just as he did Jesus on the mountain. For this to happen, we have to begin by letting ourselves be in God’s presence and naming ourselves as ‘Beloved of God’.  And then allowing that to direct our lives.

Loving Father, you have made me for glory.  As I look to the life of Jesus, may the glory that shone in him, radiant in my live in the way I love those around me.  I ask this in his name, confident that you will hear me.  

Sr Kym Harris osb