Letter from the Pastor
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August 6, 2023Twice a year we hear the story of the Transfiguration. The gospel of the Second Sunday of Lent is always the story of the Transfiguration, which is approximately 40 days before Good Friday. And today, August 6th, the Feast of the Transfiguration, which is 40 days before the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, September 14. The Transfiguration and the Cross are forever linked.
About a year before His Passion and Death, Our Lord took Saints Peter, James and John, and led them to a mountain near the town of Nazareth. Tradition assures us that this was Mount Tabor, which is exceedingly high and beautiful, and was anciently covered with green trees and shrubs, and was very fruitful.
At the Transfiguration, as our Lord prayed His face was altered and shone like the sun and His garments became white as snow. Moses and Elias were seen by the three apostles in His company and were heard discussing with Him the death which He was to suffer in Jerusalem. For a brief moment, Christ’s divinity was seen.
This vision happened during the night. As they went down the mountain early the next morning, Jesus told them not to tell anyone what they had seen until His bodily resurrection.In August there are two great feasts: today and the Assumption of our Lady on August 15. One theme, which unites these two holy days, is the holiness of the body. In our present culture we either worship the body or degrade it; we objectify the body and surgically modify the body, but rarely consider it to be holy. Our body is sacred; it was consecrated on the day of our baptism. We are called to take care of it, respect it in life and in death. We are to treat the human body with dignity and respect, for it houses our immortal souls. It is not simply a material “thing” to be thrown away when finished. Our bodies are so sacred, that at the end of this world, there shall be the resurrection of the body.
In His Transfiguration we see the divinity of Christ revealed in the radiance of His sacred body. The Assumption also shows us that Our Lord came to save us completely and not just spiritually: Mary is assumed body and soul into heaven. It shows what awaits us who are faithful to the Lord and His Kingdom.
We need to see and teach our young people, especially our teenagers that the body is not to be objectified, or mutilated, or even worshipped, our body is the visible manifestation of the human person made in the image and likeness of God. Our God thought the body to be so special that He assumed a human body, thus making it sacred. Even now in Heaven our Lord still has a glorified Body.
When we have the proper understanding of the human body, there is no place for pornography or human trafficking which is the subject of the important movie Sound of Freedom. There is no reason for mutilating the human body for a psychological illness or confusion in Gender Dysphoria. God doesn’t make mistakes especially with His children. Instead, we need to see the holiness of the entire person: body and soul.
Days to Remember
We also remember this day, in 1945, at 08:15 AM, the first atomic bomb was dropped on the centre of Hiroshima. Hiroshima was supposed to be targeted because; the city's size and layout made it a suitable test site for the bomb's destructive power. Also the concentration of military and munitions facilities in the city and by this time in the war, most of Japan's other major cities had already been destroyed.
Then three days later, on August 9th, the second bomb was dropped on the third choice city of Nagasaki at 11:02AM. It was a port city with an approximate population of 263,000 people, with some major military facilities. Nagasaki was an important port city. Why so soon after Hiroshima? The always-changeable Japanese weather and the belief that two bombings following in quick succession would convince the Japanese that the Americans had plenty of atomic devices and were ready to keep using them until Japan finally surrendered. Reports of approaching bad weather convinced the Americans to drop the next bomb on August 9.
Please God, may we never experience that horror ever again.
