Fr. Martin Browne OSB
When you look at the News these days, one of the first things you’ll see is people on the move. Refugees. Vast numbers of Ukrainians have had to flee their homeland over the past two weeks and we see images daily of huge crowds at airports and train stations, and long tailbacks on the roads towards the border. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimated on Friday that 2.5 million people had fled Ukraine so far. It really has been quite something to witness how hospitable and generous so many people across Europe have been. It is also striking to see how swiftly bureaucratic and administrative obstacles can be overcome in the case of a real continent-wide emergency.
Those millions of people are surely lucky to be safe and away from the bombs and shooting. But that doesn’t take away the fact that they have been uprooted from their homes. They have left loved ones behind, in many cases not knowing whether they are dead or alive. Many have arrived in countries where they don’t understand the language and are being hosted by people with whom they cannot speak. Some have arrived without passports or other papers. People have been extraordinarily generous. But we shouldn’t get sentimental about what is a truly horrific situation. Being uprooted and forced to go somewhere where you don’t belong is real trauma – no matter how warm the céad mile fáilte may be.
I thought of these refugees as I read today’s Second Reading. ‘Our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ.’ We may be uprooted and displaced, but at the deepest level, our true homeland is not of this world at all, but of heaven. St Paul is encouraging his audience with these words, bidding them to ‘stand firm’, in their faith that the Lord will indeed bring salvation. God’s ultimate plan is to transform and heal the entire creation and make it whole. It’s not hard to see how these words might touch the heart of a refugee, newly arrived in a strange country and culture, bewildered and without visa or passport. How consoling it must be to hear: ‘Our citizenship is in heaven’ – where the waters of baptism are the only visa needed.
But we need to be careful not to use these words as mere escapism. Simply telling people who have lost everything that all will be well in heaven is the type of attitude that caused Karl Marx to describe religion as the ‘opium of the people’; a kind of drug to dull the pain of the human condition – and stifle the impulse to rebel – with illusory consolations. As one satirical folk song puts it: ‘You will eat, bye and bye, in that glorious land above the sky. Work and pray, live on hay. You’ll get pie in the sky when you die.’
The disciples, Peter and John and James, had a wonderful, mystical experience in today’s Gospel story. They experienced Jesus in his ‘glory’, accompanied by Moses and Elijah. It was an extraordinary privilege. They didn’t have to wait till they died or for life in the sky in order to taste heaven. They had ‘pie’ on earth while they lived…
And so, understandably, Peter wanted to prolong the experience. He offered to build three dwellings, one each for Jesus, Moses and Elijah. But Jesus wasn’t interested in having a mountainside ‘glamping’ holiday. He was focused on his journey to Jerusalem and what the Gospel calls his ‘departure’. He had told the disciples this just eight days before: ‘The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.’ That is the ‘departure’ that he was talking to Moses and Elijah about: his Pascha – his Passover through death to life, his cosmic battle – and victory – over the forces of sin and death. It is the mystery we celebrate every Sunday and most especially at Easter. They had forgotten what Jesus had told them, but the Father reminded them. Like Moses on Mount Sinai, they were enveloped by a cloud, signifying the presence of the Almighty and Holy One. A voice from that cloud said: ‘This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!’ This extraordinary moment of transfiguration on the mountain wasn’t a show or a treat for Jesus’s mates. It was a revelation and preparation of what was to come.
Just as the first Passover and Exodus had been the means by which God liberated and saved his people, the Passover of the Lord Jesus – his death on the Cross and his passing over from death into life – was how the Father willed to reconcile the whole world to himself and free us from death and sin. There would be suffering. There would be death. But the future would be one of transformed, reconciled, healed, freedom. It is something too beautiful for words, but the disciples were given a glimpse of it on the mountain as they saw the appearance of Jesus’s face changed and his clothes become dazzling white.
‘Then this world’s walls no longer stay my eyes, a veil is lifted likewise from my heart,
The moment holds me in its strange surprise, the gates of paradise are drawn apart,
I see his tree, with blossom on its bough, and nothing can be ordinary now.’ [Malcolm Guite]
‘Listen to him.’ ‘He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory.’ ‘Listen to him.’ Our citizenship is indeed in heaven, and these aren’t just nice words to pacify refugees and other suffering people into accepting their lot with stoic resignation. It is not ‘pie in the sky’. It is the deepest truth of our identity as God’s people. After the Lord God revealed it to Peter and to John and James, ‘nothing can be ordinary now…’ What was revealed to them at the Transfiguration gives context and meaning to all the madness and absurdity of human suffering and sorrow. ‘Listen to him.’ Let’s not expect too little of what he can and will do. There is more to existence than the bodies in which we suffer now. Greater things await us, infinitely more glorious than what we know now. Death is not the final word. And neither are Terror or War. ‘Hope in him, hold firm and take heart. Hope in the Lord!’