Lent is about transformation, that is, metamorphosis.
The Eucharist is about transformation, that is metamorphosis.
Eucharistic transformation is not primarily about what we label "transubstantiation."
Mainly, Eucharistic transformation is about how our reception of Holy Communion makes us the Body of Christ. This is why the most important part of the eucharistic liturgy, the part to which it all builds, is the Communion Rite.
At the end of the day, the only convincing "proof" (or disproof) that our meager gifts of bread and wine become Christ's body and blood are the lives of those of us who partake of it. Does the change provoke a response?
Living a eucharistic life, which is living a life of thanksgiving, is to be an evangelist.
Apologetics is just apologetics. Nonetheless, apologetically speaking, if the Eucharist doesn't produce the effects it claims or any discernible effects at all, then no matter how elegant your theory (theology), how real can it be?
Metamorphosis is the Greek word translated as "transfigured" in our Gospel for today.
What if instead of beholding a vision that somehow exists outside of reality, or even outside of time (let's think in a quantum way), Jesus' "transfiguration," his metamorphosis, how Peter, James, and John see him in this encounter, is seeing him as he really is all the time?
In beholding Jesus on the mountain top, seeing also Moses and Elijah, and hearing the voice of the Father, I assert the three men are having an intense experience of reality, of the world.
What do I mean by "world" in this context?
Wittgenstein began his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus with-
1. The world is everything that is the case.I agree with Dallas Willard, who was a philosophy professor as well as a great Christian spiritual teacher, when he insisted that not only do we interact with the material world mainly by means of our minds, but that "We bring the reality of God into our lives by making contact with him through our minds." Our actions, in turn, result from that contact (Life Without Lack: Living in the Fullness of Psalm 23, 8).
1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things.
1.11 The world is determined by the facts, and by these being all the facts.
1.12 For the totality of facts determines both what is the case, and also all that is not the case
1.13 The facts in logical space are the world.
The Transfiguration of the Lord, by D. Nollet, 1694
For a Christian, that Jesus is the beloved Son of the Father is a fact, not a myth or merely a nifty-keen way to make sense of the world but only one of several equally viable options. While I suppose Jesus' Lordship is a fact both in the world and about the world, more importantly, it is the fact that constitutes the world.
To understand Jesus as Messiah is to revere him as Lord. In this pericope, the fact of Jesus' unique and divine Sonship is shown by there not being "anyone but Jesus alone" after the cloud lifted and the divine voice trailed off. This is meant to show that Jesus is the fulfillment of the Law (Moses) and the Prophets (Elijah). He is the full revelation of Father.
Because I don't want to make a mockery of Wittgenstein's careful thinking by quoting him inappropriately, far from acknowledging Jesus as Lord, Wittgenstein, citing Paul's insistence that "no one can say, 'Jesus is Lord,' except by the holy Spirit" (1 Cor 12:3), averred that that claim said "nothing" to him. Why did the philosopher balk at acknowledging Jesus as Lord? "Because I do not believe that he will come to judge me" (Culture and Value, 37).
Wittgenstein insisted that the idea of Jesus returning to judge the living and the dead, as Christians profess in the Creed, also said nothing to him. Jesus judging him, he continued, "could say something to me, only if I lived completely differently" (Ibid.). This is the crux of the matter, isn't it?
This metamorphosis that causes you to live completely differently does not result in you being changed into something or someone completely different. Rather, it is to be changed into someone completed. To become who God made and redeemed you to be is what it means to be sanctified.
The first lesson in what means to rise from the dead is understanding that first you must die.
"I urge you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice..." (Rom 12:1). It is by so doing, by the grace of God, you start to "be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you might discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect" (Rom 12:2).
How else can you offer yourself except through the Eucharist, in which we pray that Christ by the Spirit's power "make of us an eternal offering" to the Father? (Eucharistic Prayer II)
Taking a cue from Saint Ignatius of Loyola, this transfiguration requires you not only to discern what is good and pleasing and perfect but to endeavor to act on what you discern, no matter what it may be. We don't call Abraham our Father in faith for nothing.
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