Sacred Sorrow - The Transfiguration

Sacred Sorrow
August 2006
Fr. Herald J. Brock, CFR

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted,” (Mt 5:4).

The Beatitudes are really strange and provocative statements of Jesus. They seem to promise blessing and reward in situations when there is no apparent hope that these promises will be fulfilled. But if we take the Lord and His word seriously, we can’t just dismiss them as idealistic and impractical. We have to delve deeply and prayerfully to discover the truth that lies hidden within them.

In a poor and developing country like Honduras we encounter a lot of suffering, a lot of tears and mourning. My thoughts have returned many times to the second Beatitude quoted above, especially during the funerals of those who have died tragically, prematurely or violently. A congregation of family members, friends and neighbors stare at me blankly with red eyes and tear-stained faces, imploring me silently to somehow make sense of the heartbreak they are experiencing and offer them some words of hope and consolation. It is then that the question looms largest in my mind: How can it be that those who weep and mourn are blessed, and how will they be consoled?

After many such confrontations an answer finally began to become clear to me. Mourning is an expression of love, however imperfect. No one mourns for someone that they do not love. And love, St. John tells us, is of God:

“We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers… Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love… No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us... And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him” (1 Jn 3:14 ; 4:7-8, 12, 16)

Here, at last, was the hope and consolation that so many who mourn seek. These passages clearly imply that in any situation where there is sincere human love that manifests itself in mourning at the loss or suffering of a loved one, even though that love may be imperfect or weak, there is something of God and His presence. As the traditional Latin hymn sung during the washing of the feet at the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday evening, Ubi Caritas, proclaims: “Where there is charity and love, there is God.” These are words that give much encouragement and confidence because they indicate that in our finite and imperfect – albeit sincere – love for someone, we glimpse something of the infinite and perfect love of God for that person. As Pope Benedict XVI wrote in his first encyclical letter, Deus Caritas Est [God is Love]: “ there is a certain relationship between love and the Divine: love promises infinity, eternity—a reality far greater and totally other than our everyday existence,” (n. 5). This gives us hope that even in situations that may be “irregular,” in which it seems that a person who died was not very close to the Lord or the Church, that those whom we love and whom others love will live forever in God’s love, of which our own love is but the merest and faintest reflection. In such moments we trust more in the immense love of God for that person than in any other aspect of their life.

These insights led me to reflect on several different ways in which mourning motivated by love, what we might call “sacred sorrow,” is blessed according to the second Beatitude.

Mourning the Sufferings of Christ

“Look, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and all the peoples of the earth will mourn because of him. So shall it be! Amen,” (Rev 1:7).

“I tell you the truth, you will weep and mourn while the world rejoices. You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy,” (Jn 16:20 ).

One of the ways, at least, that we manifest our love and gratitude for the Lord – as imperfect, fragile and weak as they may be – is by the sorrow and grief we experience in recalling His Passion, in preserving the sacred memory of His sufferings. We do this by reflecting, as St. Bonaventure recommends, upon who is suffering, how good is the one who is suffering, how great is the one who is suffering, that He is suffering for my sake, the way in which He suffers and how much He is suffering. As St. Peter writes in his first letter: “ For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God ,” (1Pet 3:18 ). This is clearly one of the main purposes of reading the accounts of the Passion in the Gospels, praying the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary and making the Way of the Cross. The goal is that our own hearts would be pierced by a salvific sorrow for the Heart of Jesus that was pierced on the Cross for us. The scene of Mary Magdalene weeping at the tomb of Jesus (Jn 20:11 ) is a vivid image of intense grief motivated by passionate love that will be blessed and transformed into overflowing joy.

Mourning for Our Sins

“Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death. See what this godly sorrow has produced in you: what earnestness, what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what alarm, what longing, what concern, what readiness to see justice done,” (2Cor 7:10 -11).

When we perceive the connection between our own sins and the sufferings of Christ , our hearts are pierced with sorrow – sorrow not only for the sufferings of the Lord, but also for our sins that inflicted them upon Him. This is the “godly sorrow” of which St. Paul speaks, and which moves us to sincere repentance and conversion of life. The Catechism of the Catholic Church distinguishes between two types of contrition: sorrow for sin motivated by fear, and sorrow motivated by love. Speaking of ‘contrition of charity,’ the Catechism states: “ Contrition is ‘sorrow of the soul and detestation for the sin committed, together with the resolution not to sin again.’ When it arises from a love by which God is loved above all else, contrition is called ‘perfect’ (contrition of charity). Such contrition remits venial sins; it also obtains forgiveness of mortal sins if it includes the firm resolution to have recourse to sacramental confession as soon as possible,” (nn. 1451-1452).

A poignant example of sorrow for sin motivated by love is the grief experienced by Peter after denying the Lord:

“ Peter replied, ‘Man, I don't know what you're talking about!’ Just as he was speaking, the rooster crowed. The Lord turned and looked straight at Peter . Then Peter remembered the word the Lord had spoken to him: ‘Before the rooster crows today, you will disown me three times.’ And he went outside and wept bitterly,” (Lk 22:60-62).

Pope Benedict XVI commented on this painful experience of Peter in his recent homily on the Solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul:

“‘When you have turned again, strengthen your brethren’ (Lk 22: 32 )… the Lord, who predicted his fall, also promises him conversion: ‘And the Lord turned and looked at Peter ...’ (Lk 22: 61). Jesus ' look works the transformation and becomes Peter 's salvation: ‘he went out and wept bitterly’ (Lk 22: 62). Let us implore ever anew this saving gaze of Jesus: for all those who have responsibility in the Church; for all who suffer the bewilderment of these times; for the great and for the small: Lord, look at us ever anew, pick us up every time we fall and take us in your good hands.”

Mourning for the Sufferings of Others

“ Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn,” (Rom 12:15 ).

St. Bernard of Clairvaux, in his treatise on The Steps of Humility and Pride, teaches that we have to learn three truths: the truth about God, which is mercy; the truth about ourselves, which is misery; and the truth about others, which is compassion. Once we have experienced the mercy of God with regard to our own misery, we can build a bridge of compassion to others in the midst of their own suffering. And sometimes it is in the very experience of compassion for another that we come to understand God’s mercy for us. If we can be moved with sympathy for another, cannot God have compassion on us?

Compassion is the attempt to forget about ourselves for a moment, and “climb inside” the experience of another, to understand them from within their own subjective reality, to experience empathetically their sorrows and sufferings – as well as their joys, to ask ourselves what life is like for them. When it is motivated by sincere love, compassion has the power to save us from that most deadly of spiritual illnesses: selfishness and self-centeredness. In such moments, even when they involve acute pain, we experience the joy of fulfilling the purpose for which we were created – to love – and of somehow participating in the love of God Himself for the person, all the more intense for the fact that the person is suffering. Jesus Himself wept with sorrow at the death of His friend Lazarus (Jn 11:35 ) and was moved by compassion at the grief of the widow of Nain for the death of her son (Lk 7:11 -17).

Sacred sorrow, mourning motivated by love for the suffering of Christ, our own sins or the distress of others, is indeed blessed and carries with it the promise not only of consolation, but of joy – an eternal joy that nothing can destroy (cf. Jn 16:22).

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The Transfiguration
August, 2006
Fr. Herald J. Brock, CFR

There is more to seeing than physical vision. There is more to the perception of reality than the data of the senses. Vision and the other senses are only able to perceive and experience the “outside,” the exterior of reality. They can’t penetrate into the interior reality of their object: its substance and essence.

The event of the Transfiguration in the life of Jesus is all about seeing differently, seeing more fully (if not totally fully), seeing more clearly (if not absolutely clearly). It’s about peering inside of reality, the Reality of Jesus.

The parables of Jesus seem to have as their purpose getting people to look at something familiar in a different way, from a different perspective. They try to “duck under” our defense mechanisms, sneak past our prejudices and get us to take a second look, a new look unhindered by preconceived ideas. Perhaps the clearest example of this tactic is in one of the predecessors to Jesus ’ parables: the parable the prophet Nathan told King David in 2 Samuel 12 of a rich man who takes a poor man’s beloved lamb to serve as a meal for a visitor. It is similar enough in the moral quality of its plot to David’s adultery with Bathsheba and murder of her husband Uriah so that David’s judgment of the case (“the man who did this deserves to die”) can be turned back against him, but it is disguised enough so that David does not recognize himself as the tyrant until Nathan confronts him with the words: “You are the man!”

This explains the difference in Jesus ’ dealings with the disciples and the multitude. Jesus can talk more openly to the disciples because they have already dropped some of their defenses and begun to see. Jesus can reveal to them the inner “secrets of the kingdom of heaven,” but not yet to the multitude to whom He can speak only in parables, because they still only hear without understanding and see without perceiving (cf. Mt 13:11 -15).

We can tend to think that the Transfiguration was something that happened to Jesus , that He changed, His appearance was altered. In the Transfiguration, however, I think it’s more accurate to say that something happened to Peter , James and John . All of a sudden they were able to see Jesus as He really is, to look “inside” Him, to perceive His reality. They saw the reality, the glory, the power, the divinity that was at work below the surface in Jesus , that which enabled Him to work miracles and have such an extraordinary effect on people. The words that St. Luke uses to describe the experience of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus can be applied to these three apostles: “their eyes were opened and they recognized Him” (Lk 24:31).

In the event of the Transfiguration, these apostles were able to see Jesus from a different perspective, from the perspective of the Father. According to the Gospel of Mark, when the Father speaks at Jesus ’ baptism, He addresses Himself directly to His Son: “You are My Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased,” (Mk 1:11 ). But when the Father speaks at the Transfiguration, He seems to be addressing Himself to the three apostles: “This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to Him!” (Mk 9:7). It would seem that the Father’s desire is to share with these three close friends of Jesus His own perspective, His own way of looking at His Son.

Our problem is that were shallow and superficial. We look only at the appearances, the surface, the outside of things, of creation, of events, of people, of Jesus , of the Eucharist, of the Church. We tend to be pragmatists, empiricists, positivists, skeptics. Were somewhat like St. Paul after he was blinded by his vision of Jesus : we have something like scales over our eyes that prevents us from seeing clearly (cf. Acts 9:18 ). Or, to use another Biblical analogy: there is veil that covers our hearts and dulls our minds that impedes our understanding (2Cor 3:13 -15).

If we want to learn from the experience of the Transfiguration, and even more if we want it to become a reality in our own life, we obviously have some steps to take. We have to remove the scales from our eyes, pull back the veil from our minds and hearts, peel off the skin of appearances, dig below the surface to see the inside, to peer into the heart of reality. We do this through the gift of faith.

Sometimes faith is wrongly set in opposition to the knowledge we obtain through our senses, or to the normal functioning of our intellect, as though faith were somehow at odds with these natural capacities of ours, or superimposed as something foreign to us. Faith is rather our senses coming to the limit of their powers, our intellect arriving at the edge of its capacity, and yet recognizing that there is something more to be perceived, something for which we are intrinsically open and destined for. And so, by the grace of God, we go beyond the natural limits of our abilities begin to see and understand according to the perspective of the Father. To borrow and example from science fiction, it’s sort of like a pair of x-ray glasses. They don’t diminish, remove or contradict our sense of sight, but rather enhance our capacity to see and give us vision that is even more keen and penetrating and the ability to look below the surface.

We need to apply this way of looking at things first of all to Jesus , the Eucharist and the Church, but also to creation, the events of everyday life, and above all to other people. Too often we are content with a superficial way of looking at things, and a perfunctory way of responding to them. Not only do we deprive ourselves of experiences that can affect us deeply, amaze us and cause us to wonder, and feed our hearts and prayer, but we also commit an injustice against reality – and ultimately against God – by scaling it down and shrinking it, mistreating and exploiting it, stripping it of mystery, and divorcing it from its origin and purpose. The worst is when we do this to another human being.

This realization can also give us a fresh point of departure for evangelization. Jesus ’ use of parables and the apostles’ experience of the Transfiguration can become a model for us. Our goal is to get people to see things differently, to take a second look, a new look at things that seem familiar and that they thought they understood: Jesus , the Eucharist, the Church, life itself! To bring them to point at which they admit that perhaps there is more there than meets the eye. This requires creativity and imagination, and above all a continuous endeavor on our part. If we want to invite others to take a new look at Jesus , we have to be constantly doing that ourselves: seeking Him, looking at Him from a different angle, peering into His heart, probing His mind, acquiring the perspective of the Father.

Two things can be of assistance to us in this endeavor. The first is to look at Jesus through the eyes of the saints and other holy people with great minds and expansive hearts. They can teach us things about Him that we might otherwise never know. But in the end, there is no substitute for personal experience, for our own direct and renewed encounter with Jesus in prayer. St. John of the Cross says that the Lord is like a great mine, in which there are endless and inexhaustible veins of precious treasure for those who make the effort to delve deeply below the surface.