Wednesday, 9/2/15
Let me mention one of the many things that struck
me in the encyclical Pope Francis wrote about saving the earth. The encyclical
prints out at 200 pages, and it is composed of 246 paragraphs.
Towards the end, in paragraph 241, Francis spoke of
Mary; and he said, she is “Completely transfigured.” He further said she, ”now
understands the meaning of all things, hence we can ask her to enable us to
look at this world with eyes of wisdom.”
The Holy Father is there saying that if you could
put together all the scholars and saints now on earth, they could not be as
competent as Mary is in telling us how to save our earth. That seems to be the
main thing he is saying there; but I am more caught up with his saying that
Mary is “Completely transfigured.”
We have never heard of anyone but Jesus as being
“transfigured.” That happened on a mountaintop one week after he announced that
he was going up to Jerusalem to die.
My feeling has always been that Jesus, in his
humanity, was feeling very downcast over the thought of his approaching death.
And feeling the need for consolation from his Father, he went p to be alone
with him on the mountaintop. So, the Father, to console him, gave him a
foretaste of heaven.
The vision of the transfiguration, as Peter James
and John awoke to see it, pictured the floor of heaven stretching down like a trampoline, taking
in the body of Jesus as he hovered above them. That transformed his body from
being a merely physical one to becoming a spiritual body. As Paul said in First
Corinthians, 15:44, “If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual
one.”
That is most encouraging as it applies to us. In
the Resurrection we will stiil have bodies. In that same passage Paul wrote,
“There are both heavenly bodies and earthly ones; but the brightness of the
heavenly is of one kind, and that of the earthly another.”
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