To Find Fruit: Sunday word, 15 Nov 15

Sunday, November 15, 2015

Sunday word, 15 Nov 15

Our Transformation

Thirty-third Sunday of the Year B (15 Nov 2015)

Dn 12. 1-3; Ps 16; Hb 10. 11-14, 18; Mk 13. 24-32

Homily of Fr. Paul Panaretos, S.J.

With Halloween behind us stores are readying to immerse us in commercial Christmas. Madison Avenue plunges us into Christmas before we have a chance to celebrate Thanksgiving. Enjoyable as it can be believers know and feel Christmas drips with sanctity. The season of Advent soon to come helps us prepare ourselves to live Christmas sanctity. The church makes no abrupt shift to Advent. The liturgies of the last Sundays of the Year ease us into Advent.

These liturgies do not call attention to the season of Advent; yet their scripture readings hum with the same imagery as does Advent when it begins: they absorb us in the end of time and history and the glorious return of our Messiah Jesus. The imagery Jesus used may feel alien: darkened sun; lightless moon; stars…falling from the sky, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. Jesus echoed prophets long before him. Even non-believers in the God of Abraham nodded agreement. Fixed in the ancient Mediterranean imagination was a fiery end of the world only to be born anew as another best possible one by the divine mind.

World’s end was a time of transformation. Like the prophets before him Jesus was more interested in individuals than a new best possible world: the Son of Man…will send out the angels and gather [his] elect from the four winds, from the end of the earth to the end of the sky. We heard Prophet Daniel describe their transformation: some shall live forever…[shining] brightly like the splendor of the firmament, and those who lead the many to justice shall be like the stars forever.

Christian transformation is already. It is already because the Son of God has already come into our world as human like us. We praise Jesus for joining our humanity. We thank him for beginning our transformation to our true selves in baptism and nourishing them by the other sacraments.

We also expect Jesus to return with great power and glory as the Son of Man. We know not when he will return. When he does he will complete our transformation: from the earth he will raise up in the flesh those who have died, and transform our lowly body after the pattern of his own glorious body.¹

Our vocation is to live as transformed by Jesus’ Spirit. Part of our transformation lets us see Jesus already in others, especially the vulnerable among us. Seeing him in others deepens our desire to greet Jesus at his glorious return.

Each day is an opportunity for our transformation in Jesus to unfold. To live as his disciples means to live rooted in Jesus, our Source of transforming life. To see others as transformed and to join the church’s mission to help others be transformed are sources of hope and of growing relationship with Jesus.

In your daily 15 minutes with Jesus this week

Pause in presence of our triune God.
Ask the disciples to present you to Jesus.
Chat with him: praise Jesus for dying and rising for you; thank him for transforming you in baptism and by his other sacraments.
Ask Jesus for grace to surrender more to him and to his Spirit’s promptings.
Close saying slowly the prayer Jesus taught us. It was Jesus’ daily prayer of surrender to the vision of his Father and ours—a vision of our true selves created in the divine image.