March 3, 2007

Incarnation and Transfiguration

I have this weekend off from preaching, which is great as a break, but it's a bummer because the readings are so great.

First we have the sacrifice of Abraham where he cuts the animals in half. Then, when a flaming pot from heaven passes between the pieces, God contracts a covenant with Abraham. To me, it's a bloody and visceral prefiguring of the grace of the Incarnation: Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word of God, passes through our humanity--right through the sins and divisions in our own hearts, through our experiences, right through our guts. And by this, we are caught up, precisely in our humanity, into the life of the Blessed Trinity. That's the new and everlasting covenant. Beautiful and mystical.

In the Gospel we have Luke's account of the Transfiguration. Again, I love the mystery of the Transfiguration because it shows that the Resurrection is not a historical event, but belongs only to eternity. In the Transfiguration Jesus' closest disciples get a glimpse of the Resurrection before it happens--before the Passion even. Note that all this contains the good news that the Resurrection is just an near to us as it was to Mary Magdalene on that first Easter morning.

4 comments:

Hidden One said...

Aren't all passages of Scripture great? Or are some just easier to -use-, as it were?

Brother Charles said...

Nice to meet you, Hidden One, Blocutor Absconditus, and to be edified by your love of the Scriptures!

Hidden One said...

Hmmmm... Blocutor Absconditus... nice ring to it, but too many people already think I love Latin too much. Glad you found my comment edifying!

Brother Charles said...

Hee hee. I just thought it would be funny to invent a verb by making a portmanteau of "blog" and "loquor," e.g. we would have the regular verb:

bloquor, bloqui, blocutus sum

a blogger would be a blocutor
a conversation would be a bloloquium amongs interblocutors, etc.

But I think I'm getting a little bloloquiacius.