By Fr. Roy Cimagala
THE spectacle of Christ’s Transfiguration (cfr. Lk 9,28b-36) teaches us, among other things, that we are meant for a supernatural life, that we need to develop the art of transcending the material and temporal dimensions of our life to enter into the world of the spiritual and the eternal, and that the care we give to our body should be oriented toward the ultimate glory we are supposed to share with God.
We have to develop a taste and even an appetite for the supernatural life with God and of things supernatural in general. In this we have to help one another, because in the end, this is our common ultimate end in life—how to live our life with God, how we can be immersed in God even as we are immersed also in the things of the world.
We have to help one another wean ourselves from the exclusive dependence on the sensible, material and even merely intelligible circumstances of our life. Yes, it’s true that we cannot avoid them, since they are an integral part of our humanity. In fact, we need them. But let’s understand that they are not the be-all and end-all of our life. At best, they are means, tools and occasions to develop our supernatural life with God.
We have to understand also that our supernatural life does not in any way nullify our humanity, and everything related to it—our senses, emotions, our family and professional, social, political life, etc. If anything at all, it promotes these aspects of our life, purifies them and elevates them to the supernatural order of God.
We have to disabuse ourselves from the thinking, now so common in many worldly ideologies and lifestyles, that the supernatural life undermines our humanity. Yes, there might be some awkwardness involved, especially in the beginning, but such problems and difficulties do not detract from the objective necessity we have to develop a supernatural life.
We also have to be more aware of our need to develop and sharpen our sense of transcendence. It is to help us cope with the fullness of the reality that governs us. It is the reality that includes the spiritual which we cannot see and touch because it is not accessible to the senses, and the supernatural which we cannot reach with our own natural powers alone but only with God’s grace, through faith, hope and charity that work on our natural powers.
We have to realize that the sense of transcendence does not mean that we ignore or have no need or simply give little importance to the here and now, to the material and natural dimensions of our life. Rather, we have to realize that our sense of transcendence can only be exercised through these natural dimensions of our life, but we need to go beyond them, not trapped in them.
Lastly, Christ’s Transfiguration also teaches us that our body is meant for eternal life. It may be reduced to dust when we die, but our faith tells us that it will be resurrected at the end of time.
We should subject the body to the dynamics of our spiritual soul that in turn is subject also to the dynamics of faith, hope and charity, or in short, the dynamics of the life of God from whom our soul springs as God’s image and likeness.
Yes, indeed, our body materializes the spiritual love proper to us. The impulses of faith, hope and charity should somehow be expressed in it, in spite of its limitations.
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