The Mother of all Moments
Introduction
On the first Sunday of Lent Jesus is on a
very high mountain, and Satan is tempting him saying, “Fall down and adore me,
and I will give you all the splendor of the world before you.” (Mt 4: 1-11). On
this second Sunday of Lent, Jesus is on another high mountain called Tabor in
Christian tradition (Mk 9:2- 8). Suddenly his face shines like the sun, his
clothes become white as light, a bright cloud appears, and out of the cloud a
voice is heard proclaiming, “This is my beloved son in whom I am
well pleased. Listen to him” (Mt 17:5).
Something spectacular is taking place up there.
Christians call it a transfiguration. Catholics even assign a special feast day
for it: August 6th, Feast of the Lord’s Transfiguration.
Others, especially psychologists, simply call that spectacular event a religious
experience.
Paul’s religious experience
Religious experiences happen not only on lofty mountaintops but also down in the valleys
of real life, even as you’re on your way to do some mischief. One day as St.
Paul was on his way to Damascus to persecute the Christians, a flash of
lightening struck him from his high horse, and he heard a voice crying out, “Saul, Saul, why dost thou persecute me?”
Startled he called out, “Who are you?” The voice answered, “I am Jesus of
Nazareth whom you are persecuting” (Acts 9:1-22). It was a powerful religious experience for him,
and it marked the moment of his conversion.
Augustine’s experience
A religious experience
can happen even in your garden.
At first he thought it
was some kids on the other side playing a game. Then seized with the thought he
was hearing a very special voice, Augustine picked up the Scriptures that lay
nearby. They fell open to the words of
That great St. Francis of
Religious experience
In religious experiences
we hear voices: as Saul of Tarsus heard a voice on his way to Damascus; as
Augustine heard a voice coming from across the wall; as Francis heard a voice
coming from the San Damiano crucifix; as Peter, James and John in today’s
gospel heard a voice coming from a cloud overshadowing them on the Mount of
Transfiguration. All
religion is rooted in religious experience and its voices. Ceremonies and
sermons, creeds and catechisms, as good as they are, at the end of the day
don’t count for much. What counts is religious experience with its voices.
With
religious experience and its voices there
comes ecstasy. That’s a perfectly good word, and it
shouldn’t scare us. Its Greek roots mean “outside one’s self.” In ecstasy we stand outside ourselves. In ecstasy we are beside ourselves in the
face of something that fills us with awe and wonder. Up
there on the lofty heights of
At least in church
Sometimes that’s not the case. Karl Jung, the father
of modern psychology, writes about the day of his first Holy
Communion. Because of what he had heard he awaited the event in joyful
expectation. The day finally came. All peeled into church. In familiar robes,
his father who was the minister of the celebration stood behind the altar
reading the prayers. Jung watched his
father eat the bread, which came from the local bakery, and sip the wine, which
came from the local tavern. Then he passed the bread and wine to others who
seemed solemn and stiff and even bored. Jung saw no joy on anyone’s face. He
saw no one standing in awe of anything. He saw no one having visions or hearing
voices.
Finally his turn came to eat the bread
which tasted flat, and to sip the wine which tasted sour. After the final
prayer, he heard no one crying out, "Oh how good it is for us to be here! Let’s
build shelters here and hunker down forever.” He saw no one lingering in the
glow of ecstasy. Instead, Jung writes,
"All peeled out of the church with faces that were neither depressed nor
illumined with joy—just faces which seemed to say, `Well, that's that.'"
Only gradually in the course of the
following days did it dawn on him that nothing had happened. That experience of
no religious experience at all was fatal for him, and Jung found himself
saying, "Oh how bad it was for me to be there! I must never go back there again."
And he didn't. The day of his very first Communion proved to be his very last!
(Memories, Dreams, Reflections by
Karl Jung).
Conclusion
The mother of all moments
Through fifty long years of priesthood, I
have been blessed (and cursed) by the fiercest conviction that here in the
Sunday assembly, if anywhere, we must find religious experience. That here at
Sunday Mass, if anywhere, we should see visions and hear voices. Here, by gum, we
should reap some ecstasy to sustain us through the long hard week ahead.
Through fifty long years, I have been
blessed (and cursed) by the fiercest conviction that the supreme moment in the
week of the priest and the supreme moment in the week of God’s priestly people is
the moment of the Sunday assembly. It is
the mother of all moments for both of us--a critical moment in which something happens or does not happen.
Through fifty long years, I, priestly head
of God’s priestly people, have been blessed (and cursed) by the fiercest
conviction that there is nothing that I do all week long which is more important
than what I do to prepare for this mother of all moments. But I am not so
inflated as to think that it all depends on the priest. It depends also on the
servers who serve, the readers who read, the singers who sing, the guitarists
who play, the deacons who serve and the congregants who congregate in joyful
expectation of something.
We must all bring something to turn the
Sunday assembly into a