Listen to Him August 6

“You will do well to be attentive to it, as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.” 2 Peter 1:19

“This is my beloved Son. Listen to him.” Mark 9:7

Piety

Let us pray: Lord, help us to be attentive to your message. Count us among those ministering to you in the person of the strangers who need our help and the enemies you implore us to love. Help us get strength from both our community and from the Cloud of Witnesses who have gone before us to uphold Your law and to act on the teachings of Your Son, the Holy One. Lord, deliver us from evil and grant us peace today. Amen.

Study

http://www.usccb.org/nab/080606.shtml

Our faith is about recognizing the One among us. From the manager to the cross and at every step along the journey, are our eyes open enough to see Jesus in each other?

Central to our experience as Cursillistas and Christians is the weekend where encounter – sometimes for the first time – the true friendship and kinship we have with Jesus. The close encounter of the best kind is our transfiguration moment. Like Peter James and John on the mountain, we have a chance to see the glory of God.

Yet we have to come down from the mountaintop. We have to go back to the everyday world where we sweat in the heat wave. We have to go back to the everyday world where innocent noncombatants in Haifa, Beirut, Baghdad, Adams Morgan and Culmore face death from wars, gangs and people run amok.

Like Peter, James and John, we would like to erect a temple and remain at Missionhurst or Mount Zion or Bethany House or the Dominican Retreat House and stay there on that holy ground forever. We can not and we should not.

We should not because we can always be alone with Jesus. After the clouds cleared away and the visions departed, we too can look up and be alone with our Lord and Savior. We just have to open our eyes because Jesus could be the beggar in front of 7-11 or the priest behind the altar at Church today.

Action

“Listen to him.”

Jesus’ message is not one of passive listening or meditation. Jesus’ message to us is one of action. In seeing Moses and Elijah, we see how Jesus directly fulfills the law (given to Moses on the mountaintop) and the teaching of the prophets. Elijah got refreshed in his mission by a mountaintop encounter with Christ, too.

Now it is up to us. One that mountaintop, who would you see in your cloud of witnesses? Dorothy Day? Martin Luther King, Jr. Gerard Manley Hopkins? Thomas More? St. Francis? St. Anthony? St. Theresa of Avila? Dom Helder Camera?

Our action follows the efforts of a long line of Christians. It can not stop. But today, those acting on our behalf to meet the humanitarian needs in Lebanon, can not help because there are no secure corridors for humanitarian relief. Almost 25 percent of the population of Lebanon have fled their homes and are displaced refugees. That is one out of every four people. See this story on Catholic News Service:

http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0604452.htm

Look outside your front door. Count the houses you see. Every time to get to the number four, start over because if this were Lebanon, they wouldn’t be with you any more.

It was even worse in Hiroshima 61 years ago today. The nuclear weapon Little Boy was dropped on Hiroshima by Enola Gay, a U.S. Air Force B-29 bomber which was altered specifically to hold the bomb, killing an estimated 200,000 people and heavily damaging 80% of the city.

Make your voice and your faith heard by calling for an end to the latest violence in the Middle East by Hezbollah, the disproportionate response from Israel, and the slow response to lead the way to peace by America.

Lord, deliver us from evil and grant us peace today. Amen.