Dear Saints,

In his masterpiece Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis poses his famous trilemma: given everything Jesus claimed about himself, he can be only one of three things: a lunatic, a liar, or the Lord. For Peter, James, and John, that question was answered quite definitively through the Transfiguration, that privileged event we celebrate this Sunday. In that moment, his apostles saw Jesus for who he really is: God’s anointed king, the one to whom the Law (Moses) and the Prophets (Elijah) pointed. Revealed to be God’s beloved Son, the way Jesus went was the way it had to be. And in the midst of that extraordinary revelation that had understandably scared Jesus’ closest friends out of their wits, they were given only two directives: “listen to him” and “be not afraid.”

It’s probably safe to say that most of us will not in this lifetime witness Jesus conversing with Moses and Elijah. Yet if we only have eyes to see and ears to hear, he reveals himself to us all the same, particularly through privileged moments of prayer and the sacraments. And the better we get to know him, the more we can be sure that he’s not crazy and he doesn’t lie to us. There’s only one other possibility: he really is the Lord and, like the apostles, we too should listen to him without fear.

Christ’s Peace,

Father Daniel
δοῦλος Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ