MARCH12026

On the Mount of Transfiguration Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good that we are here. If you wish, I will make three tents here.” Peter wanted to capture and preserve the experience of the presence of God he felt on the mountain. This is a common human trait — to hold onto the good things when they come our way. You see this concretely at times when parents have a hard time letting go of the child they had known who has now become an adult. In contrast we find that in the Bible there frequently is a call to move out of the comfortable and familiar. The archtypical story is the call of Abram. “Go forth from the land of your kinsfolk and from your father’s house to a land that I will show you.” God has something new in store so Abram must heed the invitation of God to move into the a world beyond the one he knew. That can be our story as well. Especially as church goers we can get a sense that we are doing okay so why change what isn’t broken. But the call of God is not that we rest in being good, but that we become better. St. Paul puts it: He saved us and called us to a holy life. Not decency but holiness is our vocation. Often in our lives some traumatic event can push us to examine our lifestyle and values. It is at that moment when God presents us with the opportunity to grow in those virtues which make us reflect better our true identity as children of God — compassion, forgiveness, generosity, love. We heed the vocation to holiness not by holding onto the precious moments that come our way but by giving them away freely and joyfully.