Welcome to Holy Family! Whether a committed member of the community, a visitor or someone searching for a spiritual home we want you to know your presence here is a blessing for we are in this together!
This weekend we celebrate the Feast of the Transfiguration. Heaven validates what we as disciples know yet still find hard to believe – we have been chosen to be the living link between what has been and what will be. We are invited, once again, to connect intimately with our God and each other. Present in this moment we are given what was denied even to Moses and Elijah, the fullness of eternal glory revealed. We rejoice in the majesty of it all, and recognize this feast’s emphasis on the power of transformation.
Change is difficult. It upsets the proverbial apple cart. It ushers us into the unknown and most of us prefer the familiar. The tried and true is, after all, tried and true. It works. It’s reliable. The resistance to change is universal and there are good reasons for resistance. Change forces us out of our comfort zone. It invites tension and stress into our lives; it can lead to or exacerbate conflict. Some changes lead us closer to our ideal; some lead us away from the ideal. Change does not guarantee success.
Think about the changes you face every day.
The carpool is late, traffic is disrupted by construction forcing you to take an alternate route, and you watch your well planned day disintegrate before your very eyes. You find a brand you really like and then it is discontinued. You decide to take the kids for ice cream and they are out of vanilla – really, vanilla! And let’s face it, if these seemingly insignificant experiences of change can throw life up for grabs, what about the big ones – new schools, new jobs, new neighbors, personal and professional setbacks, illness, injury…
Holy Family is changing. Change is inevitable. Without it we languish, creativity ebbs away, resourcefulness dries up, spirits wither. Even the changes we long for and work to implement alter us as a faith community. The good news of this feast is that change is one of the essential animators the Divine etched deep within the memory of all that is. In doing so, Father, Son and Spirit chose a catalytic agent to impel us toward transformation. God prefers vitality and exuberance over certainty and perfection, qualities that honor the value of dying and rising and transfiguration. The theologian/poet John O’Donoghue made a stunning claim about this rousing spiritual intuition in his poem The Inner History of a Day.
Somewhere in us a dignity presides
That is more gracious than the smallness
That fuels us with fear and force,
A dignity that trusts the form a day takes.
So at the end of this day, we give thanks
For being betrothed to the unknown
And for the secret work
Through which the mind of the day
And wisdom of the soul become one.
This is transfiguration at work; a holy, energetic, saving work taken up on our behalf through grace, infusing the changes we long for and suffer through with meaning and power.
Many of us can get caught up longing for a past we glorify. Yet the psalmist reminds us there is more to divine glory revealed, a greater justice to be embraced, an everlasting dominion being established on our behalf. Peter, having been an eyewitness to transfiguration, confidently proclaims in our second reading that he ‘possess a prophetic message that is altogether reliable’ and that we would 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 our hearts.’
We have a glorious history at Holy Family. We are known far and wide for our pastoral inventiveness and openness to the Spirit’s promptings. Recently a visitor to the parish referred to us as “an oasis” in the Church. Another acknowledged that he hadn’t been in Church for twenty years, but had promised his mother to give it one more try. Someone at work told him about Holy Family. The Sunday he came, a woman was preaching and he was deeply moved and inspired by the music so he just wanted us to know he would be back the following week. We should cherish those moments.
Let us also keep in mind that despite our failures, periods of unrest and deep discontent, a myriad of missed opportunities to connect intimately with God and each other, the morning star is rising in our hearts and the work of transfiguration continues. People have left our community. Some will return if we tell them how much they are missed and extend an invitation to come home. Yet, let us not forget people are also coming to be part of Holy Family – for these folks we are the mountain top, the oasis they’ve been searching for. They feel welcome here and speak about our warmth and authenticity. They love the vibrancy of our worship, the quality of our preaching, the academic excellence of the Academy and the originality of our Family Faith program. They are wowed by our ministry to teens and inspired by our commitment to social justice. On this feast, let us rejoice that good news abounds at Holy Family and ‘we are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory…” – transfigured by God’s love and grace through our communion with each other.
Peg Hanrahan (also known as Dr. Peg) is Holy Family’s Director of the Family and Teen Faith Community which offers faith formation and catechesis to preschool through elementary aged children and high school teens, and their families.