6 August 2026
Dn 7:9-10, 13-14
Ps 97:1-2, 5-6,99
2 Pt 1:16-19
Mt 17:1-9
The Feast of the Transfiguration of Our Lord, draws us into a mystery that is well beyond our understanding or comprehension. The Transfiguration represents the fulfillment of the prophecy we just heard in the reading from Deuteronomy that also tried to describe something beyond the ability of words and images. "The Son of Man received dominion, glory, and kingship; all peoples, nations, and languages serve him. His dominion is everlasting; his kingship shall not be destroyed."
"His dominion is everlasting; his kingship shall not be destroyed."
On this Feast we recall Jesus appearing in brilliant glory; speaking with Moses and Elijah, the Law and the Prophets in front of three of His disciples.
Imagine the scene: Dazzling light. Moses, Elijah, and Jesus conversing. What were they saying? How did their voices sound? Place yourself with the apostles. Stand on the mountain with them. The tension is increasing, it is almost unbearable. And then you hear God's voice: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased." The Father confirms that Jesus is the Christ, the Beloved Son of God, the one whom Peter confessed him to be in the previous chapter of Mark's Gospel.
And then the Father gives you a mission: "Listen to him."
Like the apostles, you are stunned into silence and overcome with awe. Jesus--the Nazorean and teacher, Son of Mary and Wonder Worker, Jesus, the carpenter, healer, and prophet who was given no honor in his native place, was revealed in his Divinity.
But, there is another transfiguration, there is another revelation, we must recall today. That event was also marked by blinding light, overshadowed by a cloud, and a deafening sound led to a stunned silence.
On August 6 the Church recalls that Jesus was revealed in his Divinity on a mountain. On August 6, 1945 the human race revealed its depravity at Hiroshima. The world would never be the same. Hiroshima captured in one event the sum total of human sin from the fall of Adam and Eve.
The event of Hiroshima, and three days later, Nagasaki, condensed the cumulative horrors of all the wars of the past centuries, into a single and singular event. This time God did not give mankind a mission from the cloud. There was a terrible silence. There was a void.
Or was there?
The voice of God was obscured by the explosion. It was not silenced.
Almost 2000 years since Jesus' incarnation, birth, passion, death, resurrection and ascension, and eighty-one years since Hiroshima, God's mandate to the apostles, and thus His mandate to us: “listen to him” is more compelling and urgent than it was for the shaken apostles. Hiroshima and Nagasaki demonstrated man's capability for destruction on an unimaginable scale, a scale that is unique to our present time and technology.
"This is my Son; listen to him.”
As we listen to Jesus, as we take his teaching to heart and allow that teaching to transform us, we move a bit closer to the eschatological glory of the transfigured Jesus. At the same time we move that much farther from the apocalyptic destruction of the nuclear bomb, the human destruction of past genocides in Armenia, Rwanda and Burundi, the unbearable memories of WWII and many others throughout the world up to and including Ukraine and the Middle East.
And, as we heed God's mandate to listen to his beloved Son, we begin to move further from the systematized attacks on morality and vulnerable human life being waged in the U.S. today, abortion, the planned killing of the elderly, and the castration of prepubertal children for the sake of a perverted agenda.
"The mountains melt like wax before the LORD,
before the LORD of all the earth.
The heavens proclaim his justice,
and all peoples see his glory."
"The Lord is king, the Most High over all the earth."
"This is my beloved Son,
listen to Him."
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Taken from the choir stall to which I was assigned on my first visit ten years ago. It never changed. The books are in Latin, Gregorian Chant, and are huge. Have a Blessed Feast Fr. Jack, SJ, MD 
A depiction of the Transfiguration on the staircase leading to the Church. It is about five feet high and proportionately wide. Note the quote at the bottom. 
The miracle of Transubstantiation 
