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Transfiguration (A) – Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Transfiguration of the Lord (August 6, 2023)

Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (August 13, 2023)

Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (August 15, 2023)

Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time (August 20, 2023)

Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time (August 27, 2023)

Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time (September 3, 2023)

Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time (September 10, 2023)

Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time (September 17, 2023)

Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time (September 24, 2023)

August 6 / Transfiguration of the Lord

IN SCRIPTURE’S SYMBOLIC LANGUAGE, MOUNTAINS AREN’T just places. They are experiences that put us closer to God. Think of Moses going up Mount Sinai to receive the commandments, Elijah awaiting God’s presence atop Mount Horeb, or Jesus at the Mount of Olives the night before his crucifixion. Mountains are “thin places” where heaven and earth meet, and for a brief moment we see God clearly, or as much as human eyes and hearts can behold, and understand more keenly what we are to do.

However, we need not climb a mountain or retreat into mysticism to witness God’s wondrous and terrifying resplendence. Just ask any parent gazing upon their newborn’s face, or spouses

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savoring one another’s presence as they read in silence at the end of the day. In mundane moments like these come epiphanies of something sacred, fragile, and yet vast and enduring. Suddenly we comprehend the weight and breadth, height and depth of love so full it levels us, face down, in awe and dread that we should bear witness to such holiness in our humdrum life. In that moment, we receive from the Source of All Love a clarity that puts everything into place: “This is my beloved . . . listen.”

Transfiguration promises that within our ordinary lives is the life-changing presence of God, if only we listen for it. —DM

Subscription Resources

Congregational Hymn and Song Selections from

God, Give Us Eyes to See Your Reign (kingsfold)

Text: David Bjorlin / Arr. Ralph Vaughan Williams

God Who Dwells in Light and Darkness (beach spring)

Text: Chris Shelton

We Have Seen the God of Glory (divinum mysterium)

Text: David Gambrell / Arr. Richard Proulx

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When Jesus Prayed Upon the Mountain’s Height (engelberg)

Text: Ruth Duck

When Jesus’ Friends Beheld Him (finlandia)

Text: Adam M. L. Tice

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Unbound makes thousands of hymns previously only available in text and tune collections available for individual download as a PDF with full accompaniment included. Visit giamusic.com/unbound

August 13 /Ninteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

IT’S NATURAL TO JUMP TO THE conclusion that Peter’s mistake was losing his focus on Jesus. However, Peter was sunk even before his feet got wet.

To test the apparition walking on the water, Peter doesn’t say, “If it’s you, Lord, come save us,” but demands that he himself be enabled to conquer the storm alone. Perhaps, then, Jesus’s question is not “Peter, why did you doubt you could do the impossible?” but rather, “Why did you leave your companions behind if you trusted that I would save you all?”

Over the last several years, it has become clear that not everyone is, in fact, “in the same boat” when it comes to weathering

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life’s storms. Each of us carries a unique set of advantages, disadvantages, skills, and luck that cause some to drown, others to float merrily along, and still a small few to walk on water. Our folly, however, is not whether we trust Jesus enough to survive these storms but in believing that, whatever boat we’re in, we’re meant to survive them alone.

It takes just a drop of faith to say, “Lord, save me!” But when we’re tempted to abandon ship to save ourselves, we need the flood of baptismal grace that bonds our common fates together in Christ so that together we might cry out in faith, “And grant us your salvation.”

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Congregational Hymn and Song Selections from

Flowering Broom Tree (erica lynn)

Text: Jacque B. Jones / Music: Benjamin Brody

O Loving Maker of the Earth (dove of peace)

Text: Ruth Duck / Arr. Randall Sensmeier

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Unbound makes thousands of hymns previously only available in text and tune collections available for individual download as a PDF with full accompaniment included. Visit giamusic.com/unbound

August 15 /Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

MANY PAINTINGS AND SCULPTURES DEPICT A seated Mary and, on her lap, the child Jesus, no longer an infant at her breast but a man-child figure “enthroned” upon her knee or standing nobly before her womb. Sometimes Mary’s hands are lifted in praise, a reflection of her son’s raised arm in blessing. The image is often known by one of Mary’s titles, “Seat of Wisdom.”

It’s a common enough illustration. That is why one artist’s unique version of it stops me every time. In his 1961 bronze sculpture “Madonna of the Gospels,” Benedictine priest Hugh Witzmann replaces the human figure of Christ with a book of the Gospels enthroned upon the folds of Mary’s garment. On

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the book’s cover are emblazoned the symbols of the four evangelists. In Witzmann’s work, we have a visual reminder that Mary conceived the Word of God in her heart before doing so in her womb.

The divine gift of Mary’s assumption, body and soul, into heaven is a gift meant for all who believe in the Word Made Flesh, for Mary is the “beginning and image of [the] Church’s coming to perfection” (Eucharistic prayer preface). On this Solemnity, when we see in full the promise given to all God’s children, let us imitate Mary who believed so fully “that what she believed came about in her” (Augustine, Sermon 215, 4). —DM