From Tabor to Calvary

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

“Then Peter addressed Jesus, saying, ‘Lord, it is good for us to be here.’” (Matt. 17:4).

In this recollection, we look at different aspects of the Transfiguration. In this particular meditaiton, we look at true joy: “joy which also has its roots in the form of a cross” (Josemaría Escrivá, The Forge, Point 28).

On this occasion, Peter was full of joy: “It is good for us to be here.”

Joy and cheerfulness is one of the infallible signs of God's presence.

We experience joy when we are with Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. There can be joy and peace in our hearts and in our souls that you cannot find in other things and in other places. “A joy and a peace that this world cannot give” (John 14:27).

We also say to Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, “Lord, it is good for us to be here.” We try to practice presence of God in a regular way, because in that practice, we also find a certain joy, a reassurance that “I am with you always” (Matt. 28:20).

One spiritual writer says we are in danger of not realizing fully how close Our Lord is to our lives “because God presents himself to us under the insignificant appearance of a piece of bread, because he does not reveal himself in his glory, because he does not impose himself irresistibly, and he slips into our life like a shadow, instead of making his power resound at the summit of all things. ...How many souls are troubled by doubt because God does not show himself in the way they expected?” (Jacques Leclercq, A Year with the Liturgy).

Our Lord comes into our life with silent steps. But we know with faith that He is there.

Our Lord is also there in the moments of the cross because the Holy Spirit is there in the wounds of the Crucifixion. “There is an eternal freshness”, said Fulton Sheen, “in the wounds of Christ, because the Holy Spirit is there.”

In all the situations of our life, we can find joy. St. Teresa of Calcutta used to say, “Never be so down, and so forget the joy of the risen Christ.”

There is a church in Singapore that goes precisely by that name, ‘The Church of the Risen Christ.’ A rather powerful title. It brings with it the suggestion of joy, optimism, hope which that truth brings with it.

In the Transfiguration, Our Lord wanted to buoy up the joy and hope of the apostles because of His imminent Passion. He wanted to strengthen their faith.

The Preface of the Feast of the Transfiguration says, “That the scandal of the Cross might be removed from the hearts of His disciples.”

He knew there was going to be a scandal. He knew it was going to decimate them. But He wanted to prepare them in some way for that.

Peter was very happy. “Lord, it is good for us to be here.” He wanted to offer a sort of perpetual adoration to Our Lord. But that's not exactly what Our Lord had in mind.

Don Álvaro said in 1993, “Those were not Our Lord's plans. He worked that great wonder to strengthen them against the trials that they were soon to face, so that they would not waver before the scandal of the Cross.”

He strengthened their joy and faith so that they would be able to take in their stride all the things that their life, their vocation, might bring to them.

We also can find a certain joy in that strength in our soul and in our heart that God gives us with His real presence. With our knowledge that He is there close beside us, we know we can handle anything, because He is with us. “I am with you all days even until the end of the world” (Matt. 28:20).

Don Álvaro said, “The happiness of heaven which is anticipated by the glory of Tabor will come later. And now, on our way there, is a time for extending Christ's kingdom and for being faithful and loyal to our vocation, with the fidelity which is worked into shape through the battles of each day.”

The Cross becomes something ordinary—the little challenges of each day, the little aspects of the Divine Will, the unexpected Crosses.

But at the same time, Our Lord wants us to have that peace and that joy, gaudium cum pace. Joy and cheerfulness are permanent states in our lives because our divine sonship is a permanent state. That joy is the mark and the fruit of charity. To be with Christ is a sort of joy.

St. Josemaría knew how to find joy in all sorts of challenging situations. In the residence in Rome, Villa Tevere, it says the ‘Roman dog days’ of July and August passed while St. Josemaría prayed, worked, studied, wrote, walked, talked with people, and practiced patience.

He was ill. His diabetes was unpredictable and dangerous with fever, dehydration, attacks of raging thirst, muscular exhaustion, headaches, weakness, and prostration.

But St. Josemaría did not complain. Except for Don Álvaro, no one knew what he was going through. He even outdid the younger residents in energy and good humor.

Sometimes, coming home to Città Leonina, exhausted, they would find a power failure and the elevator not working. St. Josemaría would grasp the stair rail and start to climb.

On reaching the landing he would joke, “They say there are five floors in this house, but I think they are exaggerating. There are only four because we have already done one.” He knew how to bring humor out of all sorts of difficult, exhausting, and challenging situations.

We have come to Opus Dei to work for Christ, to carry His cross, or to help Him in doing so.

St. Josemaría wrote in the early days of 1935 that in the first years of Opus Dei, “We should tell the new vocations that they are not coming to Mount Tabor; they are coming to Calvary.”

Sometimes, we have to remind ourselves of that. It's the normal thing—the unexpected crosses, the things that don't quite work out.

Don Álvaro said for us being on Golgotha and united to Jesus means embracing the cross of each day, loving the sacrifice entailed in finishing off everything we do really well.

The cross of each day means the sacrifices of each day, forgetting ourselves, standing on our own pride, our love of comfort, our self-esteem, going out of our way, going the extra mile, and all the little ordinary things that come our way each day, particularly accepting the tasks that may come to us.

Don Álvaro says, “I'm reminding you of this, my daughters and sons, whether you have been serving Our Lord in Opus Dei for dozens of years, or whether you've just received the light of your vocation: don't forget that our way to sanctity is made up of ordinary things. Right there in what is apparently insignificant, we are to look for God's footprints and love Him with a child's piety.”

We shouldn't be surprised or scandalized by the crosses that may come, and also those that might come at the eleventh hour, because Our Lord wants to work on the business of our sanctity. That's why we're here.

In The Man of Villa Tevere, Manolo Caballero was modeling an image of Christ crucified, we're told, that was to be installed in Galleria di Sotto in Villa Tevere.

Msgr. Escrivá told him, “My son, every morning before starting work, you should say The Creed, and ask Our Lord to arouse at least an aspiration in the heart of everyone who looks at it, and pray that the Father, whenever he sees it, will be able to say with his whole heart, Domine, Tu omnia nosti, Tu scis quia amo te—Lord, you know all things, you know that I love you’” (John 21:17).

Hopefully from the work that we do, and the way that we do it, we need people also to pray, and to give thanksgiving to God, and to realize that there's something done well here, something to be proud of, something that lifts up their soul, that reminds them in some way of the greatness of humanity, and that ultimately that that leads them to Christ, because everything we do, everything we say, every bit of work that passes from our hands should hopefully be done in such a way that produces those reactions.

We're told in The Forge, “We children of God have to be contemplatives: people who, in the midst of the din of the throng, know how to find silence of soul in a lasting conversation with Our Lord, people who know how to look at him as they look at a Father, as they look at a Friend, as they look at someone with whom they are madly in love” (J. Escrivá, The Forge, Point 738).

A few years ago, the Holy Father designated August 1 as the Feast of Our Lady of Silence—a rather interesting invocation under which to invoke Our Lady, relevant for all peoples, because we're called to find silence of soul in a lasting conversation with Our Lord.

And that silence of soul, that lasting conversation, will bring joy and peace in our soul, a gaudium cum pace, knowing that whatever the crosses or the contradictions or the things that go wrong, “all things will turn out for the good for those who love God” (Rom. 8: 28). We're all involved in placing those building blocks, brick by brick, that can build up a tremendous edifice.

In The Forge (Point 740), he continues, “Our being children of God, I insist, leads us to have a contemplative spirit in the midst of all human activities; to be light, salt, and leaven through our prayer, through our mortification, through our knowledge of religion and of our profession. We will carry out this aim: the more within the world we are, the more we must be God’s.”

On these days of the journey of the Father around Europe, we could also try to offer little things each day for the success of that journey. Use this occasion, when we hear a little bit more about him, to be united to the vine, helping him in what he's doing to transmit the very things we're talking about to so many people who will be listening to him.

It's all very supernatural, it's all part of the growth of our supernatural family, all part of our transformation.

Pope Benedict, shortly after he was elected, said, “The Cross is the way to transformation. Without it, nothing is transformed.”

The present Father has said that the whole expansion of Opus Dei takes place in and from the cross.

We glory in the Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ. We glory in the fact that He's told us, “Whoever loses his life for His sake will save it” (Matt. 16:25).

We glory in that fulfillment of our duties, in our perseverance of the Work begun, in our mortification in little things, possibly knowing a little better, a little more, that old person that's there on the inside, that self. We know that self; we recognize it when he rears his ugly head, and we know how to do something about it.

In The Man of Villa Tevere it says also that St. Josemaría did not like having his hand kissed, and would hide it in the folds of his cassock whenever he could. Once as he was going along the Galleria della Madonna in Villa Tevere, several women from Villa Sacchetti approached, and one of them, Carmen Maria Segovia, said, “Father, I want to kiss your hand.”

“Well,” he answered, “you can kiss the hand of God Our Lord!” Taking a small crucifix from his pocket, he kissed the hands nailed to the cross. He said, “See how easy it is? I often do it. You do it too!”

We find our joy in those little crosses that Our Lord may permit each day, offering Him perhaps the martyrdom of the little things that may come along in small ways.

If we spend time at the table of our prayer, in the company of Our Lord, we derive the strength we need to face those other moments. The sanctifying value of those little things is great if it's done for love.

It's the difficult things that make us improve. Our Lord wants us to have our ear ready a little bit each time in the chat, in spiritual direction, in Confession, to catch some little wind of the Holy Spirit.

Our Lord wants us to struggle in these particular moments, or when He wants us to carry the cross or contemplate the cross a little more, and ask the strength of love to carry it.

We go to our means of formation, and also to our prayer, and like the apostles did on Tabor, to be with Our Lord, to derive that joy and peace in order to have the strength to carry the cross.

Christ is a book of wisdom. Our life is written with Christ on the Cross. The center of the wisdom of Christ is the Cross, Supreme Love revealed.

He could have saved us in other ways, but He chose this particular way. “How inscrutable His judgments, how unsearchable His ways” (Rom. 11:33).

St. Augustine says that the Cross is a seat of learning. We learn things on the Cross. We derive great lessons from there. We learn to be more humble. We learn to know ourselves a little better, know our weaknesses, see ourselves in a different light.

We say to Our Lord, “We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you, because by your Holy Cross, you have redeemed the world” (Prayer, Stations of the Cross). You will help us in the places where we are to redeem the world.

We know there's a great apostolic value on the cross, and we offer it for this soul and for that soul—the small crosses and also the bigger ones. This is an opportunity for me to bring this soul forward, or this enterprise forward, or this apostolic endeavor.

I enrich it by offering this particular thing, and I enrich it a little more by embracing that cross, not complaining, and going forward to meet it, offering myself, knowing how to go out to meet Our Lord in the various ways that He comes to us.

The mysteries of life can have great apostolic value. That's what our life is all about. “Souls, Lord, souls! They're for you, they're for your glory” (J. Escrivá, The Way, Point 804).

I thank you for the opportunity you give me to bring souls forward, to build up the whole of this supernatural family to which I have been called.

There's a sweetness of the cross. With Our Lady, everything becomes very sweet. Con Nuestra Madre, que el dulce es todo, said Blessed Álvaro. With Our Mother, how sweet everything is.

“My yoke is sweet and my burden is light” (cf. Matt. 11:30). We find our joy there. Joy and happiness have their roots in the form of a cross.

A man came to a retreat in Manila many years ago. He was a teacher. He'd been teaching for 50 years. He had a number of health problems, which I knew about. I asked him, “Well, how are you now?”

He said, “Father, I've come to realize that happiness does not consist in doing things that are easy.”

I was very impressed with those simple words.

Very often we think we're going to find happiness in the easy things: putting our feet up, or watching a good movie, or eating something that we like, or things like that. But very often our greatest happiness is in the challenges, in the uphill climbs, in those difficult things that make us improve.

We find our greatest joys there, from our abandonment at the hands of Our Father God.

So even though we might have ups and downs in our interior life—our prayer might be dry occasionally, we might go through a difficult period of aridity or some other problem—in general, in our interior life, we're called to have a good time, because we're close to the Source of all joy.

We find our joy in the deeper things, in the knowledge that God is my Father, the knowledge that something else, something deeper is happening here.

There's a story of a missionary who went to China one time and he began to evangelize a certain child in a family, and the Chinese father was not very happy.

He more or less sent the missionary away from the house and didn't want his child to have anything more to do with that missionary. But then the little girl, 14 years of age, got tuberculosis and eventually she died.

The missionary thought he should go to the funeral, so he attended the funeral, and stayed a little bit in the background. But then the father of the family came to him and said, “I want to thank you.”

The missionary said, “About what? I didn't do anything.”

The girl’s father said, “Yes, you did. Look at the smile on her face. She knew this was not the end. She learned from you that death was not the end; it was the beginning. So she died happy. I want to thank you for that.”

Joy is there with us. True virtue is pleasantly joyful.

The word joy appears something like 300 times in the Bible. Joy is a very important part of our life.

If we're not joyful, there's something wrong. St. Josemaría said: With young people in particular, if they're not cheerful and apostolic, it's a sign there's something not going as well as it should be in their vocation. You could say the same thing about us.

If ever we lose our joy, our acts of thanksgiving can help us to restore it, because the acts of thanksgiving somehow help us to see the loving hand of Our Father God in this particular moment. It helps us to restore our joy, which is a good indication of our self-giving.

But also, we know that some of the greatest joys in life are purchased at the cost of some sacrifice. “Greater love than this no man has, that he lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). Greater love and greater joy—but it has to come at the cost of some sacrifice.

Our Lord wants our joy to be constant, heroic. He doesn't want anything to undermine it.

Peter said, “Lord, it is good for us to be here.” Our Lord had a purpose in letting them see the Transfiguration. He wanted to strengthen them for the cross.

But somehow, He was also telling them that, ‘Look, the lot for your life on the one hand is the cross, but your lot is also joy. I want you to remember this moment and remember it always—the joy to which we are called—eternal happiness.’

We think about Our Lady and St. Joseph from time to time: the challenges, the difficulties, the reversals of fortune, the lack of hospitality, the doors shut on their face.

Yet all the time there was calm. There was not a word of complaint. There's a peacefulness, there's a joy, because they know that Divine Love Incarnate is in their presence. God is with them.

Possibly looking at themselves, they had little reason to be joyful. But looking at Him, the Source of all joy, was a great motive for thanksgiving.

Our joy is not just a function of circumstances, of how we slept last night, or how the movie was, or the book we're reading. There might be a great sadness, and there might be objective reasons for sadness, but there can also be a great joy because God leads us to consider things from a supernatural perspective.

This means we look at this situation from His point of view, and we know there's a different aspect to it that we're not seeing. God is at work. There's something else happening here.

Or if He asks us for this sacrifice, it's because He wants to give us something much greater. We build our joy on faith—faith in the love that God has for us.

Our Lord on Tabor was strengthening their faith so that they could have greater joy—a greater joy that they had to bring to the whole of humanity; a joy that was based on their divine filiation, with a message that carries with it that created things are powerless to satisfy our hunger for happiness. We don't find joy there.

G.K. Chesterton says that one of the aspects of the Crucifixion that has not been written enough about is the joy of Christ on the Cross, because consummatum est. It is accomplished.

It's over.

It's done.

It's fulfilled.

Joy is one of nature's greatest medicines, the fruit of the Holy Spirit in our soul (Gal. 5:22). Joy is something that’s always healthy. We can have a joy in our fraternity, a marvel at the people around us.

Joy often means that we're forgetting about ourselves. When we look at ourselves, we have no reason to be joyful. Joy means we're focusing on others. We're looking at them. We’re finding a great joy in serving God. In giving ourselves completely. In fulfilling our duties.

God comes to us with all of His greatest consolations. St. Josemaría talked about “los consuelos que solo tu sabes dar—consolations that only you know how to give. You continue to be my Father in all moments.”

Pope Benedict in addressing young people at UNIV in 2006 said, “Never forget, dear young people, that in the end your happiness, our happiness, depends on the encounter with Jesus and on friendship with Him.”

That’s the key factor. When we have the key to open the door of that happiness of every human heart on the planet, we have to make sure we open it ourselves. That joy and holiness: the inevitable result of getting closer to God.

In this year of St. Joseph, we could ask him that we might have that greater joy because we have come a little bit closer to him and to Our Lady who is there, waiting to give us all the wonderful gifts that are there for us to obtain.

Mary, may you help us to contemplate this scene, to learn everything there is to learn from it, to face the little crosses that you may send us with peace and serenity, because we know that you are there always, helping us to carry that cross and to go forward at all moments.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

NJF