Thursday of the Eighteenth Week of Ordinary Time

Today's Mass Readings

Since Pope St. John Paul II composed and instituted the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary (Virginis Mariae 2002), these particular Christ events are contemplated on Thursdays. The Fourth Luminous Mystery is the Transfiguration of the Lord. It is therefore appropriate that we consider Mary and her Son’s glorification in the flesh at Mount Tabor together.

The Mysteries of the Rosary place the Blessed Virgin near the events of her Son’s life. A criticism of the Luminous Mysteries is that sometimes Mary, in fact, is not present. The Transfiguration is one of those. Yet Mary’s experience of the Transfiguration is the Church’s, and her response is similar to events of the Passion that are exemplary for us. “Once more she must let her Son go away. She has done this all through her life, very often with anxiety and sorrow,” writes Hans Urs von Balthasar. “In this, there is no longer anything sorrowful, and yet there is a renunciation” (The Threefold Garland, the World’s Salvation in Mary’s Prayer).

Gethsemane and the Transfiguration belong together, and, guided by the Virgin’s own experience our faith finds both joy and fortitude to recommit ourselves to the Father’s will. Von Balthasar concludes: “This faith is neither mystical vision nor uncertainty; rather, it is filled with the certainty of the promise of final fulfillment.” Christ’s experience of the Father’s love and distance, as well as His abiding nearness to us in hiddenness, makes us gaze at His Mother for the hope for glory.

Reflection by Fr. Pachomius Meade, OSB