Father Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Friday after Ash Wednesday

February 24, 2023

Is 58:1-9, Ps 51, Mt 9:14-15

 

To listen to an audio recording of this homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/2.24.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* In the readings from Sacred Scripture the Church gives us today, she wants us to ponder the true meaning of the fasting to which we’re called in Lent and in life. Two days ago on Ash Wednesday, Jesus told us that he wanted us to fast differently from all the rest who look gloomy, neglect their appearance and even put white paste on their face to make them appear more pallid so that everyone else may recognize they’re fasting. Jesus tells us that the type of fasting he wants of us is meant to be done for and in communion with the Father who relates to us in secret. He wants us to anoint our head and wash our face so that no one will be able to notice that we’re fasting. God wants a different type of fasting from us.

* On the surface of today’s Gospel, Jesus implies that he was preaching but not practicing his teaching on fasting. His contemporaries perhaps had heard rumors that before his public ministry, Jesus had fasted for 40 days in the desert, but it didn’t appear that he and his followers were fasting at all now. That’s why the disciples of St. John the Baptist came to him to ask why his disciples weren’t fasting the way John and the Pharisees fasted. John, we know, was an heroic faster, living basically off of locusts and wild honey, and we can presume that many of his disciples were imitating his asceticism. Unlike the Pharisees who used to criticize Jesus to try to entrap him, John’s disciples seemed to have a genuine interest in the truth about what they needed to do and were shocked that Jesus and his disciples seemed to be lax when it came to this spiritual discipline. Delicately and respectfully, they asked Jesus why his “disciples” were not fasting, as if Jesus himself, the Lamb pointed out by John, might be an exception to the discipline. Jesus, in response, gave us an important principle: “Can the sons of the wedding chamber [the loose translation “wedding guests” doesn’t do justice to the Greek, which I’ve translated literally above and can more loosely and accurately be translated groomsmen] mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The time will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them and then they will fast.”

* In giving us this principle, Jesus highlighted two things:

* First, he identified himself, basically, as the long awaited Bridegroom of the People Israel described by the Prophets Isaiah and Hosea and defines the apostles as the groomsmen awaiting the time when the Bridegroom would go to meet the Bride and the bridesmaids and take them for the wedding reception. It was not a time of mourning — one of the two purposes of Jewish fasting, mourning over one’s sins; the other was supplication — but of celebration. Jesus points out here that the fundamental attitude of those who associate with him needs to be celebration at his presence. We Christians are sons of the wedding chamber heading toward the eternal wedding banquet and we need to be marked by the joy that always is associated by those in the wedding party.

* Second, Jesus mentions that a time will come when the Bridegroom is violently ripped away from them — which happened in the Garden of Gethsemane and then on Calvary — and they would fast (and mourn) on that day like a bride if her husband were kidnapped or killed.

* The question we should ask as Christians, however, is why are we fasting today? Why do we fast throughout Lent?

Father Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Thursday after Ash Wednesday

Memorial of St. Polycarp, Bishop and Martyr

February 23, 2023

Dt 30:15-20, Ps 1, Lk 9:22-25

 

To listen to an audio recording of this homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/2.23.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Throughout Lent, we focus first and foremost on God’s desire to save us and we recognize, as we heard yesterday with St. Paul, that “now is the day of salvation.” This Lent, today, is the time to respond. “God so loved the world,” St. John tells us in his most famous passage, “that he sent his only Son so that all who believe in him might not perish but might have eternal life.” God does not want us to perish. He didn’t even spare his own Son, but handed him over for us all, as St. Paul reminds us in Romans, so that we might not die but have life to the full. But God’s will is not enough, because he willed to make us free. We need to respond to his gift of salvation. Todays’ readings, on our second day in the pilgrimage of Lent, are about the choices we are called to make in response to God’s offer and to the grace he gives us that St. Paul appealed yesterday that we wouldn’t take in vain.

* The choice is framed by Moses in today’s first reading. The Israelites were drawing toward the end of their 40-year pilgrimage in the desert. Moses had led the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, accompanied them through the desert for four decades and now they were on the opposite side of the Jordan from the long-awaited Holy Land. God had told Moses that he would die before crossing, so Moses, in today’s first reading, was giving as a sort of last will and testament, a summary of what God had done for them and taught them. As the long experience of their time in the desert had taught them, God’s wondrous actions were not enough. The ten plagues weren’t enough. Their passing through the Red Sea on dry land wasn’t enough. The manna from heaven, the daily quails, the water from the rock and the theophanies associated with giving the Ten Commandments were not enough. None was sufficient to keep many of the Jews faithful. Many of them complained that they should have remained with their fleshpots in Egypt, others made a golden calf, even Aaron the high priest fell into the clutches of a wavering faith. So Moses want to urge them to choose and choose wisely. He framed the decision facing them as it truly was, a decision of life and death: “Today I have set before you life and prosperity, death and doom. If you obey the commandments of the Lord, your God, which I enjoin on you today, loving him, and walking in his ways, and keeping his commandments, statutes and decrees, you will live and grow numerous, and the Lord, your God, will bless you in the land you are entering to occupy. If, however, you turn away your hearts and will not listen, but are led astray and adore and serve other gods, I tell you now that you will certainly perish; you will not have a long life on the land that you are crossing the Jordan to enter and occupy. I call heaven and earth today to witness against you: I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live, by loving the Lord, your God, heeding his voice, and holding fast to him.” Moses reminded them that the choice for God is a life-giving choice, a choice full of blessing; and that the choice against God — even if it might seem at first a choice that leads to life and happiness — is actually fatal. This is not something, of course, that they recognized. Throughout the desert they complained that they had left their fleshpots in Egypt behind just to perish in the desert by...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Ash Wednesday

February 22, 2023

Joel 2:12-18, Ps 51, 2 Cor 5:20-6:2, Mt 6:1-6.16-18

 

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/2.22.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* “Return to me with your whole heart!” These words that God says to us today through the Prophet Joel summarize the whole meaning of Lent. Lent is about returning to the Lord not partially but with our whole heart, mind, soul and strength. As we prayed in the Psalm, God wants to give us his help so that we might have a “clean heart,” thoroughly washed from sin and guilt. Just like Paul urged the Christians in Corinth in today’s second reading, so God appeals to us to convert, not to receive his grace in vain, but to act with urgency to be reconciled to him. Now is the acceptable time, he says. Now — not later, not even tomorrow — is the day of salvation. He wants us to seize this gift!

* The ashes we receive are a reminder to us not to procrastinate on seizing that gift of salvation.

* First they are a sign of our mortality, that we are dust and unto dust we shall return. Lent reminds us that we will die and we never know the day or the hour. But ashes point beyond death. Like at the beginning of creation when we were formed from the dust of the earth and God infused into us the breath of life, so ashes point to the fact that we are not just a mortal body but have an immortal soul, which God wants to infuse with his life. Yes, we will die, but God wants to raise us, even now. Ashes remind us that Lent is ultimately about death but also about resurrection, and how Christ calls us to share in his triumph.

* Second, ashes are a sign of repentance. We see them used this way by the prophet Jonah with the Ninevites, by Daniel, by the Maccabees. They are a summons to repent and believe in the Gospel. The conversion to which they point is not meant to be a minor course correction in life, eliminating a bad habit or striving to acquire a new good one. Ashes point to how the conversion to which we’re summoned is ultimately a death and resurrection, in which we die to our old ways and rise to a new life of faith with Christ.

* Third, as we see famously in the Book of Esther, they are a means of supplication, of prayer, for others, for their salvation. Ashes are a sign that we recognize we need a Savior and that, as St. Paul reminds us, now is the day of salvation. God, as we pray in the Psalm, wants to restore us to the joy of salvation and Lent is meant to bring about that joyful restoration!

* Today in the Gospel Jesus speaks to us about the three practices that help us to grow in those realities to which the ashes point: to die to ourselves so that Christ the Savior might live, to help us correspond to the graces he breathes into our soul so that we might live faithful to the Gospel. Jesus calls us to pray, to give alms and to fast. Prayer helps us die to our ego so that we may live for and with Christ, putting on his mind. Almsgiving has us think of others’ needs and act to help them, rather than be obsessed about our own pleasures. Fasting checks the domination of our appetites over us and makes possible our hungering for what God hungers. They are a way by which God the Father helps to restore our proper relationship with him through prayer, with others through charity, and within ourselves through fasting. They are a means by which we enter into Jesus’ prayer, his fasting for 40 days in the desert, and his total self-giving down to the last drop of his blood. Today is a day in which we make resolutions with regard to all thre...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame, Manhattan

Tuesday of the Seventh Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of St. Peter Damian, Doctor of the Church

February 21, 2023

Sir 2:1-11, Ps 37, Mk 9:30-37

 

To listen to an audio recording of today’s Gospel, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/2.21.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today Jesus continues to stress with his disciples the same lesson they rejected in Caesarea Philippi, that God the Father told three of them to listen to on Mt. Tabor, and that Jesus reemphasized as they were descending the mountain. He reiterates today, “The Son of Man is to be handed over to men and they will kill him, and three days after his death the Son of Man will rise.” In response to this, they do not console him or even ask him questions to try to understand. Instead, they begin to debate who’s better than whom. It’s sad and ridiculous. It would be like if a mom said she had two weeks to live and the kids, rather than focusing on her, began immediately in her presence to talk about who is her favorite or who gets her car. But Jesus never tried to eliminate his followers’ ambition, but to purify it and direct it toward true greatness. He told them the path, which would be his path, the path of cruciform love: “If anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last of all and the servant of all.” To be great we must become great in loving service. And to illustrate exactly what he was describing, lest we interpret it according to our comforts, he took a child and said, “Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but the One who sent me.” An infant is someone who cannot will to reward us, with whom we cannot engage in a quid pro quo. An infant is not even able to thank us. While it’s true that whenever we love we receive more than we give and that those who love children receive so many blessings in return, Jesus’ point is that we need to love those who cannot explicitly reward us. That’s the type of service we’re called to give to which we’re supposed to aspire.

* In the first reading from the Book of Sirach, we ponder the wisdom of the Cross, of this life of cruciform love. Today’s passage begins, “When you come to serve the Lord, … prepare yourself” not for a stream of consolation, but “for trials.” It then describes them: “time of adversity,” “crushing misfortune,” even “a crucible of humiliation.” These trials are all tests, meant to help purify us, just as “in fire gold and silver are tested.” For that reason, while we’re in them, we should not think that God has abandoned us, but is helping us to learn how to be great, to learn how to love him and trust in him so that we might truly serve him and become the servant of all. So he tell us “Be sincere of heart and steadfast, incline your ear and receive the word of understanding undisturbed in time of adversity, wait on God with patience, cling to him, forsake him not, … accept whatever befalls you, be steadfast when sorrowful, be patient in crushing misfortune, trust God and God will help you … and direct your way. Wait for his mercy, trust him and your reward will not be lost, hope for good things, love him and your hearts will be enlightened.” Sirach reminds us, “Study the generations long past,” including the martyrs, “and understand: has anyone hoped in the Lord and been disappointed? … Persevered and been forsaken? … Called upon God and been rebuffed?” God “saves in time of trouble and is a protector to all who seek him in truth.” This is the type of trust in trial we witness in Jesus when he was fulfilling today’s Gospel words on the Cross. Psalms 22 and 69 which he cited on Calvary in his words “My God,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Monday of the Seventh Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of Saints Francisco and Jacinta Marto

February 20, 2023

Sir 1:1-10, Ps 93, Mk 9:14-29

 

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/2.20.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today, on the heels of a study of creation in the Book of Genesis through the lens of the Letter to the Hebrews, the Church begins the study of the Book of Sirach, the longest of all of the Old Testament works of wisdom literature. Normally the study is two weeks, but this year, we will have it only two days, since Lent begins this Wednesday. Today we encounter the introduction to the Book, which highlights the main theme: Awe and wonder at the mystery of God’s wisdom concealed in creation, from sands on the seashore, to drops of rain, to heaven, to earth, to subterranean realities. The inspired Joshua ben Sirach tells us that real wisdom comes from God, “one, wise and truly awe-inspiring, seated upon his throne, … Most High all-powerful creator-king and truly awe-inspiring one, the God of dominion.” His wisdom effuses throughout his creative word, for “the word of God on high is the fountain of wisdom and her ways are everlasting.” But God “has lavished” this gift of wisdom, this capacity to understand, “upon his friends.” Throughout the Book of Sirach, we see how that font of God’s wisdom lavishly overflows to those who live in friendship with the Lord.

* When we turn to the Gospel, we see one way in which that wisdom is lavishly poured out upon us in the explanation that Jesus gives to his apostles about why he was able to drive out a demon they couldn’t. He was imparting to them the means by which they could share not just in his wisdom but more fully in God’s powerful recreative work. The scene is a father’s request on behalf of his son, who since birth has been possessed by a demon in such a way that it was causing him to be deaf, mute, thrown into convulsions and even suicidal. When the father and a crowd meet Jesus returning from Mount Tabor with Peter, James and John, he tells Jesus that the apostles were arguing with the Scribes over why they couldn’t heal the boy. Doubtless the Scribes were attacking them for their failure. Jesus seems to express some frustration that, because of a lack of faith among a “faithless generation,” the miracle wasn’t able to be worked by the nine apostles who were at the foot of Mt. Tabor as he was being transfigured. There was two-fold lack of faith.

* First is the father who asked, “If you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us,” to which Jesus replied, “If you can! Everything is possible to one who has faith!” And the father replied that he did have faith but needed more of it to overcome his weakness and doubt.

* The second lack of faith was in the disciples. When they asked Wisdom incarnate why they couldn’t drive it out, he responded, “This kind can only come out through prayer.” In many of the early manuscripts it said “prayer and fasting.” Notice that Jesus didn’t say, “I was able to do this miracle but I have divine power that you don’t.” He said “prayer” and perhaps “fasting,” the type of activities that they were capable of, the practices in which he was engaged. Wisdom incarnate from whom all wisdom flows was sharing with his friends his secrets. It was a summons for them to grow in faith, like the father of the boy, through their own prayer and fasting.

* It was a summons likewise for us. Miracles still happen, and happen all the time. We see stupendous miracles in Lourdes and in every approval for a beatification or canonization....

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

February 19, 2023

Lev 19:1-2.17-18, Ps 103, 1 Cor 3:16-23, Mt 5:38-48

 

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/2.19.23_CCM_Mass_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* There are many demanding aspects of living faithfully the Christian life. As we heard three weeks ago, he summons us to live by the Beatitudes rather than seek wealth, power, sex, fame and approval like so many do in the world. Jesus tells us that to be his disciple, we must deny rather than affirm ourselves, pick up our Cross each day and follow him, a summons on which we will focus during Lent, which begins this Thursday. He tells us that we have to treat the poor, hungry, thirsty, naked, sick, stranger or imprisoned the way we would care for him. He calls us to be brutal in excising sin from our life, even to the point of plucking out our eyes or chopping off hands and feet if there’s no other way to stop using them to sin. He says that we have to make a hard choice between him and money, insisting we cannot serve both God and mammon. He tells us that we have to forgive not just once or twice, but 70 times 7 times.

* All of these are supremely challenging, but I think the hardest part of living the Catholic faith seriously comes in today’s Gospel, when Jesus calls us to “offer no resistance to one who is evil,” to turn the other cheek, to go the second mile, to give our clothes and not just our jacket, and, especially, to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. That requires heroic trust in God and unconquerable benevolence. But what’s most amazing of all is that Jesus, in calling us to it, knows that with his grace we’re capable of it! The Gospel is always a gift before a demand and Jesus, in giving us such a demand, wills to give us all the help he knows we need to live up to it. Today, however, we need to recognize that he is in fact calling us to such a measure and open ourselves up to receive his help to achieve it.

* Throughout the whole Sermon on the Mount, Jesus has been calling us, as his disciples, to live by his standards, not by the criteria of others. Last week, he told us that our righteousness must surpass that of the scribes and the Pharisees, who were the most religiously observant Jews. Today he tells us that we need to do better than the tax collectors who love those who love them, than the upright Gentiles who greet and do good to those who greet and do good to them. He calls us to live by God the Father’s standards, which he personifies. Today’s readings all make this point emphatically.

* In today’s first reading from the Book of Leviticus, we see what God commanded Moses to say to all the Israelites: “You shall be holy, for I, the Lord, your God am holy.” He tells them both to what standard he’s calling them— not just to be a “good person” but to “be holy” — as well as the reason why: “because I, the Lord, your God, am holy.” He is calling us, in short, to be like him, to live as his image and likeness.

* In the second reading, St. Paul indicates to the Corinthians and how we’re called to become holy like God. “Do you not know,” he asks, “that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? … God’s temple is holy and you are that temple.” Our holiness means allowing God who is “holy, holy, holy” to dwell within us, to grow within us, to love within us, to reign within us. Sometimes we’re tempted to think that the essence of holiness involves thousands of good deeds on our part; rather, holiness means allowing God truly to abide in us, transforming us more and more according to the image in which he created us a...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY

Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

February 19, 2023

Lev 19:1-2.17-18, Ps 103, 1 Cor 3:16-23, Mt 5:38-48

 

To listen to an audio recording of this homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/2.19.23_MC_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* The main point of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is that he is calling us, as his disciples, to live by his standards, not by the standards of others. Last week, he told us that our relationship with God must surpass that of the scribes and the Pharisees, who were the most religiously observant Jews. Today he tells us that we need to do better than the tax collectors who love those who love them, than the upright Gentiles who greet and do good to those who greet and do good to them. He calls us to live by God the Father’s standards, which he personifies. Today’s readings make this point emphatically.

* In today’s first reading from the Book of Leviticus, we see what God commanded Moses to say to all the Israelites: “You shall be holy, for I, the Lord, your God am holy.” He tells them both what standard he’s calling them to — not just to be a “good person” but to “be holy” — as well as the reason why: “because I, the Lord, your God, am holy.” He is calling us, in short, to be like him, to live as his image and likeness.

* In the second reading, St. Paul indicates to the Corinthians and how we’re called to become holy like him. He says, “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? … God’s temple is holy and you are that temple.” Our holiness means allowing God who is “holy, holy, holy” to dwell within us, to grow within us, to love within us, to reign within us. Sometimes we’re tempted to think that the essence of holiness involves thousands of good deeds on our part; rather, holiness means allowing God truly to abide in us, transforming us more and more according to the image in which he created us and for which he redeemed us.

* In the Gospel today, Jesus puts an exclamation point on this primary Christian vocation. He tells us, “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Very often when we hear this summons, we’re thrown off by the word “perfect” and think that this is an unachievable standard, because after all, none of us is perfect, none of us will ever be perfect, and if God is calling us never to make a mistake, then he’s calling us to something beyond human capacity. Therefore, we can feel somewhat justified in dismissing what Jesus says as if it’s a clearly unattainable goal. But before we ignore what Jesus is calling us to, as if he couldn’t possibly have meant it, we should focus on a few things:

* First, the main emphasis of what Jesus is saying is “Be like your heavenly Father.” He was specifically calling us to be like him in special, challenging ways in today’s Gospel, so that we “may be children of [our] Father in heaven, who makes his sun rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.” Jesus implies that we will not really become children of God until we start behaving like God, that he can be our Father — through creation, most especially Baptism — without our being his children, unless we experience the inner revolution to which Jesus is calling us. That means seeking to act as his children, to behave like Jesus who shows us how to live as a Son of God. Just as God the Father loves everyone and does good to everyone, including those who curse him, including those who make themselves his enemy through sin and an evil life, including those who try to use him whenever they need him, Jesus calls us to do the same, to love our enemies, to pray for those who persecute us,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Corpus Christi Monastery, Bronx, NY

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Spring Retreat

February 18, 2023

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/2.13.23_STA_and_the_Eucharist_1.mp3

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Corpus Christi Monastery, Bronx, NY

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Spring Retreat

February 18, 2023

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/2.18.23_Thomas_Aquinas_1.mp3

 

 

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Corpus Christi Monastery, Bronx, NY

Saturday of the Sixth Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Spring Retreat

February 18, 2023

Heb 11:1-7, Ps 145, Mk 9:2-13

 

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/2.18.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* How fitting it is today, as we make our Spring Retreat, that we have the Gospel of the Transfiguration, which was a retreat day Jesus held for himself and the apostles Peter, James and John. He led them up a mountain far apart from the crowds to pray, together with him, just like later, in the Garden of Gethsemane, he would take the same three apart for the same purpose. Prayer is faith in action and Jesus was seeking to strengthen their faith, and through them, after his resurrection, the faith of the other disciples and centuries later our faith. They needed to make a huge exertion, climbing up a mountain. Growth in prayer, in the life of faith, in our relationship with God, is not always easy. They needed to make a long hike. We needed today to get up early and get on public transportation over to the Bronx. But as we see for them, that exertion paid off, just like we pray ours will. While they are praying, Moses and Elijah appear, showing how in prayer Sacred Scripture is actualized, in which we encounter the great saints not as past figures but very much present. They were speaking not of great feats 1300 and 700 years prior, but of the present and the future, precisely Christ’s “exodus” through death to life and suffering to glory. A cloud descended, symbolic of God’s glory and of mystery. Jesus is transfigured before them, in which his flesh and clothes became dazzlingly white from the inside out. And then God the Father spoke, not to his Son, but to Peter, James and John. “This is my Son, my beloved. Listen to him!” Those are exceedingly strange words in context, because the three apostles had been doing nothing but listening to Jesus for the previous two years. But God the Father knew that they were selectively listening and they were particularly tone deaf to what Jesus had said just before.

* The context was immediately after the scene of Caesarea Philippi, when subsequent to Peter’s confession of Christ as the Messiah and Son of God, he and the other apostles refused to accept Jesus’  words that he would “suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and rise after three days” and that if any of them wanted to reign with him he would have to “deny himself, take up his cross, and follow” Jesus, losing his life to save it. Peter replied “God forbid, Lord” and rebuked Jesus. It’s clear they needed faith to accept the reality of Christ’s suffering, to trust in his word because of their trust in him, to accept in the present what Christ was saying was a guarantee about the future. Jesus had asked the twelve, “Who do the crowds say that I am?,” and then, “Who do you say that I am?” At the top of the Mount of Transfiguration, God the Father answers his Son’s question by thundering from the cloud that was covering Jesus, “This is my Son, my beloved. Listen to him.” He wasn’t John the Baptist, Elijah who was speaking to Jesus then, or one of the other Prophets, including Moses who was considered God’s greatest prophet. He was far more. And the apostles were challenged to grasp it. Peter, overwhelmed, wanted to do something to prolong the experience. He volunteered to build three tents, for Christ, Moses and Elijah respectively.