Faith

Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord – 6th August 2026 – Matthew 17:1-9

Think about the weight of this. What if the door was shut forever? What if you were never permitted to see the face of God, ever? But look at the grace of the house today! We are privileged to gaze at Him in the Blessed Sacrament and receive Him in Holy Communion. The God who used to be hidden behind a thick temple veil is now setting a table inside your soul

Think about the patriarchs. Think about the prophets. Even the heavy hitters of the Old Testament didn’t have this kind of access! Moses and Elijah, the two stalwarts of the Old Testament who literally showed up at the Transfiguration, never got to see God’s face. They had to hike up a brutal mountain just to get a voice memo from Heaven! The prophets spent lifetimes climbing toward a hidden God; we simply open our hands to receive Him.

So what’s with mountains? Jesus seemed to like them a lot. The second temptation is on the mountain, so is His place of prayer. The Sermon on the Mount was given on a mountain and so too, the transfiguration of today’s gospel.

 A first-century Jew wouldn’t need a commentary to explain what was happening here. The moment you mention Moses and Elijah in the same sentence; their spiritual radar would go off! Because in the Old Testament, whenever God wanted to show up, He picked a location and He brought an atmosphere. A high mountain plus a thick cloud cover? That wasn’t just bad weather. That was the ultimate setup. Put those two together, and it meant one thing: God is about to step into the room!

The presence of Elijah and Moses was not just for representational purposes to make our narrative look good. Elijah represented the prophets and Moses represented the law and no Jew would deny the importance of the law and the prophets. Besides, it makes for a great PR campaign for Jesus.

For greater clarity, (in you spare time) open your Bible to Exodus 24:12-16, 33:17-23 and I Kings 11:13. You will find a lot of parallelisms to the transfiguration of Jesus.

  1. Like Jesus, both Moses and Elijah go up a mountain; in fact, the same mountain.

  2. Moses takes a disciple, just like Jesus did.

  3. Moses and Elijah desired to see God’s face, but were denied.

  4. They both saw His glory but not His face for they were told that they would die if they saw God’s face.

  5. Both of them had their faces covered by God’s hand or His mantle.

What makes the Transfiguration an absolute turning point in history? Think about it. The same God who hid His face from Moses and Elijah in the Old Testament suddenly unveils it in the New. On that mountain, Jesus peels back His humanity and reveals His transfigured glory to Moses, Elijah, and the disciples. And guess what? They finally looked upon the face of God and lived. The lifelong quest of the prophets was fulfilled in an instant, because the hidden God had finally become a man. Heaven didn’t lower its standards; it lowered its visibility so we could finally draw close.

Here in lies another irony. It is this same face that God did not want to reveal in the Old Testament, that becomes on Good Friday, the face that WE HIDE FROM. The Prophet Isaiah in Chapter 53 says, “He had no form or majesty that we should look at Him; nothing in His appearance that we should desire Him. He was despised and rejected by men; a man of suffering; as one from whom others hid their faces.”

 Think about the irony of our human hearts! In the Old Testament, we were begging, screaming, and crying out, “God, let me see you! Show me your glory!” And God had to say, “I can’t, it’ll consume you.” Then Jesus comes, the veil is torn, the restriction is lifted, and God says, “Here I am. Look at Me.” And what do we do? We look the other way! We crave the God of the spectacular mountain, but we ignore the God of the everyday mirror. ‘Away with Him, Crucify Him!’ How fickle is humankind? How quickly the Hosannas of Palm Sunday will turn to ‘Crucify Him’, on Good Friday!

So, what is the transfiguration all about, merely a Gospel guilt trip? The very word ‘transfiguration’ comes from the Greek word ‘metamorphosis’ which means change. Jesus’ appearance changed and Peter, James and John, all saw Him as God and Man. The experience left the impetuous Peter a better man. Remember Peter, the patron of spontaneous prayer who must say something every time? Well, he did so this time too, but now with greater understanding. He calls Jesus, “Lord”.

Peter has become aware of the divinity of Jesus and addresses Him with a title of faith. But even more, the change is seen in Peter’s leadership. He who, not even a chapter ago, was given the keys of the kingdom of heaven and soon after denounced for his inability to grasp the new role foisted on his shoulders, takes on the leadership, but now in humbler tones. “If you wish, I will make three dwellings.” No more arrogance, no more leaning on the disciples for support. This is the Peter who has seen the face of God and lived.

Even the highest spiritual heights cannot insulate us from human weakness. Peter, James, and John—the elite eyewitnesses of the Transfiguration—will soon fail Jesus repeatedly in the darkness of Gethsemane. Yet Jesus anticipates our collapse with radical grace. The same tender hand that touched the terrified disciples on the mountain will lift them up after the resurrection. Confronting Peter’s denial and Thomas’s doubt, He offers restoration instead of condemnation. His ultimate question to Peter, and to us, remains entirely relational: “Do you love me?” He replaces the weight of our failure with the invitation of His friendship.

Change is in the air, that’s what the Gospels invite us to.  Today we don’t have to climb a mountain to meet God. Thank God for that! But like Elijah, we can hear Him in a still small voice. Mountains don’t need to be conquered for us to be with God; pride does, hate does, anger does, and lust does. And there we find God, on our own Mt Sinai; in a chapel or in our living room, in our kitchen, or in our work place. Look around now, He is there, revealing Himself to you.

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Faith

Tuesday, 18th week in ordinary time – Feast of John Vianney – 4th August 2026 – Matthew 15:1-2,10-14

This complex text requires careful teaching to avoid losing the core message in the details. This is a hard text to teach and one that could be easily misrepresented if one misses the woods for the trees.

Reports of Jesus’ ‘disruptive’ Galilean ministry have reached the religious elite, drawing a hostile delegation straight from Jerusalem to confront him. We are told in 15:1 that the Pharisees and scribes have come from Jerusalem with a singular purpose; to question Jesus.  

They didn’t travel all that way to get clarity. They came to catch Him in a trap. See, the religious elite didn’t want information; they wanted ammunition. Their question wasn’t driven by curiosity; it was weaponized by criticism. They didn’t come to look for truth—they came looking for a fight!

One would have thought that the Pharisees and scribes have journeyed this long and arduous distance because of some doctrinal issue that has come under their scanner. Yet their question to Jesus is not doctrinal but more a ‘violation’ of a social customs that had found religious approval over the years. The Pharisees ask Jesus, “why do your disciples break the traditions of the elders? For they do not wash their hands before they eat.”

We get so caught up in the cultural customs that we completely compromise the actual commandments. We start fighting over the peripheral, and we forget the powerful! We are elevating man-made traditions above God-given truth. When you start prioritizing the social over the spiritual, you aren’t protecting your faith, you are paralyzing it!. The local practice of Catholicism, like the local practices of most religions, are filled with such ‘home-spun’ traditions.

Let us look at the ‘traditions of the elders’ that have brought the Pharisees and scribes all the way from Jerusalem to Galilee. “Why do your disciples not wash their hands before eating?” In order to understand why this question is so important to this religious delegation one needs to understand that the Jews came to believe that ‘Shibtah’, a demon, attached himself to their hands as they slept and hence ingesting food would be ingesting the demon.

For the Jew, the Christian or any person of any religious faith, what should matter, is the core teachings in its written form. For the Jews, the Torah (or the Pentateuch as Christians call it) which consisted of the first five books of the Bible, constituted the written law. This is the core of the Jewish faith. Besides this, a section of the Jews, namely the Pharisees, began to accept the oral law that they claimed came from the time of Sinai. Remember that the written law, namely the Torah, is not in question here and Jesus has not spoken a word against the Torah.  

These oral laws were then codified into the Mishna and Talmud which were commentaries on the commentaries of the Law. The Mishna is a commentary on the Torah and the Talmud is a commentary on the Mishna. The Talmud itself consisted of 8 volumes consisting of a total of 63 books. Remember that these books do not tackle the written law but the oral law and that’s a lot of oral tradition to follow.

So much of faith has been corrupted by traditions that are attached to religion. We’ve let human tradition crowd out holy truth. So many social demands are made of people in the name of religion at the time of Baptisms, Marriages, First Communion and Funerals. The sacraments of penance and the anointing of the sick, which truly deserve a social celebration, are relegated to muted responses.

The point I wish to make is crystal clear. We will fight to the death over our preferences, but won’t lift a finger for God’s precepts. We’ve put human customs on the main stage and pushed foundational truth into the wings. We are bringing massive energy to things that don’t matter, while the heartbeat of God gets our leftover devotion!

Christ deplores this behaviour and in no uncertain words takes on the Pharisees and the scribes. They came to question him with frivolities, while they themselves broke the core commandments of God. “Why do you break the commandments of God for the sake of your traditions.” There! Jesus has really got himself in big trouble!  

It is crazy to me how we can butcher the Bible and people just nod along. But the moment you challenge a cultural custom, the second you mention the flowers at the grave, the confetti at the wedding, or the specific way we do things, everyone is ready to riot! We tolerate broken doctrine, but we protect our traditions with our lives. We have become more loyal to our rituals than we are to the Truth!

Are you offended reading what I just wrote/said? I won’t be surprised if you are because no sooner had Jesus tackled the Pharisees and scribes (read  verse 4 -9) than the ‘concerned’ disciples of Jesus come running to him. “Do you know that the parish council (sorry Pharisees) took offence when they heard what you said?” Oh! I did it again! Have I stepped into a quagmire of beloved religious traditions and offended my readers and listeners?

Let me tell you Christ’s reactions to this home spun religious ‘controversy;’ he took it on by its horns, threw the political correctness into the garbage where it belonged and proclaimed that “it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth that defiles (him/her) (15:11)

When the high-ranking religious elite marched down from headquarters to put Him in His place, Jesus didn’t write a rebuttal. He didn’t try to win them over. He gave them two brutal words: “LET THEM ALONE.” (verse 14). Translation? Stop wasting your time on people who only want to trap your truth. They weren’t worthy of His attention, and they are definitely not worthy of yours!

I warned you at the start of this teaching that this is a hard text to teach especially when scripture holds a mirror up to us. Christ calls the Pharisees in verse fourteen “blind guides of the blind.” That is an interesting statement because he is calling out the ignorance of these religious leaders and the stupidity of their blind followers. In the final reckoning they will be “uprooted” for they have not been planted by God but have planted themselves as religious leaders (read verse 13).

So much of our beautiful Christian faith has been distorted by religious traditions. I am not calling for a boycott of a wedding reception that follows the sacrament of matrimony or any other sacrament. Celebrations are important and serve a social need but when traditions after traditions are layered one over the other and these traditions take centre stage over the essential doctrines of the faith.

When we look the other way, when a relative who never takes their child for Sunday mass insists on all the frills and fancies for their child’s first communion, or when Christian couples who have rejected the faith want to get ‘married in Church, white dress et al or when all this and much more happens in God’s name and the rest of us hold our breath because this is ‘not our business’, then we are nothing but ‘the blind leading the blind and are culpable of the corruption of the faith.

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Faith

 Long before the cross was openly displayed, early Christians used the image of a vessel navigating rough waters. Early Christians rarely depicted the crucifixion directly because it was still a shameful form of Roman execution. Instead, they utilized the boat as an ingenious cryptogram. On tomb carvings and signet rings, the mast and yardarm of the ship were purposely drawn to form a cross. This symbol stood for the Church tossed on the sea of disbelief, worldliness and persecution, but finally reaching safe harbour with its cargo of human souls. This symbol had its origins in narratives such as the Gospel of today.

Having fishermen as disciples, familiar with the sea, made it easier for Jesus to gain access to one of these many boats. It is these boats that He used as a pulpit as He spoke to the crowds on the beach, or as He crisscrossed the Galilean Sea. These were not pristine, luxury vessels; they were battered, wood-stained, and smelled of hard labor, proving that God does not wait for you to be perfect before He uses your life as a platform

Make no mistake; the Galilean Sea for all its idyllic beauty had the potential to become a fisherman’s nightmare, enough to wreck the nerves of experienced fishermen such as Jesus’ disciples. The Gospel records the condition of the sea on this occasion as ‘basanizo’, translated as ‘tortured or harassed’.

The text notes it was the “fourth watch of the night” (between 3:00 AM and 6:00 AM). The disciples had likely been rowing since the evening. For six to nine hours, they were trapped in the dark, making zero progress, fighting a wind that was relentlessly torturing their muscles and their boat.  

Matthew narrates two such tempestuous incidents; in Chapter 8:23-27 and here in 14:22-36. There is a marked difference in the two texts. In the former text, Jesus is in the boat; here He is not; He comes walking to them. In the first there is a storm, here the wind and waves were against them. In the first they feared for their lives; here they are terrified because they think they see a ghost. It is the ‘little faith’ of the disciples that is in question in the first incident; now it is Peter’s little faith that is under the scanner.

For early readers, the storm was not a distant Sunday school story; it was an exact mirror of their daily survival. They lived in the throes of persecution from within and everywhere, and the meaning was quite clear.

After the Romans destroyed the Jerusalem Temple in 70 AD, Jewish leaders  banned Jewish Christians from the synagogues. This forced exit was a social and emotional disaster, cutting these early believers off from their families, identity, and support networks. Even worse, leaving the synagogues stripped them of their legal protection under Roman law. The Roman Empire now viewed them as an illegal, dangerous group, leaving them completely exposed to arrest, losing their property, and execution

At stake was also the question of Jesus’ claim that He was the ‘Son of God’ (verse 33), a claim rejected by the Jews both at Jesus’ time and during the time Matthew wrote the Gospel. Then there was also the reality of their ‘little faith’ that was tossed about as a consequence of their isolation from the Jewish community into no man’s land.

The message to Matthew’s community is clear; hang in there and take heart. The community of Matthew must battle the storm as the disciples did, through a long dark night, knowing that just as for the disciples, so also for Matthew’s community, the Lord will come at the break of dawn.

It is the assuring voice of Jesus, that Matthew’s persecuted community hears; “Take heart, It is I, do not be afraid.” Jesus reveals Himself as the great “I am”. When Jesus declares Ego Emi (“It is I”), He is not just identifying Himself, He is revealing Himself as the great “I AM,” the sovereign God who rules over the chaos. This is the focus of the text.

The narrative of Peter ‘walking on the water’ distracts the modern reader who is enamoured by the spectacular walk of Peter, albeit for a few seconds. When we read this Gospel passage we often treat it like a self-help lesson on individual success. We zoom in on Peter as the hero, using his walk on the water as a metaphor for taking big risks, launching new businesses, or overcoming personal fears.

Preachers often challenge the congregation by asking, “Are you going to stay safe in the boat, or do you have the courage to step out onto the water?” This approach turns a divine encounter into a motivational speech about human potential. It implies that the main goal of the text is to teach us how to perform miracles through human willpower and bold faith. By focusing entirely on Peter’s ability to temporarily defy gravity, we turn the narrative into an audition for superheroes. We end up praising human performance rather than worshipping the divine presence, completely missing the fact that Peter ultimately failed and sank, proving that human effort alone cannot survive the storm.

The meaning of the narrative unfolds when the Lord grabs hold of Peter. Jesus steps on to the boat with Peter to a public acknowledgment of the disciples. For the first time in Matthew’s Gospel, they see Him, all twelve of them, as the ‘Son of God’ and they worship Him. Matthew’s community stands consoled.

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Thursday, 17th week in ordinary time  – Matthew 13:47-53

We have reached the grand finale of Matthew 13. Unpacking the seventh and final parable of Jesus’ kingdom teaching we are faced with the reality that the kingdom of heaven is not sanitised but is diverse and different.

We love to control our image. We filter our photos, edit our words, and carefully pick our friends. Naturally, we expect God to do the same thing. We look at the Kingdom of Heaven and expect it to be a clean and an orderly place. We would like to live in a kingdom of the righteous only but then again that would be wishful thinking. There are all kinds and all sorts in the kingdom.

A drag net was one of the many ways that fishermen employed to catch fish. Two boats would be fitted with a net and as they moved the nets collected every kind of fish that happened to get trapped. As fishermen will tell you, not every fish that is caught is edible and even more, there are some fish which have no value in the marketplace. Attempting to sell them would be a burden to the fisher monger.

When Christ spoke his truth, he used a pedagogy that is employed even today with children. It is a method of teaching that moves from the known to the unknown. Jesus’ parables were largely based on farming or fishing which was the occupation of most of his listeners. Employing this method, he made clear what he intended to teach. He didn’t use elevated theology to confuse them; He used everyday reality to change them.

Earlier, in the parable of the wheat and the weeds, Christ highlighted the presence of satan and his minions. Jesus used that parable to teach with authority the consequence of sin; sin will find us in the fires of hell. It is for the sake of those who continue to live in denial of the reality of hell that Jesus gives the second such parable. Jesus didn’t talk about hell to scare us; He talked about it because He loves us too much to lie to us

When he spoke to the crowds of his time, as he does with us through his word today, he wants us to understand that death will come, as it came to the fish. Death did not just come to the bad fish it came to all that were caught in the net. But the point of the parable is not merely to focus on the reality of death but of judgment that follows.

“The angels will come!” That is what we will experience at death. But don’t think that because you see an angel when you die you have won a seat in heaven. We are told that they come with a clear mission. The dragnet may have caught fish but not every fish has value. There are good fish and bad fish and the bad fish must be got rid off. Grace gathers all, but truth sorts the catch.

For the second time in Chapter 13, Jesus talks of the ‘furnace of fire’ reserved for the evil. Interestingly, in both the parables that speak of judgment, the consequence of evil is clearly enunciated; ‘evil will be bound and burnt in a furnace of fire where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth’ (verse 30 and 50). Yet, heaven is not described with the intensity that hell is. The parable of the wheat and weeds refers to heaven as “my barn” and nothing more. The point of the parable is not to tell us of the joys of heaven but the reality of the suffering in hell.

To my mind, Christ is reiterating the reality of hell over heaven. He wants to stress this reality lest we begin to think that hell is a tool used by parents to drive their children into submission. Hell, for many, has become symbolic and casual talk. We say, “go to hell” or use it as an exclamation of frustration when we say, “Oh hell.” We have turned the fate of our souls into a piece of frivolous conversation. Yet that reality will come to burn us if we do not take it seriously.

This truth must be proclaimed especially when clearly understood. In verse 51 Jesus ask the disciples if they have “understood all this?” Their answer is yes. If our answer is also yes, then we become ‘the scribe’, the priest, the religious, the laity who then must proclaim this truth. If we are trained for the kingdom, as Christ says, then we have to proclaim the truth of Christ; both old and new.

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Talk about a birthday party you would desperately want to forget. There was no cake cut but a head chopped. What began as a ‘birth’ day ended as a ‘death’ day. St Matthew is borrowing this narrative from the text of St. Mark which was written a couple of years earlier and was already in circulation. The difference in the texts is that St Matthew strips away the dramatic fluff, cutting straight to the bone of the story.

Even though Chapter 13:54 to the end of chapter 17 deals with the ‘acceptance of Jesus by his disciples’ it begins with his rejection by his own people in Nazareth and is followed by this narrative which seems to be the reason for Jesus to begin his journey to die for us. The death of one martyr is the trigger for the Son of God to lay down his life. John’s execution was the grim dress rehearsal for Jesus’s crucifixion. In both the death of John and Jesus, the similarities are not lost on the reader.

John and Jesus are both hauled before men in charge of leadership, (Pilate and Herod Antipas) who were not really convinced that they should be put to death. Both men were pushed to a bad decision by people who would ‘profit’ from such a death. Herodias would have got rid of the voice of conscience that condemned her adulterous and incestuous union to Herod while Caiaphas and gang would have got rid of what they saw as a religious rabble rouser who could set off a very edgy Roman army. Both men succumbed when they executed the death warrant; Herod to the lust of the flesh and Pilate to the lust of power. Both were edged on by public perception; Herod was worried about his oath before his guests and Pilate was worried about his loyalty to Caesar.

But since this text is a flashback in the Gospel let me do a bit of flashback for you. Herod, mentioned in the Gospel, is Herod Antipas or Herod the Tetrarch (meaning one fourth). He was given the charge of Galilee and Perea but in reality, was a puppet in the hands of the Emperor Tiberius. He was the son of Herod the Great and this apple did not fall far from the tree. In many ways he was like his father though some portray him to be weak and indecisive. Herod Antipas (21BC – 39AD) had divorced his wife, the daughter of King Aretas, ruler of the Nabatean kingdom. This was a mistake because Aretas made sure of Herod’s downfall.

So what really lost Herod Antipas his crown? His love for ‘his brother’s wife’! The woman in question is Herodias. Herodias was the niece of King Herod the great, the daughter of King Aristobulus IV. She was married off to Philip the son of Herod the Great and bother of Herod Antipas. Her husband was also called ‘Herod Boethus’. Philip chose to stay in Rome, living a quiet life rather than the spotlight he would be thrown under in Jerusalem. But Herodias had dreams and all it took was a visit from Herod Antipas for her to snake her way into his life.

While Jerusalem’s elites only dared to whisper their disapproval, John the Baptist turned his condemnation into a roar.  This voice in the wilderness shook the corridors of power enough for Herod to have John imprisoned in Machaerus, one of Herod’s many palaces, this one in the Trans Jordan area. And then all it took was a birthday and an opportunity to win and woo Herod. John may have ‘lost his head’ with Herod’s moral life but this also made his loose his head, literally!

While Jesus told us that ‘the truth will set you free’ (John 8:32). Yet speaking truth to power also has its consequences. John was beheaded and Jesus was crucified. Speaking the truth does not insulate us from the wrath of those who have much to lose.   While the wicked sharpen their daggers in the shadows, the righteous stand firm in the light, knowing that human vengeance is a trap, but divine justice is an absolute certainty. Herodias and Caiaphas may plot the execution, but they cannot escape the ultimate courtroom where vengeance belongs to God alone. Do not trade the crown of righteousness for the muddy weapons of revenge

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