Just to let you know, midway through the Gloria, I remembered James’s name.
So the stroke was a little premature, but there is a popular expression right now that I truly find interesting, and that expression very often is heard when anyone walks into a major department store.
If you walk in the wrong entrance and by the wrong entrance, I mean the one by the women’s perfume counter, there is someone there to spray you automatically.
The atomizer is are out and they ask, Do you want to make over?
Make over? Now, most people that I asked to say they do not like change.
So let me ask the question. How many of us in the community this morning like change?
Now the good Catholic reply is, Well, it depends.
See, we say we don’t like change yet.
Let someone in a department store offer us some make over and we’re right there.
Well, what does makeover mean, if not change?
Now, the reason that I bring this up. Today’s readings offer us a spiritual makeover.
They offer us a time to stop, reflect, and ask ourselves a question about spiritual shame.
So when we hear spiritual change, is the word change a little bit more palatable?
Are we willing to say, all right, maybe spiritually I could use a makeover?
Well, that is the experience of the chosen people during the time of the Prophet Daniel.
The Lord God is offering them a spiritual makeover.
It is a makeover that will bring glory, peace and calm.
It is a glory that will elevate the people of God.
It is a make over about the whole community of faith with the promise of the Messiah, the one who is going to come to spiritually change the whole world.
And so with the eyes of faith, we know that that is Christ Jesus, the risen Lord who has come and spiritually made over the world, the one who was there at the dawn of creation.
He comes now and creates all of creation.
Now, that’s a change. That’s a real spiritual makeover.
And there might be those of us who are saying, well, that might have been good when Jesus was around, but I don’t think that’s good for me.
Well, think of the apostle Peter, who’s reading we heard as the second reading, who says to each and every one of us, I was a living witness to the spiritual change that happens when we allow Christ Jesus in.
Now, this morning, are we willing to stand with Peter and open ourselves for the experience of that spiritual change?
It was offered to the whole community of faith. It is offered to each and every one of us.
Personally, on the day we are baptized, and as we hear in the Gospel, Jesus reveals his very self to us in today’s gospel.
And what do we hear from the Father? This is my beloved son.
Listen to him. And we are called this morning not only to hear the word of God, but be changed by the word of God.
Peter, James and John saw the Lord transfigured before them.
This morning we are going to see simple gifts of bread and wine transfigured before us into the body and blood of Christ, the source of our transfiguration into the Lord, the source of our ability to change, to be a new creation offered to the community for the salvation of all.
We are celebrating a Eucharistic revival, and we in the Diocese of Brooklyn prepare on October the seventh to gather at my Monty’s field.
And experience that transfiguration, that spiritual change of our diocese when we witness to the Eucharist.
Just as Peter, James and John were witnesses of the revelation of Christ Jesus.
So are each one of us. And this morning the question becomes, in the Eucharist, are we willing to have a make over a spiritual makeover that makes us into the image and likeness of our savior through the Eucharist?
So the next time any one of us walks into our favorite department store and we are attacked by the army of perfumers.
Let us resist the temptation to be made over cosmetically.
But let us pray at that moment for the grace to be made over spiritually so that we in turn might change the world for Christ Jesus, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.