Today we celebrated the great Feast of the Transfiguration.
 
I was blessed to have professed my solemn vows on this day in 2005 … all the more significant in light of what Pope John Paul II wrote in Vita Consecrata, interpreting consecrated life via the icon of the Transfiguration. He wrote: “… those who are called to the consecrated life have a special experience of the light which shines forth from the Incarnate Word. For the profession of the evangelical counsels makes them a kind of sign and prophetic statement for the community of the brethren and for the world; consequently they can echo in a particular way the ecstatic words spoken by Peter: ‘Lord, it is well that we are here'” (#15).
 
…This glorious, timeless experience of Christ revealed as the Beloved Son radically “contextualizes” the ensuing journey to Jerusalem and to Calvary. The Word made Flesh, the Son of Man, will soon be scourged, mocked, and crucified as he foretells repeatedly to His disciples. But the intimate moment of Transfiguration mercifully serves to remind Peter, James and John (and to us) WHO it is that bears our humanity to Calvary … and beyond … and WHO bears it still in His Divine Life with the Father and the Holy Spirit.
 
Christ’s glorified Humanity, as St. Teresa of Jesus knew by experience, is the instrument of our own transformation. As she says in her Life: “And I see clearly … that God desires that if we are going to please Him and receive His great favors, we must do so through the most sacred humanity of Christ, in whom He takes His delight” (22.6). Tertullian wrote, “Caro cardo salutis[the flesh is the hinge of our salvation]” (De carnis resurrectione, 8). It is the hinge because, consequent to the Incarnation, we now share this “flesh” in common with God.