When I was a freshman at Ohio State, I started my journey of going to daily Mass. At the time, I lived in a Catholic fraternity-style household with about 12 other Catholic men. I noticed that many of the older guys in the house went to daily Mass throughout the week. I really looked up to those guys and admired their faithfulness to Mass, so I began to go with them most days.
During that time, daily Mass was almost always held in a little side chapel at Holy Name parish. If you’re ever near Ohio State, make it a point to visit Holy Name church. It is on the corner of Adam St. and East Patterson Ave.. I call it one of the hidden gems of the diocese. It is a romanesque style church, meaning the walls are thicker and the stained glass windows are smaller. The windows are beautiful along with the rest of the church. The chapel where they had daily Mass is off of a side hallway and is really easy to miss. It’s so small that the pews on either side of the chapel only seat two people. With a blue ceiling, small marble altar and simple stained glass windows, it was an intimate place to have Mass. We were all right close to the altar and got to see the liturgy up close and personal.
I really treasured my time in that little chapel. I can still remember walking through a little courtyard to the side of the church, past a beautiful outdoor statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, through a side door and up a set of dimly lit steps into that little chapel. Once inside, we crammed together to listen to Msgr. Ruef preach, often pausing to ask us questions. He loved that little side chapel and used the intimate setting to teach us college kids to think through our faith. Above all, in that cozy little space, we got to experience up close the lifting up of the Sacrifice of the Eucharist, and feed on Jesus Himself! I didn’t realize it at the time, but it was in that little chapel dedicated to St. Therese of Lisieux that I began to fall in love with Jesus in the Eucharist. Before long, daily encounters with Jesus at Mass became so much a part of my life that it felt weird to go a day without Mass.
Today we hear about the disciples making the climb to the top of Mount Tabor to pray with Jesus. At the top, they have a fantastic experience of Jesus’ Divinity shining through his humanity. His face changes in appearance and his clothes become dazzling white. Then they see Jesus talking about the Exodus from sin that he is going to accomplish through the Cross with two towering figures from the Jewish Scriptures, Moses, the one who lead the people out of slavery in the first Exodus, and Elijah, the great prophet and wonder worker who had his own type of exodus at the end of his life when he went up to Heaven in a fiery chariot. Peter is so overwhelmed that all he can think to say is, essentially, “Let’s just stay up here, I’ll build tents for everybody!”
But the point isn’t to have them stay there in the midst of the Lord’s glory shining forth. The thing about our God is that He is so incredibly humble that He is willing to hide himself. Jesus’ Divinity, while it showed out in a spectacular way in that moment, was hidden beneath his humanity. We believe in the two natures of Jesus: his full divinity and full humanity. But very often Jesus appeared just like any of us. He chose to embrace our humanity fully, in such a way that His Divinity was only revealed in glimpses: in His miracles, in His command over evil spirits and the forces of nature, in His preaching which was unlike anything anyone had heard. But we often forget that the Lord was just as powerful in those moments when he was eating, drinking, laughing, walking, and even sleeping. Jesus embraced everything about our nature and walked with us. Today he continues to walk with us in the church, if only we let him open the eyes of our hearts to see Him at work. The Lord promised, “I will be with you always, until the end of the age.” And He meant that in a literal way. He walks with the Church and joins us substantially in the Eucharist. Certainly there are times where we may see Him work more dramatically, but most of our walk with the Lord will be like that of his first disciples, in the ordinary, day-to-day moments.
Think of Abraham in the first reading. God leads him outside and tells him to number the stars, if he can. He promises Abraham that his descendants will be as numerous as the stars. How many of you, by a show of hands, imagine Abraham is looking up at the night sky filled with stars? Would it surprise you to know that he wasn’t? Just a few verses later we hear: “When the sun had set and it was dark, there appeared a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch, which passed between those pieces.” So Abraham was gazing up at a blue sky when God invited him to count the stars, if he could. He couldn’t see the stars, but they were there.
I believe this is one of the reasons that Jesus chooses to accompany the Church under the appearance of bread and wine. His ordinary appearance in the Eucharist reminds us of the fact Jesus wants to walk with us out of the Church into all those ordinary moments of our lives, to accompany us in hidden, but powerful ways. If Jesus came to us in the Eucharist in a brilliant flash of light and glory, wouldn’t it be a bit overwhelming and hard to reconcile with our ordinary daily lives? There have been dramatic instances of Eucharistic miracles, where Jesus healed people, stopped flood waters in their tracks, and even allowed the host and precious blood to become actual flesh and blood. But in a beautiful analogy to the way Jesus appeared humbly in our nature through the incarnation, now through transubstantiation in the Eucharist, the Lord of the universe hides himself under humble outward appearances of bread and wine but continues to work powerfully.
When I think of that humble little chapel on the side of Holy Name parish, it reminds me of this hidden power of the Lord. You could walk by Holy Name every day and easily miss the little side door and the chapel inside. But in that humble, hidden place, I encountered the Lord powerfully in the daily experience of the Mass. This is how Jesus is with us. He comes to us so humbly that it is easy to miss Him, to get so caught up in everything else that we pass right by Him. But He wants to slow us down during this season of Lent, to draw us close to Him and maybe even give us a little Mt. Tabor experience that opens up our eyes. He wants to be with us both in those dramatic moments but most of all in our daily walk. So I pray that we take that time to seek him out in daily Mass, in daily prayer, in the Confessional, in faith sharing groups and in those moments of daily joys and trials. He wants to be with us and give us the eyes to see Him at work.
+ Heavenly Father, thank you for this privileged time to meet the Lord and listen to him. Jesus, help us to see you more clearly as you accompany us through our daily lives. Holy Spirit, open the eyes of our hearts to recognize Jesus in the Eucharist and to sense His enduring presence with us as we go forth from here. We ask this through Christ, our Lord. Amen. +