Today’s readings make us meditate on the close relationship that unites a son with his father. The first reading tells us about the sacrifice that God asks of Abraham for his son Isaac.

In today’s Gospel, the theme of parents and children appears in a different way. This time it is the Father and Son relationship per excellence. The transfiguration allows us to glimpse the mystery of this Son in whom the gift of love that his Father has made him shines, and the mystery of this Father in the gift of love that his Son makes him. This precious mystery, which has been called “luminous” by Pope John Paul II, introduces us to the dynamics of the gift of life and the gift of love proper of the Holy Trinity.

And in that mystery, our own salvation is born. The word “Father” is the word that seals the work of redemption. When God is my Father, my Dad, my Daddy, my Abba, distances are over! God is no longer my rival or my hindrance; it is no longer a distant idea or nameless energy, it is no longer a memory of another culture or an ideology to dominate me. When Jesus introduces me to his way of loving the Father and God’s way of loving, the lie of suspicion with which the enemy tried to make me distrust my Creator has been broken.

That is why Saint Paul also tells us: “If God is for us, who will be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how could he not be willing to give him to us? Everything, together with his Son? ” (Rom 8.31-32). With this certainty well sown in the soul, the devil’s deceptions no longer fit, the honeys of the world no longer have charm, the seductions of the flesh lose their strength.

God is Father sent his Son to show us his face so that in him the image lost by sin would be remade!

Peace, Fr. Oscar Mendez, OFM

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