Lord’s Day Reflection: ‘Not conformed but transformed’

By Fr. Edmund Power, OSB

There’s a lot of suffering in the world. When people tell me how difficult their lives are, I try to listen with sympathy, but at the end of the day, there are only two possible options: give up or stumble on.

The Rule of St Benedict has a daunting chapter entitled “If a brother is asked to do something impossible” (RB 68). We can almost hear the nausea in the voice of Jeremiah today, exhausted but compelled to give voice against all natural instincts to a bitter message no one wants to hear.

St Paul and St Matthew concur in what they tell us today: there are basically two ways of thinking and therefore of acting: a natural way and an “un-natural” or rather, supernatural way.

The second reading is the first two verses of the last section of Paul’s magnificent letter to the Romans that we read from the 11th to the 24th Sundays of Ordinary Time.

He starts with a liturgical image of offering and sacrifice and worship: we are our own priests, and the oblation that will win the favour of God is ourselves. Then he shifts into a language of inner change, playing on two words which in English are expressed by conformed and transformed.

The natural way of thinking is being conformed to this world. The supernatural way is being transformed by the renewal of your mind.

What is this new way of thinking? Paul mentions it in another place: have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus (Phil 2:5). We’ll be reading the Letter to the Philippians next, from the 25th to the 28th Sundays of Ordinary Time.

And this is precisely the problem of the Gospel. Peter thinks naturally: despite his impulsive and inspired act of faith last Sunday, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God, he has not been able to understand the deeper mystery. So much so, that Jesus declares, you are not on the side of God, but of men and even calls him Satan, meaning tempter.

It is natural to seek to avoid suffering at all costs. There is nothing wrong in trying to alleviate it. In fact, it’s our duty to do so.

But it’s Peter’s very love for Jesus that blocks his ability to see behind and beyond the suffering that Jesus must undergo. If you can see behind and beyond, however, you will perceive the hope in the barely noted words, on the third day be raised.

All of us suffer, but the Christian challenge is to avoid being conformed to this world, viewing so many difficulties as simply so many difficulties. Peter, the rock on which I will build my church, is like us: he needs to be transformed by the renewal of your mind.

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But how can we think in God’s way and take up our cross and follow the Lord? Only by believing in him, which means loving him, and seeking him, and trusting him. Is that the key to facing impossible things?