Last weekend, we talked about the first theological virtue: Faith. We talked about how as Christians, our faith — the core of what we believe — is a story: The story of salvation! — that God created us good, that sin messed things up quite a bit, but that Jesus was then sent to heal all our mess by dying and rising… and that NOW… we have to decide:

Do we believe the story?

But, as we all know, in order to believe any story — you gotta BELIEVE the StoryTELLER… To believe someTHING… you need to be able to believe someONE. In fact, you have to have a trustworthy storyteller.

And that is the question, isn’t it?

Is the storyteller believable. 

Is the storyteller credible?

At the end of the day, in order to believe something — ANYTHING — you have to be willing to believe someONE… to take someone at their word!

“The believer,” Joseph Pieper says, “accepts a given matter as real and true on the testimony of someone else.”

St. Thomas Aquinas teaches us in his Summa Theologia that “Everyone who believes assents to the testimony of someone.”

This is just how belief works. There’s no real use trying to escape it! — “Every man is bound to have some kind of ‘belief,’” Josef Ratzinger once wrote. We are constantly being asked to believe all sorts of things. And the fact of the matter is: 

We need to believe COUNTLESS things that others tell us in order to function in our every day life. 

So now it’s just a question of:

Who are we gonna believe?

This is just as important of a question as “What do we believe?” 

Because ultimately — who we believe will really determine what we believe… Who we trust, who we listen to — will determine the content of our FAITH!!!

This is very relevant in the first reading from today, where we meet Abram — who would eventually go on to become Abraham, who we refer to as “our father in Faith.”

The Lord God took Abram outside, we read, and God told him: “Look up at the sky and count the stars, if you can. Just so,” he added, “shall your descendants be.”

God basically tells Abram a new story, right? — He tells him the future story of what He intends to bring about through him and all his descendants. He wants to create a great family through Abram — He wants to bless the whole world through him! This is of course referring to the Israelites, the Chosen people — but it’s also a veiled reference to the Church — the future family of God!

Abram can’t see this future yet. He can’t understand it fully yet. He doesn’t know all the details yet… In fact, everything he can see seems to discredit this story. He is very old already, and so is his wife. They have no children. How could this promise… this story… come to fruition?

But, despite all that — even though he didn’t have ALL the answers — “Abram put his faith in the LORD.” 

In other words, He believed God’s story. Because he decided in that moment that the Lord was actually BELIEVABLE… CREDIBLE… worthy of his trust… And the Lord “credited it to him as an act of righteousness.”

We read that Abram then asked: “O LORD God, how am I to know that I shall possess it?” In other words, he’s asking God — “What can you do, God, to prove that You’re really trustworthy? How can I know that I can really BELIEVE YOU?”

That’s when the Lord does something completely revolutionary: 

God instructs Abram to bring several animals for sacrifice — A heifer, a she-goat, a ram, a turtledove, and a pigeon and tells him to cut the animals in half and lay them out on the ground.

Now, to our ears, this is all very weird, right? It makes no sense. But to the original ancient audience, everyone knew exactly what was going down. 

Everybody heard this and was like:

OH… God is making an unbreakable oath with Abram. He is literally cutting a covenant. In the Middle-east at that time, unrelated families would form these permanent covenant bonds through blood sacrifice. And they would cut the sacrificial animals in two, and then walk between those halves. This was a ceremonial way of saying: “If I break my oath with you — If I don’t fulfill my promise, then I will die. I will die like these animals!”

That’s what God is saying to Abram. God is making a permanent promise, an unbreakable covenant based on His own life: You don’t have anything to fear, Abram — I’m in this all the way for you. You can BELIEVE ME.

But there’s another, even more amazing layer to all of this.

Because in that terrifying darkness of that trance that we heard about, we notice something else: Only God passes through the sacrificed animals. 

Scripture scholars will point out that the text says NOTHING about Abram walking through on his own. So — it’s as if God is taking His own part AND Abram’s part of this covenantal oath.

This… is huge.

Because think about it…

What God is essentially saying by doing this is:

“Don’t be afraid of what I’m asking from you, Abram. Have FAITH… Have confidence in me — I will NOT let let you down. You can BELIEVE ME and MY STORY… In fact — to prove it to you, not only will I uphold my end of the deal, but I’ll even take your place as well.”

Does that sound familiar? Because it should! — That’s exactly what Jesus did for us on the Cross! Jesus, even though He is Himself God — proves his Trustworthiness — proves His CREDIBILITY… by literally taking our place on the Cross.

This brings us to our Gospel today — the story of the Transfiguration.

Many of the Church fathers, when reflecting on this famous story of when Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up onto Mount Tabor and becomes brilliantly, blindingly bright as the sun — will say that THIS experience was meant to PREPARE them and STRENGTHEN their FAITH for all the awful things they were about to see when Jesus would soon get arrested, suffer, and die on the Cross.

The BRIGHTNESS of the Transfiguration was meant to support their faith through the DARKNESS of Good Friday.

It was intended to be PROOF for Peter, James and John that everything Jesus said was still believable, that everything he told them was still 100% true — regardless of what they saw happening to him in His Passion!

And this is really comforting to me: Because what this reveals for us is that God knows how hard it is for us to believe. He knows how weak and fickle we are! Christ, even on the eve of his Passion, reassures Peter: “I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail.”

Then the climax of the story comes. And the Father suddenly speaks from the cloud:

“This is my Beloved Son: Listen to Him.”

Believe Him.

Have faith in Him.

This is at the heart of the Christian faith: 

We go from simply saying “I believe in something” to “I believe in You, Lord. I listen to YOU, Lord. I have faith in YOU.”

For Catholics and for all Christians — Truth is a Person.

“I am the Way, the TRUTH and the Life,” says the Lord.

We believe in the Truth — which is to say: We believe Jesus, we take Him at his word, and we listen to Him. Faith is not unreasonable. Faith is not just a blind leap. There are VERY good, rational reasons to believe the Catholic faith is true…But ultimately, faith is about putting your trust in a PERSON — The Person of Jesus Christ, and believing everything that he has to say!

And one of the things Jesus has to say is this:

“Whoever listens to you listens to me. Whoever rejects you rejects me. And whoever rejects me rejects the One who sent me.”

He’s speaking to the apostles at this point. And he is speaking more broadly about the Church.

So… listening to Jesus… ultimately includes listening to His Body the Church. To believe what the Church believes… is to believe Jesus.

Here’s the deal:

We only believe in Jesus today — because the Church has handed on that faith to us. Remember how this homily started off: If we’re gonna believe someTHING…we need to believe someONE.

We are very blessed to have 3 young people who will be baptized at the Easter Vigil. As part of that ceremony, the priests asks the catechumens: “What do you ask of God’s Church?” And their response is:

“Faith.”

We ask for and receive FAITH through the Church. You are in the pew right now — you BELIEVE IN JESUS — only because Jesus established the Church and commissioned the apostles to go and share that story of the Gospel, and through a million little acts of providence later: Here you are! — All because Jesus chose a handful of guys to go and preach to all the nations!!!!

And those guys were CREDIBLE witnesses. They were BELIEVABLE.

The apostles were real human beings — imperfect as they were — who really lived, really breathed, and really died — most of them died horrific martyrdoms for their faith in the Resurrected Jesus: 

They were the ones who told us this amazing and true story. They are the only reason we know anything about Jesus Christ at all! They are the reason we have the Four Gospels. They are the reason we have the New Testament. They are the reason we have bishops and priests today — because apostolic succession came through their laying on of hands and the power of the Holy Spirit down through the centuries!!!!

Whoever doesn’t listen to the Church, therefore — doesn’t listen to Jesus, and whoever doesn’t listen to Jesus… doesn’t listen to the One who sent Him.

Jesus gave the Church the Holy Spirit so that we might be safeguarded from error and “led into all truth.” And truth cannot contradict itself.

Therefore, we can trust the Church’s teachings… WHY?

Because we trust Jesus who built the Church.

And because we trust the Holy Spirit, who inspires the Church.

And because we trust the Father when He says: “This is my beloved Son: Listen to Him.”

Our faith rests in God alone, yes… But God has chosen to involve His visible Church. He’s chosen to involve and include YOU AND ME! And He is sending us out now to become those credible witnesses today — in order that more and more people can freely choose to believe this most incredible Story about the only One who can save their souls.