Caesarea Philippi, where Jesus took his disciples to, is a pretty place in the midst of the rocky and sandy landscape of the Holy Land. The dense vegetation, the soothing sound of streams, the visible presence of the wildlife and the pleasant cool of the air make it today a perfect holiday destination. However at the time of Jesus it was also a strong center of paganism. Jewish parents wouldn’t send their offspring there fearing that their sons and daughters in the midst of foreign customs and beliefs could lose their faith.
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! We can identify ourselves with the situation captured by St Matthew in today’s Gospel. Ours is the society which also makes it challenging to preserve and treasure true faith. However as we accept the message coming from the Scriptures this Sunday we find strength that in the midst of circumstances silencing the voice of God Peter still professed his faith in Jesus Christ ‘the Son of the Living God.’ He did this because God, Jesus Christ, was there. The secular society we live in may shout loudly ‘God is dead’ as Friedrich Nietzsche first put it 135 years ago. But then it is our call as Christians to complete the statement announcing by our words and actions: ‘God is risen.’ Jesus is risen and active even in the midst of the society which invests its energy no to see him and to silence or ridicule those who say: ‘We have seen the Lord.’
            As I mentioned before Caesarea Philippi wasn’t an easy place to believe in one God as the Scriptures proclaim him, but it was a good introduction to the Apostles who soon would have to go all over the world to proclaim the Good News. If they did go to the ends of the world it was because they believed the promise of the Risen Lord: ‘I am with you always. Yes until the end of time.’ Why did Jesus give such a strong guarantee to his disciples? Because he entrusted them with a task ‘to teach all the nations to observe all the commandments I gave you.’
            Once again we are called to do that in the debate which is happening here in Australia about changing the definition of the marriage. Some of the gay activists and politicians were saying that it shouldn’t be taken to the plebiscite because gay and lesbians would be hurt by those who believe that marriage is a union between a man and a woman only. Did you pick up that this statement implies that upholding the traditional marriage hurts some people? In fact what we have seen so far is that those who push to change the definition of marriage call others bigots, intolerant, etc. I get that some people disagree with the Catholic Church. I respect that. However I disagree that I am cruel, lacking compassion and love, because I am convinced that marriage can be only between a woman and a man.
            My Dear Friends! As we are taken by the Lord Jesus to the beautiful Caesarea Philippi and hear the first Pope to profess faith in Christ I would like to bring into this homily the voice of our Peter, Pope Francis who voiced that the family, as an institution based on marriage between a man and a woman, is not a political cause but a matter of ‘human ecology.’ He made this message when he was working on the Encyclical Letter Laudato Si, on care for our common home. Today when we are so keen on ecology, the Holy Father acknowledged that ecology is not only about gumtrees, koalas, dolphins, Great Barrier Reef, air or water pollution. It is also about protecting who we are as humans being created as male or female. It is about ‘the complementarity between man and woman, which is the root of the marriage and family’ as he put it. Then in a prophetic way he said: ‘Although the human race has come to understand the need to address conditions that menace our natural environments, we have been slower to recognize that our fragile social environments, like marriage and family, are also at risk. It is therefore essential that we foster a new human ecology.’
            In the current debate which uses terms like marriage equality or human rights of gay people to marry the voice of children is not heard. Why the voice of people who have been raised by the same sex couples and who witness to being deprived of having mother and father is silenced in this debate? Pope Francis hasn’t been deaf to that cry as he said: ‘Children have a right to grow up in a family with a father and a mother capable of creating a suitable environment for the child’s development and emotional maturity.’
            Every single person of this planet was conceived by a man and a woman. Two men cannot conceive a child. Two women cannot conceive a child either. We also know that conception is not the end of the mother and the father to their child’s upbringing. Both of them, mother and father are needed as the child grows up.
            My Dear fellow believers! The postal vote you will soon receive is not the only way to speak up for ‘human ecology.’ In our own Caesarea Philippi here in Australia the Lord Jesus asks us to share with others what we believe and stand for. Probably you won’t get an appreciation certificate for that but you will bring the Good News to this community of ours called Australia.

            Have you heard of the Twelve Steps? That’s the program constructed by Bill Wilson in 1935 and originally offered to Anonymous Alcoholics. Bill Wilson, who for years tried to stop drinking, eventually turned to God crying: ‘I will do anything! Anything at all! If there be a God, let Him show Himself.’ Then something happened to him. He never drank after that. His doctor who supported him over those years of his battle said: ‘Something has happened to you that I don’t understand. But you had better hang on to it.’ However Bill Wilson did more. He started praying, reading the Bible and reflecting on it. Out of that came what is known today as Twelve Steps, an invention which deserves to be on the UNESCO World Heritage List.
Twelve Steps begins with admitting one’s powerless like the woman from today’s Gospel did. She came out shouting her helplessness like Bill Wilson did. ‘Take pity on me.  – She was pleading – My daughter is tormented by a devil.’ In her story we discover that like Bill Wilson she was ready to do anything. In fact she swallowed her pride. The sense of failure which she lived with for many years was the environment for her realism but also for her faith in ‘a Power greater then ourselves’ as the Twelve Steps define it.
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! After admitting one’s powerlessness and then one’s belief in a Power greater than oneself the person doing the Twelve Steps is encouraged to make a decision to turn his or her will and life to the care of God as she or he understood him. Some people claim that they are recovering from their addiction without any reference to God. My response to such comments is: ‘Good for you. I am happy that you beat you addiction. However do not call it Twelve Steps. What you are doing is your own steps. They may work but I cannot guarantee that. On the contrary I can guarantee that the original Twelve Steps born from Bill Wilson’s struggles with his life, his reflection on the Scriptures and his commitment to God, do work.
            Bill Wilson encouraged addicts to turn to God as they understood him. He didn’t lead people to some fairy stories or imaginary gods but he pointed to God whom we adore in Jesus Christ. Knowing from his experience that often people had a poor image of God, the image which was limited and fragmented, but it was all they had, he said to them: Hang on to that. Even if your faith is childish and superficial that’s all you’ve got. Hang on to that.
Because faith isn’t about imagining a god to make people feel better. Faith is not about having an imaginary friend, like some children sometimes do. Faith is about turning with our physical, emotional, spiritual, psychological, social insufficiency and fragility to God who can embrace us the way Jesus embraced that woman from today’s Gospel. She turned to Jesus and it was her victory. St Matthew tells us that she was addressing Christ as: ‘Son of David and Lord.’ She saw in Jesus not a visiting doctor but God. Her faith wasn’t perfect at that stage but she turned to God for real because God to whom she turned to was real. The outcome of that interaction was not only the miracle of healing granted to her daughter but it was also the great faith, as Jesus described it. She returned to her home not only to see a healthy daughter but to be a healthy and faith-filled mother to that daughter.
            My Dear fellow believers. These are not simply inspiring stories. They show us how much the Blessed Lord can accomplish in those who turn to him. When we turn to him and give our life to him we have a relationship with God. Then we have the life which can be compared to the Gospel from last Sunday. The man of little faith, Simon Peter, was sinking. What happened to him next? He cried out: ‘Lord! Save me’ and Jesus was holding his hand. We may have little faith but because our Lord is real he will save us like the Lord has saved millions of people doing the Twelve Steps.

            Years ago when I began working as a teacher I discovered that shouting over a noisy class wasn’t a solution. It worked better to keep my voice down.
            The first reading is full of big noises: the noise of “the mighty wind, so strong that it tore the mountains and shattered the rocks” or the noise of “the earthquake,” or the noise of “the fire.” There was also a big noise in the heart and mind of the prophet Elijah. The prophet, like all prophets did, was carrying within himself the situation of his own people.
At that time those who were leading people astray dominated in the society. Their voices were so strong that even the earlier miracle Elijah performed, when he brought fire from heaven to prove his genuineness, didn’t work. It didn’t convince them.
Elijah was like a teacher who lost his plot in the midst of a noisy class. I am not sure what was louder in the scene we had in the first reading, whether the forces of nature around Elijah or the voices within him, still echoing what was happening in the society drifting away from their relationship with God. In the midst of those interior and exterior big noises God kept his voice down, “there came the sound of a gentle breeze.”
My Dear Sisters and Brothers! Though separated by some millennia we can empathize with Elijah. We are also surrounded by some big noises of theories, ideologies, etc. which can make us think that someone operates a very powerful surround sound system in this world stopping the voice of God to be heard. We may think that we cannot escape this noise which seems to fill up our heart, mind and soul.
My Dear Fellow believers! Do not feel sorry for yourself for having to live in such an environment. Do not think that our era is worse than the previous ones; instead turn to the Lord Jesus. The Gospel tells us of the Lord coming to his disciples in the midst of big noises too. The heavy sea combined with the disciples’ fear is a situation where it was hard to hear anything. Into such situation Jesus walked.
The men in the boat had just seen the feeding of thousands by Christ but in the midst of the frightening storm when they saw Christ approaching their boat they got frightened even more. In their religious tradition only God could walk on the water as it was written in the Book of Job: “He and no other stretched out the skies, and trampled the Sea’s tall waves.” However they didn’t expect God to come to them and that’s why they jumped into a conclusion that it was a ghost.
It is a part of life and faith journey which all of us go through. We get immersed in the waves of philosophies which poison our relationship with the Lord like pagan beliefs in ghosts poisoned the disciples’ relationship with Christ. Challenged by frightening circumstances they surfaced their hidden beliefs which were like that weed Jesus spoke of in one of his parables. That night on the lake the weed of believing in ghosts appeared plainly. They knew that as descendants of Abraham, patriarchs and prophets they weren’t to hold to such beliefs. On the stormy lake they realised that it took root in them. However Jesus didn’t give them a lecture to reprimand them for such a distortion. Instead he proved to be Emmanuel – God-with-us. He was with his disciples there. In the midst of those interior and exterior deafening noises Jesus was speaking to the men calmly like a teacher who doesn’t need to shout over a noisy class in order to be in control.
We also find ourselves overcome by the volume of the noise of theories and ideologies contradicting the Word of God. But as it happened before when God came to Elijah amidst of political, social, religious and naturals storms and when Jesus walked on the raging water to reach his disciples Jesus comes to us in this twenty first century too. He, our Emmanuel – our God-with-us, brings his divine wish to strengthen our faltering faith, our weakening relationship with him. The storms around us don’t need to drop. The storm on the lake didn’t drop during the conversation Jesus had with his Apostles either, it dropped at the end of the conversation. We, because of the grace of our Lord, can be attentive and responsive to his gentle voice in the midst of big noises surrounding us.

            Imagine if Jesus was transfigured above Jerusalem Temple instead of being crucified at Golgotha. It was estimated that around three million people were in the Holy City during that time. Our Blessed Lord couldn’t have a better opportunity to promote his Good News, when so many Jews and pagans were crowded in Jerusalem. If those three million people had seen what Peter, James and John saw on the mountain of Transfiguration the word would spread like fire to the four corners of the world. Why did Jesus choose only three simple men to witness his glory while his humiliation happened in the plain view of millions?
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! God chose to accomplish our salvation not outside us but from within us. A couple of centuries prior to Jesus prophet Daniel wrote: ‘I saw, coming on the clouds of heaven, one like a son of man.’ The prophet was given a vision of the coming salvation which was originated in heaven. No human being can save himself or herself. Salvation is the work of God. Today’s Gospel, reminiscing the Divinity of Christ, is irrevocably connected to the events of Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday. Those three Most Sacred Days were the culmination of what Daniel saw in his vison: ‘coming … one like a son of man.’ That’s why Jesus not only chose the obscurity of the mountain for his Transfiguration but he also ‘warned the disciples to tell no one what they had seen until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.’ It was crucial as the transfiguration on its own could have made people think that he was only looking like a human being while his crucifixion left no doubt about how real his human condition was. Salvation is not some medicine applied by God wearing protective gloves not to get contaminated by our sinfulness. On the contrary Jesus Christ stepped into the most dehumanising situation so that the healing, the salvation of our humanity could be brought about from within.
Jesus consistently introduced himself as ‘Son of Man,’ which to our ears today sounds like a title of God, doesn’t it? However to his listeners the expression meant simply a human being. It is a very profound mystery for our contemplation that Jesus insisted so strongly on presenting himself as a true man. Why? So that we could believe that salvation is an act of loving mercy rather than an impersonal treatment of God distanced from us. If the title ‘Son of Man’ has got such a divine implication, as we hear it today, it is because Our Blessed Lord, in whom we place our trust, took upon himself our human nature to transfigure it from within to such an extent that it was radiating with glory proper to God. Jesus didn’t need to strip himself off human physique to reveal his divinity. His divinity shone from his humanity as Peter, James and John were blessed to witness on the mountain of Transfiguration. Jesus’ divinity shone even more profusely when he was on the cross. They stripped him off his clothes there but then every nerve and muscle, every cell of his suffering body was screaming not only out of excruciating pain but also out of loving mercy. The glory of the Son of Man nailed to the wood of the cross was not causing blindness but it was accomplishing the salvation we needed so much. That’s why, some years later St Paul wrote in the Letter to the Romans: ‘Be transformed by the renewing of the mind.’ St Paul very carefully used the same word which was used in the Gospel to describe the event we celebrate this Sunday but his time in relation to Christians. St Paul wasn’t an idealist he was a realist. He was aware of the sins among Christians but he was also aware that human nature is not an obstacle to be shining with God’s glory. St Paul drew this belief from his contemplation on the glory of Jesus revealed in the most prosaic human situations and finally in Jesus’ death and Resurrection.
            For two millennia Christian people have been recalling various events of Jesus’ mission in the midst of humanity in order to renew the human mind. This renewal comes from within, from memories of Jesus’ events and the work of the Holy Spirit present always in those who remember Jesus. As we lovingly and gratefully remember Jesus’ Transfiguration today, the Spirit, who as the cloud wrapped the summit of the mountain, works profoundly in our souls and in the midst of this community. Can you see the glory of God shining from this community and from each person here present? I can because I believe Jesus.