Latin American Economics and Catholic Social Teaching

Transfiguration Spirituality

CHRIST DID NOT DIE FOR GOLD

by Mark and Louise Zwick

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We write this on August 6.
This day is indelibly branded and engraved on our souls.

• It is the day, August 6, 1945, that our father died (Mark's father, Herman Sebastian Zwick, died when Mark was a young teenager, leaving a family of twelve children). This changed Mark's life.
• It is also the day, August 6, 1945, that the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and which changed irreversibly the course of history in regard to war and peace.
• But, more importantly for believers, it is the feast of the Transfiguration, which, if taken seriously, can change our lives and the course of history.

At the Transfiguration, the disciples are momentarily permitted to see the Son of God as He really is, but only because they have been transformed themselves.

The Eastern Christian Church and the early Church Fathers remind us that mere mortal eyes and mortal flesh cannot see the glorified and transfigured Christ.

The song, "Let all Mortal flesh keep Silence" takes on profound theological depth here.

Unless we have been transformed in Christ, unless we die to self and put on Christ, we can neither see nor withstand the Transfiguration.

A transfiguration or transformation is required of the whole person in Christ, in order to see Christ transfigured. The change on Mt. Tabor in the Gospels is not in Christ so much as it is in the disciples, who were enabled to apprehend the Divine Light in direct proportion to their possession of the Holy Spirit and their union with Christ. "Do you see that before that light, eyes which see naturally are blind? Even the disciples saw that, but were unable to look steadily upon it."
(St. Gregory Palamas).

In a recent article in the National Catholic Register (7/31), Fr. Alexei Smith, Pastor, St. Andrew Russian Greek Catholic Church in El Segundo, California, tells us that in the Christian East (unlike the West), the transfiguration is "the fountainhead of a whole spirituality." He quotes the early Church fathers, such as Origen, emphasizing that "spiritual advancement is needed in order to see Christ."

What a challenge to us! Popular spiritualities today sometimes omit or mock the idea of advancement in prayer, although the mystics have always seen this at the heart of the spiritual life, a preparation for being able to see the vision of God.

We sometimes see incredible examples of the transformation that takes place in people's lives when they are comtemplatives who are transfigured as they put on Christ. One does not have to live in a monastery to be a contemplative--in fact, some of the greatest examples are also people of action.

Bartolomé de Las Casas, a Spanish Dominican priest and missionary of the sixteenth century, experienced a transformation that completely changed his life, after he began to work with the Native Americans of Latin America.

His was a tremendous transfiguration.

In a wonderful book Gustavo Gutierrez describes Las Casas' personal transformation as he is profoundly changed from a priest who had his own encomienda and his own Indians (he was once refused absolution because of his neglect of sharing the faith with them) to a prophet who spent his life in defense of the "scourged Christ of the Indies," the suffering Native Americans. (Gustavo Gutierrez, Las Casas: In Search of the Poor of Jesus Christ, Orbis Books, 1993).
Las Casas arrived in the Indies only ten years after Columbus. And so he saw almost from the very beginning the "untimely and unjust death of the dwellers of these lands." It was the massacre of the indigenous people that led to his transformation, and his insight that it was difficult, or rather, impossible to preach the Gospel to the poor under these circumstances, as he wrote in his last work:

"When we preach to the Indians the humility and poverty of Jesus Christ, and how he suffered for us, and how God rejoices in the poor and in those the world despises, they think we are lying to them."

Gutierrez tells us that having spent his entire life meditating on the person of Christ, Las Casas was overwhelmed with the injustices done to the Indians by the Spanish conquistadores. He believed in Matthew 25: "Whatsoever you do to one of these least ones, you do to me."

His personal meditation on the figure of Christ led him to put himself at the service of the proclamation of God's love for each and every person, especially for the poor of his time, the indigenous. The great theme of his life was the God of Jesus Christ, the God who dwells in history. This was the foundation of his acute sense of the value of persons, of their life and freedom, and of his particular sensitivity to the most forgotten and those whom the world despises.

To maintain this witness to serve Latin America's poorest, Las Casas had to suffer much and "pass through the lake of infamy and tribulation" (his own words).

The reality of the Bible permeated Las Casas life. When he thought of the Jewish people being liberated by God from the tremendous oppression by the Egyptians, he thought of the awful oppression suffered by the indigenous population of South America at the hands of the conquistadores. Las Casas knew he had to be like Moses--and never let down his arms nor his efforts for the suffering poor.

He wrote and wrote about these injustices, traveled back and forth to Spain and did not stop speaking about the need for a change of heart.

For Las Casas it was simple--salvation cannot be divorced from justice. For him it was the proper characteristic of the followers of Jesus to proclaim and bear witness to the salvific will of God, "to establish justice and right." It was imperative for him, a condition for attaining the face-to-face vision of God. (Gutierrez, p.10)

Transformed by Christ, Las Casas walked through the world in search of Christ's poor. As Gutierrez tells us, for those poor he fought and from out of their midst he announced: the Gospel in a society being established on a foundation of plunder and injustice. In the afflicted and scourged inhabitants of these lands, Las Casas was able to see the presence of Christ himself."

An important discovery for us in reading Gutierez' book on Las Casas was that he was not completely alone in fighting for justice for the native peoples in Latin America in his time. He was not only able to influence many others to share in his thinking, but also had many allies within the Church and even among some royal officials and members of the Council of the Indies.

But powerful people fought against Las Casas' ideas on justice for the poor. They had to justify their taking of political power and the lands and the gold of the native peoples. They published their articles and attacked his positions.

Las Casas' answer was clear: "Christ did not die for gold." To appropriate the wealth of the indigenous without any authorization is to commit a "mortal sin of theft or robbery."

This dialogue about injustice toward the indigenous peoples of Latin America seems to be unique to Spain. Since the English (Great Britian) write history, we have heard much about the cruelty of Spain at this time in history. England and Spain were enemies and presented a cruel picture of Spain and of the Catholic Church, a picture which they could have painted so well of themselves regarding the colonization of the United States.

Unfortunately, there was no English Las Casas to protect the victims from the hands of the English. The English mentioned nothing of the rights of the native population.

As Gutierrez tells us, all of the European nations involved in colonizing the Americas "are proud of what they have accomplished in the Indies, and actually regard it as civilizing and evangelizing." But Gutierrez emphasizes that, "Spain alone had the courage to hold a comprehensive debate on the ethics and morality of the European presence in the Indies. In the other countries of the old world, the right to occupy these lands as regarded as too obvious to be questioned."