transform: Transform Me:
Transform the world

**We pray for tweaking—and then we wonder why God doesn’t answer our prayers. The reason is simple: God is not in the business of tweaking. He’s in the business of transformation.**The other sad, tragic, miserable truth is that most of us have never prayed a prayer of transformation—not even once in our lives. Most of us have never come before God and prayed:Loving Father,
Here I am.
I trust that you have an incredible plan for me.
Transform me. Transform my life.
Everything is on the table.
Take what you want to take and give what you want to give.
Transform me into the person you created me to be,
so I can live the life you envision for me.
I hold nothing back;
I am 100 percent available.
How can I help?
AmenIf you want to see miracles, pray that prayer. If you want to see and experience miracles in your own life, pray a wholehearted prayer of transformation. That’s a prayer God will answer. God always answers a prayer of transformation. Never once in the history of the world has God not answered a sincere prayer of transformation.So what’s it going to be: More tweaking or are you ready for transformation?Excerpt taken from Chapter 22 of Matthew Kelly’s Rediscover Jesus

THOUGHTS

These companion essays are not simply extending the reflection.
They are meant to be what the early Church Fathers called mystagogical—they accompany people more deeply into the mystery they have already encountered in the liturgy.
The reflection opens the door.
The essay helps the reader remain in the room.
It isn't another homily. It's an invitation to sit a little longer with the Gospel and notice where God's grace may already be at work in your own life. It’s like a second doorway into the same encounter. The homily opens the Sunday Gospel; the essay gives you somewhere quieter to enter it again during the week.
____________________________________________________________________________When Mercy Becomes Bigger Than the Wound
There are wounds that change us. Some are visible for a while and then disappear, while others settle much deeper into our lives. A word spoken years ago can still return with surprising force. A betrayal can make trust feel dangerous. A rejection can quietly shape the way we see ourselves long after the person who rejected us has forgotten the moment. We may continue living our ordinary lives, yet some part of us remains guarded because we remember what happened.
That is part of what makes Peter's question to Jesus so human. “Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive?” Peter is looking for a boundary. He wants to know where generosity ends. Jesus responds by telling him a story about a servant who has been forgiven an enormous debt and then refuses to forgive someone else a much smaller one. The story reveals something important about forgiveness that we can easily miss: Jesus is not primarily giving us a rule for dealing with difficult people. He is inviting us to remember who we are in the presence of God.
We are people who have received mercy.
That sounds simple, but it can take a lifetime to understand. We often see ourselves through the lens of what we have done well and what we have done poorly. We remember our failures and quietly wonder whether God remembers them too. Yet the heart of the Gospel tells us that Christ does not reduce us to the worst things we have done. He sees the whole person. He sees the person we have been, the person we are now, and the person grace is still shaping us to become.
When we begin to experience ourselves that way, mercy becomes more than something we receive at a distance. It begins to change the way we see.
That does not make forgiveness easy. Nor does it make every relationship safe. There are times when love requires distance. There are times when trust must be rebuilt slowly, if it can be rebuilt at all. There are situations in which forgiveness and reconciliation cannot mean the same thing. Forgiving someone does not require us to deny what happened or to pretend that the consequences were insignificant. Truth still matters. Wisdom still matters. Boundaries can be an expression of love rather than its opposite.
What forgiveness does begin to change is our relationship with the wound itself.
There is a point at which something another person did can begin to occupy more space inside us than it deserves. The event may have lasted minutes, but we can carry it for years. The person who hurt us may have moved on, while we continue to replay the conversation, rehearse what we should have said, or imagine what we wish had happened instead. The past cannot be changed, yet it can continue to claim the present.
Christ does not want that for us.
He wants us to become free.
That freedom may come gradually. We may have to bring the same hurt to prayer many times. We may have to say to Christ, “I am still angry.” We may have to admit, “I want to forgive, but I don't know how.” We may even need to begin with a prayer that feels almost too small to count: “Lord, you know what happened. You know how deeply it hurt. Hold this for me until I am ready.”
There is grace in that prayer because it does not pretend. It tells the truth and places the truth in the hands of Christ.
Perhaps that is one of the great gifts of prayer: we do not have to carry everything alone.
Over time, Christ can begin to loosen the grip of resentment. The memory may not disappear, but it can become less powerful. We can remember without reliving. We can acknowledge what happened without allowing it to define who we are. We can maintain a boundary without needing hatred to sustain it. We can even begin to pray for the person who hurt us, not because what happened was acceptable, but because we no longer want that person's actions to determine the condition of our own heart.
That is an important distinction. Forgiveness is not saying, “It didn't matter.”
It is saying, “It will not own me.”
The wound remains part of our story, but it does not have to write the ending.
Christ does.
And perhaps that is why Jesus begins with mercy. Before we are people who forgive, we are people who have been forgiven. Before we extend mercy, we have already received it. Before we learn to look at another person's weakness with compassion, Christ has already looked upon our own weakness with compassion.
We are not standing outside the mercy of God trying to figure out how to get inside.
We are already there.
That realization can change the question. Instead of beginning with, “How many times must I forgive?” we may eventually find ourselves asking, “How is Christ inviting me to live in the mercy I have already received?”
That is a very different question.
It moves us away from keeping score and toward becoming free. It moves us away from measuring another person's debt and toward recognizing the abundance of grace that has already been poured into our own lives. And it allows forgiveness to become less about performing a difficult spiritual task and more about allowing Christ's own heart to become our way of seeing.
Mercy does not erase the truth.
It transforms what the truth is allowed to do to us.
And perhaps that is the freedom Jesus wants Peter to discover. He is not simply asking Peter to become better at forgiving difficult people. He is inviting Peter to see the world from inside the heart of God.
We are invited there too.
The mercy we have received can become larger than the wound we carry. Not because the wound was insignificant, but because Christ is greater.
And when that begins to happen, something beautiful takes place. We discover that forgiveness is no longer primarily about what we are giving to someone else. It is about allowing Christ to give freedom to us.
Mercy received slowly becomes mercy shared.
And the heart becomes free.
Amen________________________________________What Would Love Look Like Here?
There is a question that can quietly change the way we experience difficult relationships. It is not Who is right? or Who started it? It is not even What does this person deserve? The question is simply, What would love look like here?
That question sounds simple until we actually have to live it.
It is easy to talk about love when relationships are healthy and people are treating us well. Love feels natural when we feel appreciated, understood, and safe. It becomes much harder to recognize when someone has disappointed us, misunderstood us, betrayed our trust, or caused us pain. Yet that is precisely where Jesus brings us in today's Gospel.
Jesus does not pretend that people will never hurt one another. He gives his disciples a way of responding when relationships become difficult, beginning with a private conversation that preserves the dignity of the person who has caused the hurt while still taking the hurt seriously. That balance matters because Christian love is not denial. Love does not require us to pretend that harmful behavior is acceptable, and it does not ask us to remain in situations that continually damage us. It does not demand reconciliation where reconciliation would be unsafe or impossible.
Love and truth belong together.
What Jesus offers is something deeper than a technique for resolving conflict. He offers us a glimpse into his own heart. Christ does not reduce people to their worst moments. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus repeatedly sees beyond the label that others have placed upon someone. He sees Zacchaeus beneath his reputation, Peter beyond his failure, the woman whose shame has become public, and the sick, the poor, the outsider, and the sinner not simply as problems to be solved, but as persons to be loved.
Christ sees the whole person.
That may be one of the hardest things he asks us to learn.
When someone hurts us, the hurt can become the lens through which we see them. The person becomes the one who betrayed me, the one who embarrassed me, or the one who abandoned me. The event may be real, but gradually the event becomes the entire person in our imagination.
Love does something different. Love does not erase the wound. It refuses to let the wound become the whole story.
That distinction can be freeing. We may never receive the apology we hoped for. We may never understand why someone behaved as they did. A relationship may never return to what it once was. Sometimes the most loving thing we can do is establish a boundary and allow another person to walk a different path. Even then, Christ can continue to work within our hearts.
Saint Paul writes, "Owe nothing to anyone, except to love one another." Those words can sound demanding until we realize what Paul is really doing. He is shifting our attention away from keeping score. We naturally remember what others owe us. They owe us an apology, an explanation, respect, or perhaps another chance. Sometimes they may indeed owe us those things. But Paul asks us to consider another question: What do we owe them?
Love.
Not because they have earned it, but because Christ has loved us first.
That changes the center of the conversation. We stop asking only what the other person should do and begin asking what Christ is forming within us. Can I speak the truth without becoming cruel? Can I establish a boundary without becoming bitter? Can I forgive without pretending the wound did not happen? Can I release someone into God's hands even when I cannot repair what happened? Can I continue to see this person as someone loved by God, even when I need distance from them?
These questions do not have simple answers. They are part of the lifelong formation of the heart because relationships continually give us opportunities to discover whether Christ's love is becoming more deeply rooted within us.
This may be why Jesus promises to be present wherever two or three are gathered in his name. His presence is not limited to perfect relationships or perfectly reconciled communities. He is present among people who are still learning how to love one another. He is present when we are trying to speak honestly without wounding, when we are trying to listen without defending ourselves, and when we are trying to forgive without denying what happened.
He is present even when reconciliation is not possible.
The promise is not that every relationship will be healed exactly as we would like. The promise is that we never have to enter the difficult places of relationship without Christ.
That changes the question.
Perhaps Christian love is not primarily about having warm feelings toward everyone. Sometimes love is courage. Sometimes it is honesty. Sometimes it is patience. Sometimes it is letting go. Sometimes it is refusing to speak about someone in a way that diminishes them. Sometimes it is praying for someone we cannot bear to be around. And sometimes love is simply allowing Christ to hold a relationship because we cannot.
We do not have to repair every relationship ourselves. We do not have to make everyone understand us. We do not have to win every argument. We do not even have to make every relationship whole again. We can remain faithful to love.
That may be the deeper invitation hidden within today's Gospel. When a relationship becomes difficult, we can bring it into the presence of Christ. When the hurt rises again, we can bring it to him. When we do not know what to say, we can bring our uncertainty to him. When we cannot change another person, we can release that person into his hands.
Then we can ask the question that may slowly become a habit of the heart:
What would love look like here?
The answer will not always be the same. Sometimes it may mean speaking. Sometimes listening. Sometimes forgiving. Sometimes creating distance. Sometimes simply letting go. But if we keep asking the question in the presence of Christ, something within us begins to change.
We become less concerned with winning and more concerned with loving. We become less concerned with keeping score and more concerned with remaining free. We become less concerned with proving ourselves right and more willing to make room for grace.
The relationship may or may not change.
But we do.
And perhaps that is where the deepest healing begins. Not necessarily with the restoration of a relationship, but with the restoration of something within our own hearts. We become a little less imprisoned by resentment and a little more free to love. We become a little less focused on what another person owes us and a little more aware of what Christ is asking us to become.
Our hearts begin to look a little more like his.
And whenever that happens, love has already begun to heal something.________________________________________When Christ Changes the Way We See
We spend much of our lives learning how to measure things. From an early age, we begin to absorb ideas about what makes a person successful, secure, valuable, or worthy of love. Some of those lessons are helpful. Others become so deeply woven into our thinking that we no longer recognize them as lessons at all. They simply become the way we see the world.
Perhaps that is why Peter's response to Jesus in today's Gospel feels so familiar.
Only moments earlier, Peter had recognized Jesus as "the Christ, the Son of the living God." He had made a profound confession of faith. Yet when Jesus begins speaking about suffering and death, Peter immediately resists. He loves Jesus, and precisely because he loves him, he cannot imagine that the Messiah should walk toward suffering rather than away from it.
Peter's problem is not a lack of love.
His problem is that he is still seeing through a human understanding of what victory should look like.
Jesus tells him, "You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do."
There is something deeply compassionate in that correction. Jesus does not reject Peter because he does not yet understand. He knows that Peter is still learning. The same disciple who will eventually become a pillar of the early Church is, at this moment, still trying to fit Jesus into a picture he already understands.
Perhaps we do something similar.
We can sincerely love Christ and still see our lives through the measures we have absorbed from the world around us. We may believe that our worth depends upon what we accomplish. We may assume that being strong means never needing anyone. We may think that protecting ourselves is always wiser than risking vulnerability. We may measure success by comfort, possessions, recognition, or control.
None of those things necessarily makes us bad people.
But they can quietly become the lens through which we see everything.
Saint Paul offers another possibility: "Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind."
Transformation begins, in part, with learning to see differently.
This does not mean becoming detached from the real world. It means allowing Christ to become the center from which we understand that world. The circumstances may not change immediately. The difficult person may remain difficult. The loss may still hurt. The uncertainty may still be there.
But something within us begins to change.
We begin to see the person who hurt us as someone who is also carrying wounds. We begin to see forgiveness not as pretending that nothing happened, but as refusing to let resentment have the final word. We begin to see our own failures with honesty without allowing them to become our identity. We begin to discover that receiving love can sometimes be as courageous as giving it.
This is the renewal Paul describes.
It is not merely a change of opinion.
It is a gradual tra

Trust in the slow work of God

From Teilhard de Chardin, SJ
Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something
unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through
some stages of instability -
and that it may take a very long time .
... Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.

More Information

If you would like to be kept up-to-date on TRANSFORM, join our email family.