
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; Which then is the true countenance of the boy in this gospel?&nbsp; Is it the one disfigured from his sickness, or the one healed by Jesus? Which is our true countenance, that of daily suffering, that disfigured by sin, or that healed by love and by the pardon of Jesus?</p>
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;To bring this into consciousness can become an insupportable burden. Without a hope for a transformation, a rebirth, we risk the fall into a profound anguish that can be manifested in many ways: frustration, fear, sickness, depression, flight from reality. The result is always incapacity, as with the boy in the Gospel, to hear and to speak, that is, to enter truly into relationship with oneself, with others, and with God.</p>
<p>&nbsp; &nbsp; This is the true malady that leads us to physical, psychological and spiritual death: not to be able any longer to believe, to hope in a life of loving relationships with oneself, with others, with God. The anguish of living, the weight of our sin and our suffering lead us to lose our faith in us, in others, and in God.&nbsp; Jesus encourages the father of the boy, as he says: “Everything is possible for the person who believes.” And more powerfully, the love of the Father transforms the disfigured countenance of Christ on the cross into that luminous countenance of the risen Christ.&nbsp; The message here for us is that we can believe that in our mortal life, an immortal life is already being prepared and like the father of the ailing boy who believes in his son’s healing, we can believe that the healing of that part of us most beautiful and vital is available with faith. &nbsp;</p>
<p>&nbsp; &nbsp; It is faith that opens this passage to us, this transformation. Without faith we can be overcome by the fear to live, a life without sense and without relationship. After Jesus has cast out the mute spirit from the boy, the boy seems like a corpse, and everyone believes him dead. But Jesus takes his hand, raises him up, and enables him to stand.&nbsp; Without faith in him who died and rose, we cannot be raised up from our condition of death. From the depths of our anguish and suffering, there is a hand that awaits to take us and raise us up.&nbsp; It is Christ who descended into the depths of our life to enable us to rise from our incapacity of relationship, and enables us to rise to new life.&nbsp; It is this faith that permits us to take up our daily cross and to transform our life. It is faith in Christ, raised up by the Father that saves us from the emptiness of our mortal life. This is the new life: believe to be loved, learn to love God, ourselves and others. &nbsp;</p>
<p>&nbsp; &nbsp; The countenance of the transfigured Christ is the countenance of the human person who speaks with God. Jesus is the image of the new human person no longer deaf and mute, but capable of hearing and speaking with God the Father. Life is relationship. And it is prayer that gives back to humans the capacity for a new relationship with God, with oneself, and with others. In this relationship every woman and every man discovers the true countenance of God, that of a Father who loves. &nbsp;</p>
<p>&nbsp; &nbsp; In this process, we each discover of own true countenance, that of the image and likeness of our Creator, and our brother Christ. To listen to the Word of God, to speak with God as with a Father, to celebrate the resurrection of His Son, transforms our life into prayer.&nbsp; This dialogue with the Father heals us and those whom we encounter in our new life. “I believe, help my unbelief.”&nbsp;</p>