When immigrants from Norway and Sweden came to the United States in the early years of the Twentieth Century, they brought with them a staple of the Scandinavian diet: yogurt. However, they brought it in the form of what they called “yogurt slips.” A yogurt slip was a small, clean piece of white flannel, dipped in yogurt, and set out to dry in the sun.
The cloth, a few inches square, dried like a stiff piece of cardboard, and then it was stored. When they settled in their new homes, the Norwegians and...
When immigrants from Norway and Sweden came to the United States in the early years of the Twentieth Century, they brought with them a staple of the Scandinavian diet: yogurt. However, they brought it in the form of what they called “yogurt slips.” A yogurt slip was a small, clean piece of white flannel, dipped in yogurt, and set out to dry in the sun.
The cloth, a few inches square, dried like a stiff piece of cardboard, and then it was stored. When they settled in their new homes, the Norwegians and Swedes would take the yogurt slips they carried with them to America and place them in a glass of warm milk. The culture on the piece of cloth would turn the milk into yogurt.
Family members in the old country would often enclose new yogurt slips in letters to their relatives in the new land.
Within each one of us, we possess the Spirit of God’s compassion and justice that enables us to “transfigure” our world. Too often, however, the temptation is to remain mere “slips” filled with potential but unable to bring the culture of God’s grace into the mix of work, play, and school.
On the mountain of the transfiguration, the disciples see in Jesus the very life and love of God that dwelled within Him – that same love of God lives in each one of us, as well, calling us beyond our own wants, needs, and interests.
Love that calls us beyond ourselves is called transforming. The challenge of the disciple’s call – our call – is to allow that love to transfigure, that is, to radically change our lives and our world, just as those yogurt slips would change the milk into yogurt. In the transforming love of Christ, the Messiah-Servant, we can change despair into hope, sadness into joy, anguish into healing, and estrangement into community. Today’s Gospel invites us to make the prayer of St. Francis our own:
LORD, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen.+
