by Kathy Stout, Ph.D.
This Lent, may you taste a portion of the transfiguration experienced by Wu and promised by Christ.
To strengthen us in our Lenten journey, the Church recalls the memory of Jesus’s Transfiguration on Mount Tabor in this Sunday’s reading. According to St. Maximus the Confessor, the Transfiguration reveals the future of human destiny as a direct participation in the divine light of God. The second reading of this Sunday reminds us that Christ will change our corruptible body “to conform with his glorified body” (Phil 3:21). If this promise of immortality and divinity by participation sounds difficult to believe, we may receive additional encouragement from the Chinese Catholic John C. H. Wu (1899-1986), who in the darkest hour of his life came to believe through the humble witness of the Little Flower, Thérèse of Lisieux.
Why was a statesman and legal scholar converted by a cloistered nun who died at the age of 24? Why did Wu spend his time translating the Psalms to classical Chinese during the Japanese attack of China? Why did he leave politics at the end of WWII to teach comparative mysticism in US colleges? Why did he never lose hope when his political dreams for China failed to materialize? The answer is this:
With Christ, There is peace in war The poor are rich Adversity is sweet The ignorant are wise And life is a prelude to Heaven
Adapted quote from John C. H. Wu, Beyond East and West (Notre Dame, IN: University
of Notre Dame Press, 2018), 307.
Dr. Kathy Stout is a facilitator of the USCCA Book Circle and an Incoming Associate Director of the USCCA Board. She received her Ph.D. in theology from the University of Dayton, and she has taught classes on Catholic theology and Chinese traditions at the University of Dayton and the University of Oklahoma. Her current research interest is the dialogue between Chinese Buddhism and Christian spirituality.
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