Transfiguration

6 August 2006
Transfiguration
Today we celebrate the feast of The Transfiguration. The Gospel reading is Mark's account (Mk 9.:2-10) that has a sense of stark, pared-down intensity. In Mark's Gospel the story is set between Jesus telling his listeners that they must take up their cross in order to follow him and a prediction of the Passion. This gives the account of Jesus' transfiguration a play of light and dark. It is no mere flash of glory, but transforming glory set amidst the dark reality of the price that must be paid for fidelity to one's beliefs.

For all of us who faithfully try to walk the path of the Gospel in our daily lives there will always be the "cost" of that fidelity - whether it is just the inconvenience of buying one product and not another for ethical reasons, to asserting oneself when it may be more socially acceptable not to, to being ridiculed or excluded because of a stance taken. Sometimes the "cost" can seem too much or just too constant.

The Transfiguration flashes out in a moment of glory the reality that is greater than all, the reality that lies hidden at the heart of the everyday. Some scholars may dismiss this event in Jesus' life as an invention of the early Church or may explain it as a foretaste of the Resurrection or Jesus' Divinity revealed. Perhaps it is all that, but it is too constant in the Gospels simply dismiss. If we take the humanness of Jesus as seriously as we take his Divinity we must look to the Transfiguration for what it says about him and what it says about us.

There is enough evidence of the Extraordinary in mystical experience to affirm this even as some privileged glimpse into the inner truth of Jesus. It is a human experience of a heart open in love to God that thereby allows God to reveal Divinity.
On one level it is a profound lesson on prayer. When we pray we come to know ourselves as we most truly are - as loved, graced, affirmed and missioned. We also come to know God. God who abides and whose glory fills us even when we would pass up the cup of suffering. And in that abiding God suffers with us and mysteriously, and against all human reason makes the suffering of love the point of transformation for all reality.

Moses and Elijah are there. Jesus' ancestors of faith. When we come to prayer, we never come alone. We are surrounded by all who have gone before us on this journey into God - the Communion of Saints. Peter, James and John were there. We are also accompanied by all creation, giving voice to its longing.

If Jesus' presence was transfigured, so is ours. The "dazzling whiteness" may be reserved for our ultimate transformation, but all relationships we have transfigure us whether it be for good or ill. Prayer, pouring one's life into the abiding presence of God will transfigure us in ways that may surprise and even shock and delight us.