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In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy
Ghost.
There are blessed or tragic moments when
we can see a person revealed to us in a light with a depth, with an
awesome beauty which we have never suspected before.
It happens when our eyes are open, at a
moment of purity of heart; because it is not only God Himself Whom the
pure in heart will see; it is also the divine image, the light shining
in the darkness of a human soul, of the human life that we can see at
moments when our heart becomes still, becomes transparent, becomes pure.
But there are also other moments when we
can see a person whom we thought we have always known, in a light that
is a revelation. It happens when someone is aglow with joy, with love,
with a sense of worship and adoration. It happens also when a person is
at the deepest point, the crucifying point of suffering, but when the
suffering remains pure, when no hatred, no resentment, no bitterness, no
evil is mixed to it, when pure suffering shines out, as it shone
invisibly to many from the crucified Christ.
This can help us to understand what the
Apostles saw when they were on the Mount of Transfiguration. They saw
Christ in glory at a moment when His total surrender to the will of the
Father, His final and ultimate acceptance of His own human destiny,
became revealed to them. Moses and Elijah, we are told, stood by Him;
the one representing the Law and the other one representing the
Prophets: both have proclaimed the time when salvation would come, when
the Man of suffering will take upon Himself all the burdens of the
world, when the Lamb of God slain before all ages would take upon
Himself all the tragedy of this world. It was a moment when in His
humanity Christ, in humble and triumphant surrender, gave Himself
ultimately to the Cross.
Last week we heard Him say that the Son
of God will be delivered in the hand of men, and they will crucify Him,
but on the third day He will rise. At that moment it became imminent, it
was a decisive point, and He shone with the glory of the perfect,
sacrificial, crucified love of the Holy Trinity, and the
responsive love of Jesus the Man, as Saint Paul calls Him. The Apostles
saw the shining, they saw the divine light streaming through the
transparent flesh of Christ, falling on all the things around Him,
touching rock and plant, and calling out of them a response of light.
They alone did not understand, because in all the created world man
alone has sinned and is blind. And yet, they were shown the mystery, and
yet, they entered into that cloud which is the divine glory, that filled
them with awe, with fear, but at the same time with such exulting joy
and wonder!
Moses had entered that cloud and was
allowed to speak to God as a friend speaks to a friend; he was allowed
to see God passing by him, still without a name, still without a face.
And now, they saw the face of God in the Incarnation. They saw His face
and they saw His glory shining out of tragedy. What they perceived was
the glory, what they perceived was the wonder of being there, in the
glory of God, in the presence of Christ revealed to them in glory. They
wanted to stay there forever, as we do at moments when something fills
us with adoration, with worship, with awe, with unutterable joy. But
Christ had told them that the time has come to go down into the valley,
to leave the Mount of Transfiguration because this was the beginning of
the way of the Cross, and He had to be merged into all that was tragic
in human life. He brought them down into the valley to be confronted
with the agony of the father whose child could not be cured, with the
inability of the disciples to do anything for this child, with the
expectation of the people who now could turn to no one but Him - that is
where He brought them.
And we are told that He had chosen these
three disciples because together, in their togetherness they held the
three great virtues that make us capable of sharing with God the mystery
of His incarnation, of His Divinity, of His crucifixion, to face His
descent into hell after His death and to receive the news of
His resurrection: the faith of Peter, the love of John, the
righteousness of James.
There are moments when we also see
something which is beyond us, and how much we wish we could stay, stay
forever in this blissful condition; and it is not only because we are
incapable of it that we are not allowed to stay in it, but because the
Lord says, You are now on the Mount of Transfiguration, you have seen
Christ ready to be crucified for the life of the world - go now together
with Him, go now in His name, go now, and bring people to Him that they
may live!
This is our vocation. May God give us
faith, and the purity of heart that allows us to see God in every
brother and sister of ours! Didn't one of the Desert Fathers say, ‘He
who has seen his brother has seen God’? - and serve one another with
love sacrificial, with the exulting joy of giving our lives to one
another as Christ gave His life for us. Amen. |
