Quick Thoughts on the Transfiguration

In my writing I've reflected upon Jesus' transfiguration a fair amount. Our Lord is an infinite Person and so the events of His earthly life are an inexhaustible source of revelation. This was brought home to me again this morning as I prayed through Matthew's account (17:1-8) of the Transfiguration. A quick list of what jumped out at me today:

"Jesus took with him Peter and James and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain apart. And he was transfigured before them" (1-2)  Even in our intimacy with the Lord, we always come to Him as members of His Church. (Heb 12:1, 22-24).

"...a bright cloud cast a shadow over them, then from the cloud came a voice that said, "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him" (5).  The cloud, or God's presence, emits light; but it is divine light. It blocks out the natural light of the sun, the "light," or so called "wisdom of the world," to impart true wisdom. This is also an image of what John of the Cross calls the dark night of the senses, where God deprives the soul of the natural joys it used to take in created things to drive it toward Him.

"He was transfigured before them; his face shone like the sun and his clothes became white as light. And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them, conversing with him" (2-3).  It is in Christ's light, that the apostles are able to see Moses and Elijah and hear them conversing with Jesus. It is only in Jesus' light that they were able to fully understand the Law and the Prophets (Lk 24:44-45).

So there you are - after 34 years of reading and reflecting upon this event, I am reminded of how much more there is yet to see.

Jesus' Transfiguration - 4 Steps to Hearing God's Voice

You recall Jesus' transfiguration: While Jesus was at prayer on a mountaintop, Peter, James, and John witnessed Him become “more brilliant than the sun.” Moses and Elijah appeared to Jesus, and the disciples heard them discussing his “exodus.” The scene culminated with a cloud (the Shekinah, or cloud of God’s glory) overshadowing the mountain as God the Father proclaimed, “This is my beloved Son, listen to him” (Lk 9:28-35).  We all want to hear God's voice the way Peter, James, and John did; and the narrative of Jesus' Transfiguration gives us a blueprint for doing that - a practice known as lectio divina, "divine reading."

Step 1 - Get yourself "into position" to hear God
We have it easy compared to the apostles.  They had to climb a mountain before they experienced the Transfiguration.  For most of us it's just a matter of finding a quiet place in the house or stepping out onto the porch.  (Alright, depending on your family, a small hike might be in order.) Consciously place yourself in God's presence by making the Sign of the Cross.  Pray the Our Father to ask God for the daily bread of his word.  You need his word so that his Kingdom may more fully come and his will be more fully done in your life.  This bread, like the Eucharist, strengthens us to fight temptation and the evil one (Eph 6:17; Mt 4:3-11). We need the Lord to open the ears of our hearts.

Step 2 - Read his word
Like Jesus, allow the Father to speak to you through Moses (representing the books of the Law) and Elijah (the prophets).  Listen to Jesus himself in the gospels, and the apostles in the epistles.  Accept what you read in a spirit of humility, not intellectual pride or skepticism. By all means, use the study notes in your Bible's margin and commentaries to better understand the text; but never allow your heart to question its truthfulness. Jesus is our model.  As Dr. Scott Hahn pointed out, "Jesus embodies the response of personal humility that the form of the written Word requires. Hearing the Scriptures as the voice of the Father, he allowed himself to be formed by it message in all aspects of his human life" (Consuming the Word, p.99).

Step 3 - Invite the Spirit to "overshadow" you as you ponder what you have read
This is meditation, Christian meditation.  No need to cross your legs or chant "ohm" (although softly reciting ten Hail Marys - a decade of the Rosary - is highly encouraged). Meditation simply means to think things over deeply and prayerfully.  Try to get inside the text by asking questions.  Interact with it the way Jesus interacted with Moses and Elijah.  For example, if you were meditating on the Transfiguration, try putting yourself in St. James' sandals: What would have gone through your head when you saw Jesus' face begin emitting light right there in front of you?  When you heard the Father say, "Listen to him," would your mind have turned to the parts of his teaching you had conveniently ignored? Now ask yourself, "What parts of Jesus' teaching have I been ignoring?"  If you take seriously what you've read, how should your life change?  Can you think of something concrete that you can begin doing today?

Step 4 - "Listen to him" - resolve to live what you have heard
Voice your thoughts and conclusions to the Lord.  Ask him for the grace to live out whatever resolutions you have made.  Allow Jesus to accompany you "down the mountain," as you reenter the business of life.

And there you go - 4 steps to hearing God's voice!  Please let me know how it goes.
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P.S.,  If you enjoyed this post, you might also like the soon-to-be-released book, Through,With, and In Him: The Prayer Life of Jesus and How to Make It Our Own.

Transfiguration - Just a Stretch of the Legs

Something new regarding Jesus' Transfiguration jumped out at me while praying the Rosary. You remember the event: While Jesus was at prayer on a mountaintop, Peter, James, and John witnessed Him become “more brilliant than the sun.” Moses and Elijah appeared to Jesus, and the disciples could hear them discussing His “exodus.” The scene culminated with a cloud overshadowing the mountain (as the Shekinah, or cloud of God’s glory, had when Moses received the Law on Mount Sinai) and God the Father proclaiming, “This is My Beloved Son, listen to Him.”

The new data that registered with me is actually preliminary to everything I just recounted: before the Apostles witnessed this, they had climbed a mountain! Traditionally Mt. Tabor, with an elevation of 1929 feet, has been identified as the spot. (Imagine the St. Louis Arch multiplied by three).  Those boys had to exert themselves a bit to “get into position” for the Transfiguration.

And that got me thinking about the energy we have to exert in our own lives. To make progress as Christians we have to work. God may have given us a new nature, but that doesn’t mean its “second nature” yet. (That sentence is crying out to become a bumper sticker.)  Seriously though, think about your day so far. How many words or actions do you regret?  I can think of a few. There’s no reason to become disheartened though. When the Apostles were climbing that mountain they had to exert themselves…but Jesus was right there alongside them. The Lord was exerting Himself, as they were exerting themselves. And the same is true for us. We have to do the work, we have to make an honest, concentrated effort; but Jesus is right there alongside us — and thanks to His resurrection and ascension, in us – working to get us to that next level. Without Him its impossible; but with Him, there are no limits.

This is what the Church is talking about when it says that final salvation is the result of Faith and Works. We become the kind of creatures that can exist in Heaven because we’ve actively cooperated with God’s activity. Maybe it’s a bit confusing to talk about Faith and Works as two separate activities; it’s really one fluid movement, beginning in God and returning to Him, through us. Listen to the Apostle Paul: “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:12-13). It’s 100% God and, because of grace and the gift of the Holy Spirit, 100% us too!  We’re joined to Jesus, as He loves and gives Himself to the Father, through us!  We’re inserted into the very Life of the Trinity.

And like the Apostles, embracing Jesus’ desire to get us to the “top of the mountain,” leads to incredible realities. Like them, we get to pray alongside Jesus. And because of that, our prayer will change, will become more mature, will focus upon God’s will instead of ours. We get to hear Moses (the Law) and Elijah (the Prophets) of the Old Covenant speaking to us as we study Scripture. Divine Light enables us to see things about ourselves and our situation that would have been impossible before.

And this pattern will be repeated again and again in our lives, as Jesus challenges us to follow Him from one peak to the next, until we’re as high as we can possibly go –”Mount Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem” (Hebrews 12:22).

Jesus' Transfiguration - What I Had Missed

It's no secret that I am transfixed by Jesus' Transfiguration.  Even after years of meditating on it, I keep "seeing" new things in this Mystery.  Some years ago a friend pointed out how the Transfiguration demonstrated visually what we are told so many other places in the New Testament:  Jesus is the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets.

As [Jesus] was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning.  Two men, Moses [representing the Law] and Elijah [representing the Prophets], appeared in glorious splendor, talking with Jesus. They spoke about his departure, which he was about to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem ... a cloud appeared and covered them, and [Peter, James, and John] were afraid as they entered the cloud. A voice came from the cloud, saying, “This is my Son, whom I have chosen; listen to him.”  When the voice had spoken, they found that Jesus was alone. (Lk.9:29-36)

My friend zeroed in on the way Jesus now stood there alone, embodying in His Life and Person all that Moses and Elijah had revealed in part.  My friend was absolutely right.  But there's another side of the equation.

The voice, a manifestation of God the Father, and the cloud, a visual representation of the Holy Spirit, also give way to Jesus standing alone before the apostles.  The thirty-something year old man standing before them speaks the words of the Father, and He is the conduit through which the Holy Spirit is poured out upon the world!  "[Jesus] is the image of the invisible God ... in him all the fulness of God was pleased to dwell" (Col.1:15,19). The Transfiguration says all of this.  Turning to the Epistle to the Hebrews, the first verses read like a theological commentary on this event:

In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. (Heb.1:1-3)

And so long as I'm quoting those verses from Hebrews, let me quote St. John of the Cross:

In giving us his Son, his only Word (for he possesses no other), he spoke everything to us at one in this sole Word - and he has no more to say ... because what was spoken before to the prophets in parts, he has now spoken all at once by giving us the All Who is His Son.  (CCC 65)

Just a Stretch of the Legs

Praying the Rosary on the way into work, something new caught my attention about Jesus' Transfiguration. You probably remember the event: While Jesus was at prayer on a mountaintop, Peter, James, and John witnessed Jesus become "more brilliant than the sun." Moses and Elijah appeared to Jesus, and the disciples could hear them discussing His "exodus." The scene culminated with a cloud overshadowing the mountain (as the Shekinah, or cloud of God's glory, had when Moses received the Law on Mount Sinai) and God the Father proclaiming, "This is My Beloved Son, listen to Him."

The new data that registered with me is actually preliminary to everything I just recounted: before the Apostles witnessed this, they had climbed a mountain! Traditionally, Mt. Tabor, pictured here, has been identified as the spot. (That little white dot at the top is a church, if that gives a better idea of the size.) I'm thinking that they had to exert themselves a bit to "get into position" for the Transfiguration.

And that got me thinking some about the energy we have to exert in our own lives. To make progress as Christians we have to work. God may have given us a new nature, but that doesn't mean its "second nature" yet.

Seriously though, think about your day so far. How many things can you think of that make you say, "Lord, I shouldn't have said that," or "I wish I'd done that?" I can sure think of a few. There's no reason to get disheartened though. When the Apostles were climbing that mountain they had to exert themselves...but Jesus was right there alongside them. The Lord was exerting Himself, as they were exerting themselves. And the same is true for us. We have to do the work, we have to make an honest, concentrated effort; but Jesus is right there alongside us - and thanks to His resurrection and ascension, in us - working to get us to that next level. Without Him its impossible; but with Him, there are no limits.

This is what the Church is talking about when it says that final salvation is the result of Faith and Works. We become the kind of creatures that can exist in Heaven because we've actively cooperated with God's activity within and through us. Maybe it's not appropriate to talk about Faith and Works as two separate activities; it's really one fluid movement, beginning in God. I may start using the term "faithwork" to describe it. Check out how the Apostle Paul spoke of it: "...work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:12-13). It's 100% God and, because of Grace and the Gift of the Holy Spirit, 100% us too! 

And like the Apostles, embracing Jesus' desire to get us to the "top of the mountain," leads to incredible realities. Like them, we get to pray alongside Jesus. And because of that, our prayer will change, will become more mature, will focus upon God's will instead of ours. We get to hear Moses (the Law) and Elijah (the Prophets) of the Old Covenant speaking to us as we study Scripture. Divine Light enables us to see things about ourselves and our situation that would have been impossible before.

And this pattern will be repeated again and again in our lives, as Jesus challenges us to follow Him from one peak to the next - until we're as high as we can possibly go. (They don't call it "Mount Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem" for nothing [Hebrews 12:22].)