THE LIGHT AND DARKNESS OF THE TRANSFIGURATION
“The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom should I fear?” -Psalm 27:1
Dear friends in Christ,
Lent is a season of paradoxes: that is things that don’t seem to go together at first sight. For example, it is a season of fasting, but also of feasting on the word of God and the Eucharist. It is a season of generosity and giving away but also of receiving from the Lord and from one another. It is a season of stillness and prayer but also of the active works of charity.
Perhaps the more we consider the season’s simultaneous invitations and challenges, the more we will recognize that paradox is at the heart of our Catholic Faith, like the collision at the heart of Christ’s Cross. Our Faith readily embraces ‘both/ and’ rather than simply ‘either/or’. In that sense it is complex and contains many ‘tensions’ or dynamisms. That said, our Faith is also simple and about becoming simple-hearted and single-minded like children.
In last Sunday’s Gospel passage, our Lord answered Satan’s third temptation which was laced with references to Scripture, with a pithy but meaningful phrase: “It [that is, Scripture] also says…” as a reminder that the Scripture has tensions within it and needs to be read as a unity.
One such tension is expressed in the Biblical presentation of the Transfiguration of Jesus on the mountain in the presence of Peter, James and John. It is the tension between light that illuminates and darkness that obscures and clouds. After glimpsing brilliant glory on the face of Jesus transfigured before them, we are told that the apostles “becom[e] fully awake” only to see a cloud “cast a shadow over them,” enwrap them and cause them to fear. To add to the sense of mystery and awe, Matthew’s version of this passage references a “bright cloud [that] cast a shadow over them” (Mt 17:5). From all accounts, this experience was not a simple consolation as we are told that the apostles were frightened and stunned by what they experienced. Was it light? Was it dark? Yes.
Our Faith simultaneously has the power to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable” (Rabbi Abraham Heschel). It both reveals and obscures and leads us suddenly to know that He is God and that we are not, but also to wonder at how different His ways are from our ways. The experience of the Transfiguration was for the apostles a seminal moment of light and clarity as well as one that caused them to pause on the threshold of a staggering realization about the master they were
following and where He was leading them.
In other words, the Transfiguration is a mystery. For Catholics a mystery is not something that we cannot know anything about but rather something that we cannot know everything about. Perhaps in these days of Lent we can and should ponder all the mysteries of Our Lady’s Rosary to grow in our awareness of their simultaneous beauty and profundity.
This week we celebrate both St. Patrick and St. Joseph! These two Saints, just two days apart on the Liturgical Calendar, can help us take seriously the paradoxes which are at the heart of our Faith: the bold English apostle to Ireland and the chaste foster father of the Son of God. Like Moses and Elijah, both pray for us and point us to the Forty Hours Devotion this coming weekend which brings us before the glory of our Lord Jesus!
-Fr. Howe, Pastor