Today’s readings: Genesis 12, 1-4; 2 Timothy 1, 8-10; Matthew 17. 1-9.
There were times when, whichever way things developed in life, believing in a happy ending sufficed. The mainstream culture and perspective on life tended to consolidate faith, which was synonymous with assurance of things hoped for. Today, believing has become wearisome, and the burden of proof for faith claims weighs more and more on whoever dares to live coherently.
This is a challenge we all face now when we struggle to re-articulate our beliefs in an environment where the traditional way of expressing ourselves from a faith perspective seems to have lost its potency and meaning. We need a fresh way of understanding and delivering our belief in a mindset that is fragmented and overshadowed by contrasting and conflicting ways of looking at reality.
The eminent social theorist Zygmunt Bauman sees the identity of the Christian as changing from that of a pilgrim to that of a tourist. David Lodge, in his novel Paradise News, speaks of the tourist as a modern-day pilgrim seeking a lost authenticity in other times and places. In the novel, a disgruntled parish priest laments that for his parishioners he was a kind of travel agent, issuing tickets, insurance, brochures, guaranteeing them ultimate happiness.
What are we making of life and of faith today? The first two Sundays of Lent give us an inkling of the two sides of the coin of life. On one side, there is temptation, weaknesses, failures, and challenges. On the other, as in today’s Scriptures, there is promise of abundant blessings, redemption, transfiguration. Without becoming unrealistic, talk about life is in today’s Scriptures transferred to the realm of promise, belief, foretaste of things hoped for.
Unfortunately, for many, this side of life remains out of reach. It is true that we live in constant change, but one of the major challenges we all face in our personal lives is precisely how to manage change.
Gregory of Nyssa, a fourth century Father of the Church, in his book The Life of Moses, explains how we are moving either toward and into God’s goodness or in the opposite direction. Either we are being perfected in virtue, or we are suffering deterioration and regression.
Life choices are not simply between good and evil, doing this or that. They are issues of what we are becoming and where we are going. They are more about long-term decisions that concern direction, that impact more on our being rather than merely on our doing.
Abraham was asked to leave the known “for the land I will show you”. His decision to leave his country, family, and his father’s house was a faith decision, lacking clear logistics. It was a leap of faith, but not in the dark. Faith decisions are never blind. Faith presupposes love, and where love is lacking faith cannot subsist.
So his voyage was not towards the unknown. There was God who knew, and Abraham believed. Faith is letting God’s future in God’s hands. It must have been painful for him. Yet in his life, faith opened a new chapter of radical reliance on God alone. In our understanding of salvation there are always two basic principles to keep in mind: first, that only God can save; and second, that God’s salvation reaches us in the point of our human need.
Faith put Abraham on a journey that was never all dull and never all bright. It was the chiaroscuro contrast depicted in today’s gospel of the Transfiguration. Chiaroscuro stands for the contrasting effects of light and shade in works of art. Caravaggio used deep, dark backgrounds for many of his paintings and seemed to almost turn a spotlight on his figures.
It is the contrast between the high mountain and the level ground, between the bright cloud and the shadow that covered the disciples. We are never all the time in bright light. But we are never left all the time in the shadows. Today’s account of the Transfiguration is a reading back of the violence Jesus was to undergo from the resurrection perspective.
It is this perspective that changes everything, that turns a spotlight on life the moment we mostly need to gaze at the whole picture and not be disheartened by fragments of it.