Today’s readings: Genesis 12, 1-4; 2 Timothy 1, 8-10; Matthew 17, 1-9.
Our days are heavily weighed down with a collective feeling of anxiety that makes us aware of how fragile our world is.
The North African political unrest, which is becoming quite threatening on the economic, social and cultural fronts, coupled with the return of a nuclear threat in the aftermath of one of the most devastating natural calamities in our lifetime, make us think that even the world we live in needs its own rites of passage.
At times we desperately need to have a new source and ground for reassurance. What the world needs at such a point in time is surely not the cheap type of prophecy that speaks of some sort of imminent apocalypse. What we need is hope and whatever can keep that alive.
When heaven’s perspective is badly marketed, then we would do better without it. But when appropriately transmitted, it can provide what makes us better equipped to face what comes ahead. This seems to be the focal point of today’s Scripture readings.
As Richard Rohr writes in his book Wondrous Encounters, we need moments that give us energy and joy by connecting us with our ultimate source and ground, just as much as we need moments that give us limits and boundaries, and a proper humility, that we keep seeking the source and ground and not just our small self.
This is what today’s story of Abraham is about, when he was called to jump out of the ordinary towards something more meaningful and adventerous. This is also the story of the three disciples forming Jesus’ inner circle, when at a point of confusion they were given glimpses of their ‘source and ground’.
One thing about Christian life that is remarkable and mysterious at the same time is what in theology we call ‘the already and not yet’.
There is something that has already been achieved, it is a given, but which we grasp and apprehend slowly and gradually in life. It is never fully graspable.
Yet on this second Sunday of Lent the Scriptures give a foretaste of this ‘already’, which provokes our mind and heart to proceed, relying, in Paul’s words in today’s second reading, “on the power of God who has saved us and called us to be holy”.
What we read about the three disciples with Jesus on the mountain is very often what we go through in life when we experience the elusiveness of God and of all that makes life meaningful.
It has always been difficult, let alone in our times, to speak meaningfully of visions. That is why stories like the Transfiguration always end up with a summons to silence, to “tell no one”.
The public sphere where we live is too loud and noisy to see and grasp or in some way to listen to the glorious presence of God. God’s manifestation remains remarkably hidden to the human eye, and hence rejected.
It is no coincidence that on the mountain with Jesus the Gospel puts Moses and Elijah. They both experienced their road to transfiguration as one of loneliness and rejection.
Moses had been scorned by his people, when impatient with God they had turned to the golden calf. Elijah had been threatened by Jesebel, at the time of King Ahab when his warnings were not music to the king’s ears. In both cases they were men of vision and their seeing was utopic, though an interlude to what came later.
Transfiguration is only a glimpse of glory. It cannot endure in time. It has to be instantaneous, fragmentary, even though illuminating. But the mountain remains the place, the sacred space which in our life reaches beyond our failures and our incapacity to hold on to what keeps us going. Origen had been one of the first to use the mountain of Tabor as metaphor of the contemplative life.
Life is by nature transitory. So by nature it needs to have a beyond, a source and a ground. In the midst of our busy schedules, and with the anxiety that generates fear, we need heaven’s perspective to refresh our spirits and enlarge our vision.