THOUGHTS OF A MONK

Transfiguration

1Kg 19:9-14; 2Pt 1:-10-18; Mt 17:1-8

In the 1890s a young German composer wrote a Tone Poem based on an unfinished poem by Ritter. The poem created a scene that was typical of the 19th century Romantic ethos. A sick man lies on a mattress in a poor room lit by a flickering candle burned down almost to a stump. The man is desperately fighting sleep, fighting death; all is silence save the ticking of a clock on the wall. Occasionally a plaintive smile crosses his face as he dreams of his childhood days. But death keeps plucking at him even though he fights against it. In the delirium of fever he sees his life unrolled before him: childhood innocence, the testing of youth, man in battle for the greatest prize, to realize a high ideal and make it higher by his act. All his life he seeks it but never wholly achieves it. Then comes death, but in its wake, from on high, the sounds of triumph, what here on earth he sought in vain, from heaven greets him: deliverance, transfiguration.  Richard Strauss was in his 20s when he wrote his Tone Poem Death and Transfiguration. One might wonder why such a theme for such a young man.

And yet Jesus was also a young man when his transfiguration took place, as his journey to his passion and death on the cross, neared its end. We are all on that same journey, but we are not all in the same place on that journey. However, what happened to the three apostles, Peter, James and John, on the mountain with Jesus was like that last moment in Strauss’ Tone Poem: their own transfiguration. It was a moment when their eyes were opened to see beyond the surface reality not only of who Jesus was, but also to experience the presence of God and to see what that can mean in our lives.  They saw the same man, the same mountain, the same surroundings they had been living with, but they saw it all anew. Jesus was no longer just their rabbi; this was God’s beloved son.

Seeing the same things we always see, but seeing them in a deeper way, is the fruit of transfiguration.  In the 17th century, a Carmelite monk expressed in conversations and letters his understanding of The Presence of God. He gave reflections from his own experience in response to requests from visitors and correspondents. For Brother Lawrence, no aspect of life was too mundane to be understood as anything less than a gift from God and all activities were to be done to the glory of God: eating and drinking, working and resting, playing and praying. He worked in the monastic kitchen and even there, preparing even the simplest meal, was done to God’s glory. Do we have the eyes to see in such activities the glory of God?  If not, we might learn from some of the greatest painters of all time what to look for, since simple “still life” paintings of fruit and other ordinary objects have become great masterpieces of art. Why? Because they show us how much more is there than we might otherwise realize.

The three apostles were thrown off guard by a wondrous vision, a vision that was actually a prelude to Jesus’ death. If you notice the scroll in St Silouan’s hand in the icon on the upper wall you will see the text: “keep your mind in hell and despair not.” He is saying, live every day as if it is your last and you will see things you never thought possible to see. My 91-year-old mother is moving out here from southern California. She tells me that every morning when she wakes up she thinks to herself, wow; I have another day to live! She wants to come back east, in part, to experience once more the four seasons, something she experienced in Nebraska as she was growing up. We live them now and may not appreciate them in the same way as she will.

Likewise, as we bless the fruit today we are reminded that these fruits, and indeed all of creation, are God’s gift. Too often we can take it all for granted. We get into a routine and miss the wonder of all that is around us. The plum is just a plum, bread is just bread and human being is just a human being. As Fr. Alexander Schmemann pointed out in a sermon on Transfiguration, “we know their weight, their appearance, their activities, we know everything about them, but we no longer know them, because we do not see the light that shines through them. The eternal task of faith and of the Church is to overcome this sinful, monotonous habituation; to enable us to see once again what we have forgotten how to see; to feel what we no longer feel; to experience what we are no longer capable of experiencing.” This is Transfiguration in our lives, it Is part of what Jesus was trying to get the apostles to see as well. We don’t have to wait until the end, as in Ritter’s poem, to be delivered from seeing only on the surface, the possibility of being transfigured is always present.

Christ is in our midst.