Ordinary Transfiguration

Dear Friends,

Yesterday was one of my favorite feast days of the church year—the Feast of the Transfiguration. I love the story. So beautiful, so mysterious. So, as I sat outside to say my morning prayers and reflect a bit, I was sure, just sure, that something about the glory of the Transfiguration would hit me out of the blue—some powerful new insight into the divine, some amazing facet of God's beauty, would strike me—so that I'd have some grand theological gift to offer you today.

That didn't happen. It was a bit of a dreary morning and much warmer and muggier than the few before it. The readings for Morning Prayer lacked any major punch. It was all just "blah." Uninspiring. Disappointing. Not worthy of a feast.

I spent some time pretty irritated about all this. Aren't these great feasts of the church supposed to call us more deeply into the mystery of God? Isn't the Transfiguration meant to shed some light on us and our lives? Aren't we to be in some way transfigured by beholding the glory of it all?

Of course, I came to realize, the answer is yes. Jesus in blinding light, in his glory on the mountain, is meant to be a gift to us. We are to find ourselves caught up in the mystery of it all, in some ways transfigured by it. The trouble is, that doesn't happen on our schedule.

I thought of the actual witnesses of the event, Peter, James, and John. Without a doubt they were transfigured by it. But the work of transfiguration, which in Jesus flowed out of his very being and happened in an instant, for the rest of us takes a lifetime—including those disciples who witnessed the event. While all three went on to do extraordinary things for the sake of the gospel of Jesus, they all also walked through the sheer ordinariness of human life. They ate meals, they loved, they argued, they joked, they died. And, yes, they were transfigured. But it was the transfiguration of a lifetime, not of an instant. They were made new, not on the mountain, but in the daily failing, succeeding, sinning, repenting, and trying over and over again to find the face of the Transfigured One anew.

And if we are to be transfigured, it will be the work of a lifetime. What's more, it will be God's work in us, not our own striving. It will be in the very ordinariness of life. The days that are gloomy and cloudy and muggy, just as the ones that shine with beauty and wonder. It will be in the sinning and repenting, the succeeding and failing. But, more than any of that, it will be in the daily journey up the mountain again, hoping to catch sight of the face of the One who died and rose. The One who shines in uncreated glory. The One who will make us new, in his own time.

God bless,

Fr. Quinn+