Gazing on the Transfigured One
Meeting Christ in His Mysteries by Gregory Collins, OSB is a book I have already recommended highly. Part Two is entitled: “Meditating on the Mysteries in the Liturgical Year” and provides rich reflections for the liturgical seasons.
The Feast of the Transfiguration receives much more liturgical and theological attention in the Christian East than it does in the Roman tradition. But, thankfully, the Gospel of the Second Sunday of Lent does bring our prayerful gaze upon this central mystery of Christ … and of his followers.
Here is what Collins says about this further dimension of the Mystery:
The full vision of this light will be seen in all its splendor only in the eschaton, at the end, when Christ shall come again in glory. Yet the light of grace and that of glory are essentially the same. They are simply different modes of the overflowing radiance of presence which God confers on those who gaze on him in love.
A further consequence of this vision is its slow transformation of the self. Contemplative prayer and the dark enlightenment of faith leads to a new understanding of the self, an experience that is by turns consoling and desolating. God’s purifying light is deeply disillusioning in the sense that it gradually purges away all false ideas and images.
Gradually, God’s purifying light burns away the webs we project and weave around ourselves. It drives out foolish fantasies from the mind, replacing the spiritual dainties we confect to gorge our egoism, with the hard and dry but more substantial bread of reality.
Here is Beato Angelico’s vision:
That sounds like a dangerously attractive book. I’m not sure that such potent reading is compatible with one’s everyday routine.
The painting, on the other hand, is pleasantly descriptive without being challenging, to my eyes at least.
Claire,
where else do we confect “false ideas and images” and “foolish fantasies” if not in our “everyday routine?”
Precisely. That book is way too trenchant for comfort.
“And looking up they saw only Jesus.”
Claire says: “That book is way too trenchant for comfort.”
Other candidates:
Newman’s “Sermons,” Teresa’s “Interior Castle;” Augustine’s “Confessions,” Mark’s “Gospel” …
Touché.
Je vous en prie.
Very good; thank you Fr Imbelli.
Last Sunday during the Spanish mass our priest pointed out that on Mt. Tabor, while Peter, overwhelmed by the beauty/glory of the transfiguration (as he said; “estaba muy resplandeciente”), as he could not really think what to say, went on about setting up three temples, to Jesus, Moses, and Elijah, the voice from the cloud – the Holy Spirit – boomed in to remind Peter, James and John (and us) to collect our thoughts and remember; “This is my beloved Son – Listen to him.”
Fr. Mario explained how at that moment, Peter and the rest – while enamored of the resplendence of the transfiguration – did not know what lay in store by way of sacrifice – Christ’s passion and the cross. Accordingly, we should be remember the cross and be willing to make the sacrifice in order to obtain the vision of God’s glory; that there is no glory without the sacrifice, that there is more to it than gazing at the pretty stained glass windows.
Wow – I liked his take on this, and I like the eastern view you have presented; very powerful. Thanks again Fr.
By way of balance, Fr. Mario did point out that art and music are good and helpful (and fun), but that we more, that we need to take the bigger view.
Something like the difference between being serious and being grim and/or melancholy -
Ken, I liked John Dear’s book on the Transfiguration, a meditation that touches upon related questions such as why one cannot just “stay on the mountain”.