Genesis 15:5-12,17-17; Philippians 3:17-4:1; Luke 9:28b-36
In today’s gospel we hear Luke’s account of what we call the Transfiguration of Jesus. Peter, James and John go up a mountain with Jesus to pray. These are the same three who follow Him up the Mount of Olives after the Last Supper and fall asleep during His agony. I wonder sometimes if maybe Peter, James and John suffered from chronic fatigue syndrome because, here in today’s gospel, they fall asleep as well. But when they awaken, they witness a spectacular event. They catch a glimpse of the true glorified reality of Jesus that they had never witnessed previously: Moses and the prophet Elijah talking with Jesus about His “exodus” which would take place in Jerusalem. The “exodus” that they are discussing, of course, is his passage through suffering and death into life. Peter then exclaims “Lord, it is good for us to be here!” and proposes building three tents. Then they are all enveloped in a cloud and they hear the voice of the invisible God proclaim, “This is my Son, my Chosen, listen to him.”In our lives, we too can have our “mountaintop experiences,” moments of a profound and overwhelming experience of God in our lives. Like Peter, James and John in today’s gospel, Jesus invites each of us to a “mountaintop” - times and places of quiet prayer and meditation and self-examination. And there, in the stillness of our quiet and solitude, we allow ourselves to be open to an intensely personal and spiritual experience - moments of grace, “brushes with the holy,” that we do not plan and cannot make happen – moments which are pure gifts of God. And like Peter, we too exclaim “It is good for us to be here” and want to pitch our tent, hold on to the moment, and desire the experience to last. However these intense and extraordinary experiences with the holy can’t last forever (at least in this life). We only get glimpses of God’s glory, and then we have to move on and go back down the mountain.
Yes, as wonderful and as uplifting as it can be when we are graced by the mountaintop experiences of faith, mountaintop moments do not last; we cannot stay on the mountain because the fact of the matter is, we live in the valleys. And we are called back to the valley, to where the need is, to where God’s love is needed. Because it is in the valleys that every night, there are people without a place to sleep. Every day there are children who are hungry, people who are lonely, people who are hurt and grieving and overcome with worry. No, we cannot stay on the mountain. But it is in the valley that a new transfiguration must occur.
There’s a story that once there was a little boy who decided he wanted to go find God. He knew it would probably be a long trip to find God, so he decided to pack a lunch, consisting of four packs of Twinkies and two cans of root beer. (This kid must have read the same diet book that I did!) He set out on his journey and went a few blocks until he came to a park. In this park on a bench, sat an old woman looking at the pigeons.
The little boy sat down beside her and watched the pigeons too. After a while he grew hungry and so he pulled out some of his Twinkies. As he ate, he noticed the woman watching him, so he offered her a Twinkie. She gratefully accepted it and smiled at him. There was something about her smile that fascinated the boy. He thought it was the most beautiful smile he had ever seen, and he wanted to see it again. So he brought out the cans of root beer, opened one and offered her the other one. Once again she smiled that beautiful smile.
For a long time the two sat on that park bench, eating Twinkies, drinking root beer, smiling at each other, and watching the pigeons. But neither said a word. Finally, the little boy realized that it was getting late and that it was time to go home. He started to leave, took a few steps, then turned back and gave the woman a big hug. Her smile beamed brighter than ever before.
When he arrived back home, his mother noticed that he was happy, yet somehow strangely quiet. "What did you do today?" she asked, trying to figure out what was going on. "Oh, I had lunch in the park with God," he said. Before his mother could reply he added, "You know she has the most beautiful smile I have ever seen."
Meanwhile the woman had left the park and returned to her home. Her son noticed something different about her. "What did you do today, Mom?" he asked. "Oh, I ate Twinkies and drank root beer in the park with God," she said. And before her son could say anything, she added. "You know he is a lot younger than I had imagined."
God appears in our lives in surprising places. It isn’t often a dramatic blinding revelation like on the mountaintop in today’s gospel. Sometimes it’s more a matter of removing our blinders and looking at what is right in front of us, or more precisely, WHO is in front of us. And we soon discover that God is right there, on the park bench, in the grocery store, on the street, in the house next door, in the classroom, in the living room.
Why is it that we find it so difficult to appreciate the holiness in the ordinary moments of our lives? When a child crawls into our lap needing reassurance; when the hand of the homeless reaches out for a sandwich; when our neighbor knocks on our door in need of a cup of coffee and someone who will listen, when someone with whom we have been disagreeing extends to us the olive branch of forgiveness and reconciliation; and when all there is left to do for someone who is sick is to pray for them.
Each of us is called to imitate the example of Mother Teresa who, while walking the dirty crowded streets of Calcutta looked into the face of a poor, homeless, sick man, and suddenly saw the face of that man transfigured into the image of Christ. And Mother Teresa, like St. Peter, said said, “It is good for me to be here” and took the man in her arms and cared for his needs. Or St. Maximilian Kolbe, a Catholic priest, who recognized in the face of a Jewish man condemned to die in a starvation bunker in Auschwitz the transfigured face of Christ, and proclaimed, “It is good for me to be here” and gave his life in exchange for his fellow prisoner. Or Dorothy Day, the founder of the Catholic Workers Movement, who committed her life to nonviolence, voluntary poverty, prayer and hospitality to the homeless, the exiled, the hungry, and the forsaken in whom she saw Christ, and proclaimed, “It is good for me to be here.”
And so, here we are in the midst of another Lent – a time that we are called to the mountaintop for prayer and reflection. An opportunity for us to set apart holy times and holy places in order to focus on God, and come to know God, and experience God in deeper, more profound ways. And it is a time to descend into the valley of our ordinary lives to demonstrate charity and service. A time to recognize our glorified Savior in the broken and needy, in those whom Jesus referred to as the “least ones”. And whether on the mountain or in the valley, it is a time of penance and fasting. A time to allow our very lives to be transfigured and for God to transform us from sin to redemption, from death to life, from being hopeless to being saved. It is a time that through the Eucharist, God transforms ordinary bread and wine into spiritual food that gives us strength to do God’s will and be God’s agents in the world. A time when God can transform our earthly, broken humanity into faithful members of the Body of Christ.
The season of Lent . . . It’s good for us to be here.
