Mark 9:2-10
I WHISPERED, “GOD, SPEAK TO ME” AND A ROBIN SANG. BUT I DID NOT HEAR. I YELLED, “GOD, SPEAK TO ME!” AND THE THUNDER ROLLED ACROSS THE SKY. BUT I DID NOT LISTEN. I LOOKED AROUND AND SAID, “GOD, LET ME SEE YOU!” AND A STAR SHONE BRIGHTLY, BUT I DID NOT NOTICE. I SHOUTED, “GOD, SHOW ME A MIRACLE!” AND A BABY WAS BORN, BUT I DID NOT KNOW. SO I CRIED OUT IN DESPAIR, “TOUCH ME GOD, AND LET ME KNOW YOU ARE HERE.” WHEREUPON GOD REACHED DOWN AND TOUCHED ME, BUT I BRUSHED THE BUTTERFLY OFF MY SHOULDER AND WALKED AWAY. (Marylin Macdonald)
Today we hear the story of the transfiguration of the Lord as told by Mark. The three apostles who witness this are suddenly flooded with a revelation, something that was never apparent when they were walking around Palestine with Jesus. In a flash of insight, they are shown Jesus as he really is, God become man. They see that Moses and Elijah still live, still converse with God as friends speak to each other; the apostles realize that life goes on after death. And they hear the voice of God, and it will be the last time the Father communicates with people directly. And the voice tells them that henceforth they are to listen to Jesus, the beloved son.
The apostles had a mystical experience. I think that’s why we have three different descriptions in the three synoptic gospels. You can’t pin down a mystical experience, you can’t tell other people what went on, really. These experiences aren’t just in the brain. Peter puts it well. “Rabbi, it is good that we are here”. Mystical experiences are gifts in a sense. “Let us make three tents” he goes on to say. Mystical experiences are such that you want them to last, you don’t want to leave them. And “he hardly knew what to say, they were so terrified”. Mystical experiences are always a little frightening, because you go out of yourself, you feel out of control.
I think the little poem I read at the beginning tells us that God speaks to us all the time, and we just aren’t tuned in. We fail to recognize God’s voice because of the noise of this world and our distractions as we go about our daily lives. This is a problem with prayer, which is meant to be a two-way communication. Sure, it’s a good thing to pray the rosary, to pray during Mass, to pray from a prayer book. But what we don’t do is listen;. We don’t sit in silence and let God speak to us. When you read about the great saints, the emphasis is usually on their great deeds, or their martyrdom, or their missionary work. You don’t hear about their prayer life so much. Saint Theresa of Avila wrote extensively on her own interior life, partly so that others could follow her into deeper communion with God. In her book, “The Interior Castle”, she talks about how to reach that state in which we are able to hear God speak to us. I’m not there yet, but I try to be sensitive to all the ways He speaks to me. ON the other hand, I believe all of us have had some sort of mystical experience, or mountaintop event, when God seems to be taking us out of our ordinary lives for a few minutes and tries to get our attention.
Last summer Joan and I had the good fortune to take a cruise from Seattle to Alaska. That was a great vacation. But there was a moment there when we took an excursion out of Juneau to the Mindelheim glacier. IT’s a huge mass of ice sitting between two peaks and feeding into a lake below. They say it will be gone in 30 to 50 years if the climate keeps changing. But when I first saw it, I sensed I was in another world; I felt very insignificant in front of this natural phenomenon that has been there waxing and waning since long before the time of Christ. I didn’t want the moment to end, but it did.
Thomas Merton, the monk who wrote “Seven Story Mountain” had a mystical experience. He describes how he was walking in the shopping district of Louisville after he had come out of his hermitage. As he describes it, “I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers...It is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race...[I]if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.”
The transfiguration of Jesus means many things. But three stand out. God speaks to us if we only listen. If we could only see people as they really are, we couldn’t take our eyes off of their beauty and holiness. And if we could listen with the ears of our souls, we too would hear the words, “This is my beloved”. During this Lent make time to listen.
