Experiences of God
“Tell no one of the vision until after the Son of Man has
been raised from the dead.”
Really? Peter, James and John had just seen Jesus
transfigured, talking with Elijah and Moses, and then heard the divine voice
from the cloud of God’s glory remind them of what people had heard when John
baptized him: “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased.
Listen to him!” But, really? They are not to tell anyone of their
extraordinary experience of God and God’s glory that day on the mountaintop?
Then again, how does one even begin to describe an
experience of God? It is nearly impossible to describe such unutterable
experiences in ways that can convey the depth and power one feels in the
presence of God’s glory. Sometimes the best we can do is to join with those who
have had such experiences and follow them on their journey to the mountaintops
and the blazing brightness of God’s glory.
Just follow the three Master Escape Artists at the heart of
this Sunday’s gospel.[i]
Elijah, Moses and Jesus. For Elijah it began as he stood in a mountain crevasse.
God promised to pass by: there was wind, but God was not in the wind; an
earthquake, but God was not in the earthquake; fire, but God was not in the
fire. Then he heard a still small voice, a quiet whisper, a low murmur, asking,
“Why are you here, Elijah?” Elijah replied, “I have been zealous for
the Lord, and now they want to take my life.” Then he took off on a journey
with God that resulted in his escape from this world in a blazing chariot of
fire!
Moses went up the mountain. The glory of the Lord settled on
Mount Sinai. The cloud covered it for six days; on the seventh day he called to
Moses out of the cloud. Now the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a
devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the sight of the people of Israel.
From there Moses led the people on a journey with God for forty years, took
them to where the edge of the land of promise, and then Moses departed,
escaped, never to be seen again.
And now James, John and Peter follow Jesus up that mountain.
He was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes
became dazzling white. Suddenly there were Moses and Elijah, talking with him.
Saint Luke says they were speaking of his exodos, his departure, his
escape – an escape that would begin with his arrest, his being crucified on a
Roman cross, his body placed in a borrowed tomb, sealed with a rock. Then
suddenly, he is raised to God’s Glory. It is his Passover, a new exodus, into
eternal liberty. His resurrection is our Passover!
He had told James, John and Peter six days earlier – but of
course Peter would have none of it. And as he rebuked Jesus, Jesus saw Satan
once again, behind Peter. No doubt he is telling Eljah and Moses all of this
when Peter comes running up to them saying, “Let’s build three booths, three
tabernacles like those in which our ancestors lived with you, Moses, in the
wilderness!” Peter once to stay there in the vision forever! That is, until it
happened. The cloud that sat upon Mount Sinai for seven days as Moses sat, and
sat, and sat – patiently waiting upon the Lord. The bright cloud of God’s glory
came upon them, and the voice that had spoken down by the river; as he had come
up out of the water, and the Spirit-Breath landed on him like a dove; the voice
that said: “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen
to him!”
When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and
were overcome by fear. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Get up and
do not be afraid.” And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus
himself alone. That’s when he tells them to tell no one until he rises from the
dead. They remember he had said this six days earlier, but they could not
comprehend at all what he was talking about. No doubt they were too afraid to
ask if Elijah and Moses had actually been there. Was he really shining like the
Sun? Remember, they said, when Moses came down from Sinai his face shown so
brightly they had to put a veil over his face lest he blind the people who had
already blinded themselves by worshipping a golden calf.
It is said that Saint Clare of Assisi, an early follower of
Saint Francis, would come from prayer with her face so shining it would dazzle
everyone around her! Her enclosed order of women was almost unthinkable at the
time, although soon throughout Europe other women were doing the same. Some,
like Agnes of Prague, daughter of King Ottokar I of Bohemia, sister of Wenceslaus
I of Bohemia, formed such a community and wrote to Clare for advice. Clare
urged Agnes, and all others, to spend time daily before the Cross of Christ;
that it is the mirror in which we can see ourselves for who we truly are. In
her fourth letter to Agnes, Clare writes: “Place your mind before the mirror
of eternity! Place your soul in the brilliance of glory! Place your heart in
the figure of the divine substance! And transform your whole being into the
image of the Godhead itself through contemplation! So that you too may feel
what His friends feel as they taste the hidden sweetness which God Himself has
reserved from the beginning for those who love Him.”
I read this and re-read this letter to Agnes and imagine
Agnes, like Clare, emerging from her time before the mirror of the Cross with
her face shining, dazzling with the love of Christ, God’s own Beloved. Several
days a week I stand before a statue of Clare holding a cross which frames a
mirror with Christ’s face at the center, a tear seeming to fall from his right eye
as he meets my gaze. I pray for Ukraine. I pray for Michigan State University.
I pray for Rock Spring Parish. I pray for our country; the country I love; the
country for which my father fought against the rise of the White Supremacy of
the Nazi regime.
If one looks at the mirror in Clare’s hands at just the
right angle, one can see the Saint Francis Cross hanging over the altar at the
other end of the chapel at the Shrine of Saint Anthony of Padua in Ellicott
City. The cross that Francis from which Jesus asked him “to repair my
church.” It is impossible to describe
what it is like to see these two crosses, one reflected in the other, while at
the same time experiencing the divine presence burning in the candles that
surround Clare on both sides. Feeling what his friends must have felt that day
upon the mountaintop.
There are people who will doubt that any of this really
happened: Elijah rising in his chariot of fire; Moses’s face shining so
brightly it needed to be veiled; Jesus shining like the Sun, his clothes
dazzling bright; Clare’s face shining like her transfigured Lord; Agnes giving
up a life of a princess to live a life of poverty, prayer and contemplation;
Francis hearing Christ speak to him from the cross; we, with his friends,
feeling touched by Jesus who says, “Do not fear, do not be afraid.” We
have forty days ahead of us to contemplate just what we think of these stories,
and perhaps, if we are lucky, we too will have similar experiences of God’s
love and know, really know deep down inside, that we too truly are God’s
Beloved. To place our minds before the mirror of eternity. To place our souls
in the brilliance of glory! And to know just how good it is!
No comments:
Post a Comment