The Transfigured Christ

During this Summer month of August it is time to remember that this week is marked by two significant dates from 1945, the first war-time use of atomic weapons, on the city of Hiroshima on August 6th and then, three days later, on August 9th, on Nagasaki. The loss of life and the dawn of the availability of weapons of mass destruction were marked by those fateful August days. If you look back to the old Roman Missal and read the Introit for the Mass of the Transfiguration on August 6th you will find this text, taken from Psalm 76.

"All the world shone with thy lightning and the troubled earth shook ".

There is something disconcerting and prophetic in those few words. The argument that this action ultimately saved lives and brought the war to a rapid conclusion is challenged more and more.  

There are times in all our lives when an event is transformative, when something happens that makes a difference; there is a step-change and the person we were before is radically different from the person we become. There is no going back.

It might be meeting someone by chance and experiencing a significant chain of events that follow. For a mother, the birth of her first child, for a child the loss of a parent, for two adults, the break-up of a marriage with all the distrust and feelings of betrayal that are involved. Or it might be the precious moment when we realised there is a vocation path that we must follow and the joy of becoming who we presently are, remains over subsequent years. Each one of us could identify some such turning point, some significant occasion in our lives, and the older we are, the more times it might have happened.

Of all the events recorded in the Gospels, the account of Peter, James and John with the Lord on Mount Tabor, just west of the Sea of Galilee, given to us by Matthew, stirs the imagination. There, on that rocky outcrop, the appearance of the man from Nazareth was transformed and momentarily his three companions were dazzled by the event and covered their faces. Something of the glory and radiance of God was revealed to them, however briefly. Did they understand its significance? I doubt it. Did it affect their lives and their perception of the nature of Jesus? Most certainly it did. That moment in time was linked with an event that was yet to happen, the Resurrection of the Lord after his crucifixion at Passover. "Don’t tell anyone just yet", they were told, the significance of such an event would be lost on those who had yet to walk the journey that led to it.

Richard Rohr argues in his book "Falling Upward" that the consequences of the first part of our lives are only realised in the experience of the later years, that those years are, in a significant manner, a completion and an understanding of earlier times. He writes: "The language of the first half of life and the language of the second half of life are almost two different vocabularies, known only to those who have been in both of them".

Just now and then, we too are transformed, transfigured even, and the dwelling of God in us is allowed to shine through. Others see it, and are grateful for our being alongside them. Others feel it, in the gentleness of our touch or the carefulness of our hug. Others value it when we truly listen to their words of joy or pain and share with them times of great personal happiness or the darkness of desolation.

Creative artists show us vision, in the transformation of materials, whether it is through paint on canvas, the chiselling of a block of marble or the exploration of a block of wood. In each form there is something to be found, some delight to give joy, something to make us think.

In 1961, Barbara Hepworth wrote "I, the sculptor, am the landscape, I am the form and I am the hollow, the thrust and the contour."

What, I wonder, was the block of stone like before her hands began their imaginative transformation of the material?

So in recognising the enormity of that occasion on the hill of Tabor and its significance in the lives of three followers of Jesus, in faith, may we follow their example.

A beautiful hymn written by John Bell, a member of the Iona Community in Glasgow called "A Touching Place", has this refrain after each verse:

"To the lost Christ shows his face;
to the unloved He gives His embrace;
to those who cry in pain or disgrace,
Christ, makes, with His friends, a touching place"

Let’s leave it there.

END