The Crystal

"Jesus took Peter, John, and James and went up to the mountain to pray.  While He was praying, His face changed in appearance and His clothing became dazzling white. And behold, two men were conversing with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory  . . . Peter and his companions had been overcome by sleep, but becoming fully awake, they saw His glory, and the two men standing with Him. As they were about to part from Him, Peter said to Jesus, 'Master, it is good that we are here; let us make three tents, one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.' But he did not know what he was saying. While he was still speaking, a cloud came and cast a shadow over them, and they became frightened when they entered the cloud. Then from the cloud came a voice that said, 'This is my chosen Son; listen to Him.' After the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone.". -[Luke 9: 28B-36].


This story of Scripture is arguably the most beautiful in the Bible. Many would misinterpret this event as the moment when Jesus is taken up in glory, after His crucifixion. But, actually, no one witnesses Jesus' Resurrection. Jesus is laid in the tomb one moment and is gone before daybreak. It is Mary Magdalene who rushes into the tomb, fully realizing what has happened, that by Jesus absence, a miracle has occurred.

In Luke 9 here, Jesus is on the mountaintop, praying, and dazzling in appearance. Jesus' appearance is described as "His glory."

In the end of this "Transfiguration", a voice speaks from a cloud, saying "This is my chosen Son; listen to Him."  This disembodied voice is, of course, God. I always hoped that if God's voice came from out of a cloud, that He would have a lot more to say than the tautological and the obvious, "Here is my Son."

But the truly significant import of this statement is that God does speak to us mere mortals, if only we could listen and recognize who He is. After all, Peter, James and John are initially asleep and come very close to kissing the Transfiguration entirely.

And God in His Trinity points clearly to Jesus as His Son, in case anyone could doubt. This statement of God's is God's deliberate and firm affirmation of who God IS, in and of Himself, and in His Son.

Peter, helpful and pragmatic, proposes pitching tents. What a completely ordinary and earthly response to a wholly dazzling and supernatural moment. Not only does Peter betray his quotidian self, he apparently means to stay on the mountain awhile if he is building tents.

But Jesus and His disciples are meant to descend the mountain and do the difficult work of encountering other human beings.

In his book, "The Seven Story Mountain", Thomas Merton writes a beautiful metaphor about the Transfiguration. He writes that "Grace" is God's own life, shared by us. God's life IS Love.

Merton goes on to say, "The soul of man, left to its own natural level, is a potentially lucid crystal left in darkness. It is perfect in its own nature, but it lacks something that it can only receive from outside and above itself. But when the light shines on it, it becomes in a manner transformed into light and seems to lose its nature in the splendor of a higher nature, the nature of the light that is in it."

"So the natural goodness of man, his capacity for love which must always be in some sense selfish if it remains in the natural order, becomes transfigured and transformed when the Love of God shines in it. . . . Christ established His Church, among other reasons, in order that [humankind] might lead one another to Him and in the process sanctify themselves and one another. For in this work it is Christ Who draws us to Himself through the action of our fellow men."

Loving one another is incredibly difficult. Think of fractured relationships, bias, hatred, jealousy, war, abuse, conflict, egoism, manipulations. But loving one another is our WORK. We perfect ourselves on a spiritual level by loving others. We draw closer to the model of Jesus, the more and better that we love. We inspire others, in our Love, to work on loving more fully and more perfectly.

And to know Jesus and to try to imitate His virtues, is to draw closer to Jesus and to God.

Many today believe that Christians are intolerant, rules-bound, judgmental people who cannot possibly love someone who falls short of the glory of God.

The reality is that our job is to love one another, and to "lead one another to Christ."

One cannot love another if we hold ourselves apart as either superior or inferior to those around us. In this work of Love, we are in the trenches together.

Others may believe that the holiest Christian remains on the mountaintop, dazzling in glory but too transfigured to ever relate to someone who is all too imperfect, all too human. Yes, there is a place for the contemplative, cloistered life. But the vast majority, along with Jesus and the disciples themselves, descend from the mountaintop and confront the spiritual warfare that is Love.

Others still, believe that they are, in their natural state, a fine, very serviceable crystal. But, not believing in God, or deriving light from His Love, they won't fully perfect their spiritual potential.

In fact, Merton states, "Indeed, outside of Him [God], there is nothing."  Later in his book Merton writes of the time "in which he was to become conscious of the fact that the only way to live was to live in a world that was shared with the presence and reality of God."

Merton concludes from his realizations that "God has willed that we should all depend on one another for our salvation, and strive together for our own mutual good and for our own common salvation."

It is perhaps a shocking revelation today, that we shall all find our salvation together, or otherwise, we shall all perish together. In this age of personal identity and of individual needs overshadowing any sense of the collective community, the notion that we "should all depend on one another" is counterintuitive and even astonishing.

For we all possess the capacity to absorb the Divine Light, and to reflect it back unto the world. In fact, that is precisely why God placed us on this earth. But we cannot ever experience our own spiritual transformation or transfiguration, if we believe that we are individual cells, alone in the world and totally disconnected from each other - or divorced from the Divine Being.

Merton concludes, " We are born with the thirst to know and to see Him [God], and therefore it cannot be otherwise."

God's voice, emerging from a cloud, proclaims, "This is my chosen Son."  - But will we listen?

[Related postings: "Be Dazzled", 2/27/18; "Transfigured", 2/22/16; "This is My Son", 3/16/14; "My Transformation", 2/24/13; "Transfiguration of Christ", 3/5/12; "Transfiguration", 3/20/11.]

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