As preached by Brother Luke
Holy Wisdom Churc
Lk 9:28-36; 2Cor 3:5b-8, 12-18; Wi 7:25-8:1 Pilgrimage. Seeing in a new light.
When I was a kid in
school learning vocabulary, one common exercise was to give students a new
word, or words, to be used in a sentence. This was to help us understand, and
maybe even remember, the new word. That word for us today is Transfiguration. I suspect, outside of this feast, we don't use that word
very often, if at all. It is specific to the event the apostles Peter, James
and John experienced with Jesus on the mountain not long before his passion.
Maybe we can bring the wonder of this into our
ordinary life experiences. We might think of it as seeing something in a new
light.
The apostles had been living
with Jesus during his entire ministry. They could see him in daily life as an
ordinary person, the son of man, spoken of in scripture. A teacher of
remarkable wisdom. But they were constantly struggling with the reality beyond
worldly reality, of Jesus as divine, as the perfect reflection of God, the
creator of all things. Whether it was about the calming of the stormy sea,
healing all kinds of diseases, turning water into wine, multiplying the loves
of bread or driving out demons, they remained mystified,
openly wondering who is this man?
So Peter, James and
John were given an insight not shared with the other
apostles, a vision of Jesus beyond earthly boundaries. They saw him in a new
light, literally. They experienced something so astonishing, they were thrown
to the ground. They got a glimpse of God's cosmic reality. But even that was
too much for them to fathom. And maybe for us as well.
It is not unusual to
hear of Jesus referred to as the Cosmic Christ. For me, this
is simply another way to understand that God is the author, the creator, of all
things. It is hard to conceive cosmic more broadly than that. What Christ was
opening up to Peter, James and John on that mountain was a vision of the connection between this created world and the creator of this world. Christ
was revealed in this new light as the fulfillment of the law and the prophets
as represented by Moses and Elijah who appeared with him. And yet, it all
vanished in a cloud in an instant.
But it is not gone.
Our eyes can really see that connection in all that we experience in our
seemingly ordinary lives if we let God transfigure our hearts. Our interior
disposition has to be open to this possibility. We at New Skete are fortunate.
Here on this mountain we are graced with the natural wonders of creation. We are embraced by God's creation when we walk around these grounds or hike our trails and allow our senses to
be open to penetrate the divine reality beyond the immediate visual and sensory
experience. And by breeding German Shepherd dogs, we participate in the birth
and early growth of their puppies, living
beings. Seeing creation's constant wonder unfold, literally, in our hands. This
is soon to happen again as one of our brood bitches is carrying 10 puppies and
is due to give birth any day now.
Our speaker today,
Ioana Popa, will take us on a journey into the realm of scientific inquiry
grounded in faith. A journey to help us better appreciate that scientific
research and discoveries do not deny God but help us understand a little better the enormity of God's creation. We humans will never be
able to wrap our minds totally around the wonder that is God, but every
scientific breakthrough takes us another step further along that path.
