Have You Seen A Transfiguration?

On the 2nd Sunday of Lent, Catholics and many other Christians alway reflect upon the Gospel reading which is known as “The Transfiguration“. We alternate in our 3 year cycle between Matthew, Mark, and Luke but it is always the Transfiguration. This year we are in Cycle A so we hear from Matthew.

I think there are times when not only Peter, James, and John his brother, but we as well, have experiences when the we are able to perceive a reality beyond the limitations of our five senses. We may in the moment seek to qualify it as our imagination, a dream, or something else to explain it so it fits within our construct of reality, and it may well have been that but, on some primal and elemental level, we knew it also as truth. We knew it as an experience whereby somehow through ordinary means, the divine touched us.

One poem that speaks of this is “Faith Matheny” by Edgar Lee Masters.

At first you will know not what they mean,
And you may never know,
And we may never tell you: —
These sudden flashes in your soul,
Like lambent lightning on snowy clouds
At midnight when the moon is full.
They come in solitude, or perhaps
You sit with your friend, and all at once
A silence falls on speech, and his eyes
Without a flicker glow at you: —
You two have seen the secret together,
He sees it in you, and you in him.
And there you sit thrilling lest the Mystery
Stand before you and strike you dead
With a splendor like the sun’s.
Be brave, all souls who have such visions!
As your body’s alive as mine is dead,
You’re catching a little whiff of the ether
Reserved for God Himself.

There is much to be learned from the Transfiguration accounts in the Gospels. That is why we hear them every year. But, if you experience a transfiguration of sorts in your own life, meditate upon it and seek any gift of wisdom that may be gleaned from it.