LORD, IT IS GOOD FOR US TO BE HERE

“Jesus took Peter, James, and his brother, John,
and led them up a high mountain by themselves.
And he was transfigured before them;
his face shone like the sun
and his clothes became white as light. . . .

Peter said to Jesus in reply,
‘Lord, it is good that we are here.’” Matthew 17:1-4

The Feast of the Transfiguration may be a good time for us to do some serious (and deep) thinking about who God is and what God is like. I do not mean for us just to recall the concepts and images of God that we created in our much younger minds as we learned about God from our parents and teachers in school, religious education or RCIA classes, nor do I mean what pops into our minds when we profess the Creed, read or hear something about God. I mean: “Who do you (I) think that God is?” and “What do you (I) think God is like?” Have you ever let Jesus take you up the mountain of deep faith and let the Father reveal to you what God had and has in mind for you and your life?

WHO IS GOD

But, of course, whatever your answers are to the God questions above, according to  Bishop Barron, in his Catholicism Series, and according to St. Augustine of Hippo, “All of our words, all of our concepts fall short of who God really is,” for “God is essentially mystery.”

But that does not mean that we can not get to know God better and in the process open our minds and hearts to communicate with the one and only person to whom we belong – our Creator, our true Father. In fact, why else would the God of our faith have breathed life into us? That breath of life is something like a seed of God’s life placed in us at our conception, at the very first moment of our existence. But that was just the beginning of our connectedness with God, the beginning of the process of our growth into our fullness of being. Since then, it has been a partnership, God and you, God and I. God offering the graces needed, and we accepting or rejecting the grace.

In last Sunday’s Gospel reading we read, “The kingdom of heaven is like the head of a household who brings from his storeroom both the new and the old.” (Matthew 13:52) And that is exactly what our life is about, moving from the “old,” where we used to be, to the now – our present way of perceiving ourselves, God, others and the world – to the “new,” where God, through Jesus, is leading us.

People have been doing this for millennia. Why? Because of what they have sensed and came to know through their taking time to drink in the mysteries within and around them. They took the time to reflectively consider the great “mysteries” of human life, of all life, the “mysteries” that are clues this wonderful Creator has given us so that we, too, may come to know more and more about what will make us not only feel good, but also be whole!

Yes, “God is essentially Mystery,” but a mystery not distant from us, not to be met for the first time when we die, but a God who can and is trying to reveal Himself to you and me right now.

There is not much summer left. September is almost here. Can we once more, or for the first time, let Jesus lead us up this mountain and be transfigured in our presence, letting him, the Father and the Spirit reveal more of who God really is? I am sure that this is so much better than our half-truths and misconceptions about God, ourselves and life. And, like Peter, we will then say to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here.”

Sister Loretta