L.J. shares a reflection on the Gospel reading from St. Matthew that we hear on the Second Sunday of Lent, March 5, 2023.
It takes only a moment of deep prayer to know God and ourselves in truth, then everything changes.
In a retreat called, “The Rediscovery of Life,” Anthony De Mello relates the following story: “There was a lion that grew up in a flock of sheep and so he had no consciousness that he was a lion. He didn’t know he was a lion. He would bleat like a sheep, he’d eat grass like a sheep. One day they were wandering at the edge of a big jungle when a mighty lion let out a big roar and leaped out of the forest and right into the middle of the flock. All the sheep scattered and ran away. Imagine the surprise of the jungle lion when he saw this other lion there among the sheep. So, he gave chase. He got hold of him. And there was this lion, cringing in front of the king of the jungle. And the jungle lion said to him, ‘What are you doing here?’ And the other lion said, ‘Have mercy on me. Don’t eat me. Have mercy on me.’ But the king of the forest dragged him away, saying ‘Come on with me.’ And he took him to a lake and he said, ‘Look.’ So, the lion who thought he was a sheep looked, and for the first time he saw his reflection. He saw his image. Then he looked at the jungle lion, and he looked in the water again, and he let out a mighty roar. He was never a sheep again. It took only one minute.”
It takes only a moment to wake up to God, only a moment of interior silence, a moment of real prayer, to know deep in our bones our real identity. Today’s Gospel is about such a moment, a revelation of the true self. The lives of Peter, James, and John are changed in an instant when they see Jesus transfigured, resplendent in truth and divine glory. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Though dramatic and otherworldly spiritual experiences may be rare, most of us have life-changing spiritual experiences even if they are but glimpses of God or mere moments of transcendent love. It takes only a moment of faith, a moment of being open to God to receive such an experience.
We can, however, turn anything – even the best of things – into an idol. God knows this, and so sends the cloud to darken their experience. This isn’t the darkness of evil and sin, but the divine darkness, which engulfs us in the very mystery of God. God cannot be reduced to an experience, no matter how exalted it is. Therefore, while we can accept life-changing experiences as they come, they aren’t the goal. Rather, this cloud overshadowing the Transfiguration represents the necessity of unknowing, interior silence, and pure faith. They constitute the bulk of the spiritual journey. They balance all the experiences of light we have, and with which we tend to identify. That is the problem. Experiences can become another source of identity, propping up the false self. Realizing who we are in God is more important than a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and this tends to happen slowly over time, and with a great deal of unknowing, interior silence, and pure faith. But the important thing is that we come to know we are God’s beloved. This is our true self.
We should remember, Jesus reveals God and human nature. He is fully divine and fully human. He is the optimal example of the human person. As such, the transfigured Jesus represents the true self, the revelation of who we really are. Just as Jesus is brilliant in heavenly glory, the true self is resplendent in God’s glory, not because of any moral or spiritual achievement of our own but because of God’s gift. Jesus is glorious because he is God’s “Beloved Son.” Again, what is revealed about Jesus is also revealed about us: we are God’s beloved children, too. This is the self-in-God. The false self is the self-outside-of-God.
As Thomas Keating says, the grace of the Transfiguration is “to empower us to live in the presence of God and to see the radiance of that presence in all events, people, the cosmos, and in ourselves.” Knowing we are God’s beloved is to find our identity in the love and mercy of God. It is to practice the acceptance of the divine in every experience, and, no matter what the experience, to accept that God delights in us as we are. God loves us, accepts us, and delights in us as we are. The true self knows this. It only takes a moment to see this truth, and it changes us forever. To abide in the moment and to see this truth of being God’s beloved, we return to the YHWH breath meditation. Breathing in and out, we center our hearts on God. Letting the breath clear our minds, we begin to know – by unknowing and in a glorious yet dark silence – who we really are. Breathing brings us into the now, the moment. Like the lion who thought he was a sheep, it takes only a moment to wake up.