Reflection for the Vigil of the Second Sunday of Lent 2009
7 March 2009

by Judith Sutera, OSB

I must admit that in all the years I've lived, I've never seen anyone literally suffused with divine light. I've never encountered a sister chatting with Moses and Elijah, nor personally visited with them myself. Yet most people who are prayerful would admit to having had brief moments in their lives when they truly felt they were bathed in the comforting or searing glow of God's presence, and experienced some kind of transfiguration. Who wouldn't want, as the apostles did, to build a temple to that moment, to want to keep it alive and stay in it as long as possible?

Jesus, being more perfect, speaks the truth we need to hear in the face of that temptation. We must return to the ordinary.

Think of some of the sisters you've known that you feel are really holy. How often have you seen them actually levitate or glow brilliant white? Did they have stigmata, or fall into a mystic swoon in the middle of community prayer? Obviously, there must be other, more mundane ways to recognize the presence of holiness...

The sad fact, which Jesus was trying to get through to his disciples, is that most of life occurs between those rare moments of transfiguration. Even the holiest among us spend most of their time off the mountain. We prove that we've really been there and really saw something, not by the monuments we build on the site, but by what we do when we get back.

From what I've read, I suspect that day-to-day life with those who have too many moments of intense trasfiguration can be very hard on a community. In his wisdom, Benedict really doesn't talk about those peak experiences, just about what it's like in the valley. He can't describe how one crosses the divide to be able to see and hear the law and the prophets as Jesus did. So he uses his writing to propose ways in which a group of ordinary people can create environments that help them get there. If we can't build tents on the mountain, what should we build in the ordinary places to honor transfiguration and make it stay with us.

His conclusion, the path of humility, is very similar to that which Paul proposes to the Corinthians. We have only our ordinary selves, transformed by ordinary experiences. First, we recognize that we are frail and made of earth. Then we come to understand that God can be present in us anyway, just as we are. We survive perplexity and persecution and affliction, from outside and within. We come to believe and proclaim.

Benedict shows us this great process, but at the end of it, then what? Does he tell us we'll be in ecstasy, or heal the sick, or go out and change the world? No, at the end of the process, he says, we'll do exactly what we were doing before, and start all over again tomorrow. The key is that we've seen the light of transfiguration, and the light has filled us, and so it can shine out of our darkness.

It is the memory of the light, and the assurance that we are God's beloved, that strengthens and permanently transforms us. What we see in those holy ones is the fruit of their contemplation, and the light shining in them, even as they are still doing the same old things as the rest of us. They carry their transfiguration: the change from fear to love, from routine to reverent act.

This is the notion of contemplation that Gregory attempts to explain in the story of Benedict's vision of the world. It's all in your point of view, he tells the disciple. The world did not get smaller, but Benedict was raised up beyond himself so he was actually seeing with God's eye. It's like being in a deep forest, with your whole visual field taken up by the huge tree in front of you, and then going to the top of a mountain where the whole forest can be hidden by holding up one hand.

"When we view the Creator's light, no matter how little of it," Gregory explains, "...it reveals how narrow in compass everything below really is." Then, there is no mountain or valley, only the new perspective in which all is bathed in the light and all is transfigured. In our Lent, then, and in our life as a continuous Lent, we must try to constantly remember the light, see the light, make present the light. Our contemplative living will enable us to see through, not the proverbial rose-colored glasses, but far better God-colored lenses. Then there is no distinction between mountain and valley, between vessel and treasure. Then there is no temptation to, because there is no need to, build tents and stay. This is the secret the holy ones know. Then we can truly, as one of our holy ones was fond of instructing us, "be where you are and do what you're doing."


© 2009 Benedictine Sisters of Mount St. Scholastica
Atchison, Kansas