Transfiguration of the Lord

This time of year, most of us get a case or two of PITS. I’m not referring to a rash in the axillary region, but to “People in Town Syndrome.” Friends decide that Seattle would be a great place to escape the summer heat and humidity of the Midwest for a few days, or that it would be a beautiful spot to spend a few days before or after an Alaska cruise or a vacation adventure into the Olympics. To all our friends, and to our many summer visitors here at the parish, we can only say “Sorry!” and repeat what has become a refrain here this past week: “It usually isn’t like this.” So to all of these visitors, guests, and friends, I repeat:  Sorry. It usually isn’t like this.

 Although, in truth, it very often is like this, only in different ways.

I don’t know about you natives, but for me as transplant that’s thriving here, my daily ritual is the same. Every morning when I turn on the coffee pot, I look out the window to see if The Mountain is out. For those of you who are visitors, The Mountain—that’s capital T, capital M The Mountain—is Rainier, or Takoma, as the native Puyallup peoples called her. Grand, glorious, the volcanic peak is 14,411 ft. tall about 50 miles southeast of here. In a good year, we see The Mountain one day out of every four, or five or six. For much, most of the winter, we don’t: Fifty miles of clouds, rain, and mist obscure the view. In the summer, we see her when the winds are right and the smog of Tacoma is blown away, glowing in the sunrise or majestic in the sunset.

Last Monday we saw her. We haven’t seen her since, as northerly winds have brought eye-burning, choking smoke from the fires in British Columbia. It’s likely to be a while before we see her again. Yet we know we will see her again, sooner or later. We know that she is there, grand and glorious. Sometimes, when all the elements conspire happily together, we see her unveiled. Most of the time, five days out of six, we don’t see. But we know that The Mountain is there.

Not a bad image for this feast of the Transfiguration.  Jesus goes up the mountain to pray with his disciples, and something happens. In that sacred space between heaven and earth, his glory is revealed, unveiled; his friends are overwhelmed by what they see, by what they hear: “This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased. Listen to him.” Those disciples are stunned by the revelation of the glory of God shining in the human face of Jesus, a face they knew and loved but did not fully comprehend. The veil of clouds and smoke and noise is pulled back for a moment, and reality is revealed, transfigured. The very voice of God proclaims “This is my beloved son; Listen to him.”

And then, like always, the clouds descend again, and Moses and Elijah and the glory that is always there disappears from their sight. Jesus says simply “Rise up, do not be afraid.”

Would that we could experience that revelation one day out of every five or six. Would that we could penetrate the cloud every day and see the mountain. We can’t, of course. The world with its clouds and smoke gets in the way. Our preoccupations and worries get in the way. Our ambitions and our sorrows get in the way. Yet we believe because we have seen, that The Mountain is still there, and so is Jesus.

We hold on by faith, the assurance of things hoped for on the evidence of things unseen, as St. Paul calls it. We hold onto the words that Jesus spoke, listening again and again to his invitation to live in hope, to live in Christ our Hope. We hold onto those rare moments when the veil is removed and we see him, in the bread broken on our table, in the faces of those we love, in the mercy we have received and in the good deeds we have done not out of obligation but out of care for one another. And although most of the time we live in a cloud, the cloud is full of light.

“Rise up,” he says, “do not be afraid. I am with you always.” Just like The Mountain.

Fr. Tom Lucas, S.J.