orange peel
Anyone who has any faith at all – whether that be a Jew, a Muslim, a Christian or whatever – must at some point grapple with a few eternal questions.
Who is God? What does He mean to me? Why should I care?
These questions have been addressed by both individuals and by entire nations throughout the history of mankind. It is quite possible to see how this great mystery of our faith is played out on both pathways – individual and collective.
Today’s readings on this Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord give us a lot to chew on in the collective sense of who God is and how He differs from the rulers of nations – and how he challenges us to choose the right rulers to follow.
But let’s start on a very basic, individual level.
Our very first impression of God begins in the womb, where God knits us into a boy or a girl made in His image. Some believe, as do I, that during this state of suspension in the amniotic fluid of our mothers, we have complete knowledge, love and presence with God. It is a safe and warm place with all of our burdens carried by our creators – which include a holy trinity of God, our mother and our father, each of whom played a distinct role in our creation.
And then, in a rush of violence, we are taken out of the womb, born into the world and forced to draw our first breath. At this point, our undeveloped brains (but not our hearts) forget about the warmth and comfort of God. Suddenly we are cold, we are struggling to breathe, we are crying … crying and immediately searching for that peace that we had just experienced for nine months.
No wonder then that our first impression of God come from our parents. A loving mother and a loving father become the first representations of God for us as children. They provide us with love, comfort, food and all we have to do in return is love them back.
As we grow, into older children, we no doubt begin to notice the flaws of our parents – they are human, after all – and thus we begin to wonder more about who God really is and where we can find Him again.
I recall the time one of our grandchildren was challenged to remember the name of our pastor one time after Mass and she proudly proclaimed: “I know him, that’s God.”
Ah, those were simple times for most of us.
But then we grow up. We get smart. We learn to think for ourselves and we begin to question all the warm-and-fuzzies we had been taught about Jesus as kids. We begin to drift away from our parents’ ideals of faith and begin to search out our own ways.
It is a never-ending journey.
Now, let’s consider this journey to God on a larger scale – a scale the size of humanity itself.
We know the stories from the Old Testament … the revelation of God to Abraham, who we call the father of many nations. His roots extend to Jews, Muslims and Christians.
We know about Moses and the Exodus of the Hebrew nation out of Egyptian slavery and into the promised land. And we know how that nation went through many trials and many periods of unrest – marked by a gradual transition from a people faithful to the God of Abraham and Moses, to a people faithful to whichever secular ruler happened to be in place at the time.
Every Old Testament prophet is called by God to “wake up” their people and urge them to return to their roots of faith in an all-powerful deity. But it’s difficult. Where was God? Where was He when we needed him? Give us proof.
And so the nations searched for answers. They knew the laws of Moses and many of them diligently followed them while others did not. These rules were not the answer in and of themselves to the big question of God, but they did serve to prepare the soul for the truth it was seeking. One could say the same about the habits we develop as families … the importance of daily prayer and attending Mass on a weekly basis.
Today is the Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord – that single moment high on a mountain top when our Lord chose to give his apostles a glimpse, a “sneak peek” at who He really is.
If you picture our search for God as peeling away the layer of the most beautiful orange in the world, then this Transfiguration was the point when all the peelings are gone and you are holding the most sweet, fulfilling piece of fruit – blessed fruit from God’s tree in the Garden of Eden – in your hand.
But this sweet victory does not come suddenly. Look at the first reading from the Book of Daniel and you get a sense of how the unpeeling of the truth of God – the search – took place gradually.
Daniel was a book written around the year 165 (BC) – just a few generations from the birth of Jesus. It was written primarily for the Jews of that time to remain faithful to their ancestral religion at a time when they felt the allure of “worldly culture.” Sound familiar?
Like many of the lessons of the Bible, this lesson can also apply to us today.
Daniel went to great lengths in his book to demonstrate the superiority in the wisdom of God over the “merely human” wisdom of the pagan leaders. Again … sound familiar?
When it comes to peeling away the layers of mystery, Daniel was a turning point. According to Bible scholars and theologians, his apocalyptic style of writing (marked by vivid imagery of wild beasts, fire and damnation) were relatively a new thing and helped its readers and future generations come to a fuller understanding of what was to come.
Daniel also writes about angels being ministers of God who reveal God’s will to humans – going considerably further than previous books and pointing toward what has become a highly developed understanding of “angelology.” Daniel also writes explicitly about the resurrection of the dead, also a unique topic among other Hebrew writers at the time.
Finally – and for Christians one of the most prophetic aspects of Daniel – he describes in his vision a “son of man” coming with the clouds of heaven – a phrase that may not have been directly related to Christ at the time, but certainly helped us understand the trinitarian qualities of God … (not to mention a title that Jesus uses to describe himself in the Gospels).
Indeed … lots of prophesy there in Daniel … which comes to fruition for those who witnessed the Transfiguration in the Gospel.
A nation of people gradually coming to know the truth of our Lord – not unlike the journeys we all must take as individuals to find Him in our own lives.
Daniel’s visions and their meanings were meant to provide a little bit of calm in the storm that his people found themselves living within at that time. His message endures today – whether those storms are like the hurricanes that destroy an island or a small thunderstorm with lightning strikes that pierce our heart.
The message: God is the Master of history. He uses the rise and fall of nations – as well as the peaks and valleys of our personal journeys – to prepare us for the day …
The day we get to pull away that last layer of mystery and finally see God for who He is and who He has always been in our lives.
It is then that our hearts and our souls will be transfigured, just as Jesus was on that mountain so many years ago.
I know these journeys are deeply personal for all of us. What’s comforting to me is that we are not experiencing anything new or unique. We are not alone. We do this together and we have been on this journey for more than 2,000 years.
