The Mother of All Moments

 

Introduction

Transfiguration/disfiguration

The old Latin Mass of pre-Vatican days always opened with the Introit. That is a  verse from one of the psalms. The Introit for the Mass of the Transfiguration was from psalm 76, verse 18: ”The crash of your thunder rolled out. Your lightning lit up the world; the earth trembled and quaked.” (Illuxerunt corruscationes tuae orbi terrae. Commota est et contremuit terra!) And the gospel was Matthew’s account of  the Transfiguration, relating how a bright shining cloud overshadowed Peter, James and John. (Ecce nubes lucida obumbravit eos.." (Mt l7:5). 

 

"Your lightning lit up the world; the earth trembled and quaked.” With those words the 8 a.m. Mass in Hiroshima began on the feast of the Lord’s Transfiguration 61 years ago today (1945). Then 16 minutes and 8 seconds later, an utterly apocalyptic event burst upon the earth, casting an ominous mushroom shadow and ushering in an altogether new and foreboding age: the atomic age.  At that moment, in 1/10,000 of a second, there was generated 300,000 degrees of heat.  At that split second, 150,000 people were radiated and incinerated. (We had a measly three thousand incinerated on 9/11.) I can never celebrate the feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord without always remembering the horrible disfiguration of Hiroshima and the subsequent disfiguration of Nagasaki three days later.

 

Today, August 6, 2006, on this feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord we have before our eyes the media’s non-stop coverage of the disfiguration of southern Lebanon and northern Israel.

 

The many mountains of life

There are many mountaintop experiences in the life of Jesus and in the life of us all. The first Sunday of Lent always recounts how Satan takes Jesus up a very high mountain and tempts him (Mt 4: 1-11). Toward the end of his life, there is the Mount of Olives. That’s a garden in which Jesus sweats blood, and the passion of the Christ begins (Mt 26:36). Then there is the Mount of Calvary on which Jesus gives up his spirit (Mt 27:22--23).  But before Mount Calvary, and in preparation for it, there is a high mountain called Mount Tabor in Christian tradition. On that mountain Jesus is transfigured and becomes resplendent with glory in order to prepare the apostles for his imminent disfiguration in his passion and death.

 

The transfiguration is always the theme for the second Sunday of Lent (Lk 9:28-36; Mt 17:1-8; Mk 9:2- 8), and the church has also instituted a special feast day to celebrate it: August 6th. And since August 6th lands on a Sunday this year, the feast of the Transfiguration replaces the 18th Sunday of Ordinary Time.

Tabor: the mount of religious experience

On Mount Tabor Jesus was transfigured  before Peter, James, and  John. His clothes became dazzling white—whiter than any bleach could make them. The apostles heard a voice proclaiming, “This is my beloved son. Listen to him.”  On that lofty height something spectacular was taking place. Christians call it a transfiguration; psychologists call it a religious experience. In a religious experience you see things and hear voices.

 

A religious experience on the road to Damascus

A religious experience can happen not just on a lofty mountaintop, it can happen also down deep in the valley of real life. It can even happen as you’re on your way to do some human mischief. One day when Saul of Tarsus was on his way to Damascus to search out and arrest the followers of Jesus, a light from the sky suddenly flashed all around him. It struck him down from his high horse, and he heard a voice. (In a religious experience you see things and hear voices.) The voice cried out, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” Saul was startled and called out, “Who are you?” The voice answered, “I am Jesus of Nazareth whom you are persecuting”(Acts 9:1-22).  That experience converted Saul from a staunch Jew into a staunch Christian named Paul. It took place not on a lofty mountaintop but down in the valley of human life and on one of its many crooked paths.

 

A religious experience in a garden

St. Augustine had his religious experience and heard his voices in the garden of his villa. In his younger days he was a rounder of the first water. He strayed off into the teachings of Manichaeism and into the wayward paths of youth. He begot a son out of wedlock. He records it all for us in his famous Confessions--a very personal, prayerful and easy-to-read piece of classical literature.

 

In the Confessions Augustine tells us that one day in the garden of his villa and before his conversion, he heard a voice coming from the other side of a wall. (In a religious experience you see things and hear voices.) The voice kept saying in a sing-song sort of way, like kids playing a game, “Tolle et lege, tolle et lege” (Augustine wrote in Latin), “Take and read. Take and read.”  At first he thought it was only some kids at play on the other side of the wall. But suddenly seized with some strange light he knew it was much more than that, and he picked up the Scriptures that lay near at hand.  They fell open to the words of Paul in Romans 13:13, “Let us behave decently as people do in the light of day; no orgies or drunkenness, no  immorality or indecency, no fighting or jealousy.  Rather let us put on the Lord Jesus Christ as armor against all these things, and let us forget about satisfying our bodies with all their cravings” (Rm 13:13-14; Confessions Bk VIII, ch 12).

 

It was a powerful experience for Augustine. It marked the moment of his conversion. It sent him on to become the famous Bishop of Hippo in North Africa and a  Doctor of the Church who ruled the  Universal Church from the 5th to the 13th century through his voluminous theological writings.   Augustine had his  experience and heard his voices not on a lofty height  like Tabor but down in the valley of human life and on one of its many crooked paths.

 

A religious experience at San Damiano

St. Francis of Assisi who was born in 1181 had his religious experience and heard his voices in a run-down chapel of San Damiano in Assisi. Like Augustine before him he was a rounder in his early years. Shortly after his conversion, in the 25th year of his life (1206), he was praying before a very old crucifix in the rickety little chapel. The crucifix was an icon painted on canvas and then applied to a walnut wooden cross. It was the work of an unknown artist of the Umbrian School. It was shortly after his conversion, and Francis was earnestly asking the Lord what He wanted from him. Suddenly he heard a voice from the crucifix. (In  religious experiences you see things and hear voices.) The voice said,  “Francis, repair my church.” 

 

Francis was a simple and literal man. At first he thought the voice was calling him to repair the rickety little chapel with mortar and  brick. The voice was, in fact, calling him to repair  the universal church corrupted by all the Byzantine splendor and excesses of the Middle Ages. The voice was calling him to become the father of a great Franciscan family of brothers and sisters who in his spirit would repair the church as no movement before or after. Francis had his religious experience and heard his voices not in a lofty basilica like St. Peter’s in Rome but in a lowly chapel of San Damiano and before a very ancient crucifix.[1]

 

Ecstasy

Religion is rooted in religious experience. At the end of the day that’s what counts. What counts are not ceremonies automatically performed or creeds recited by rote.  What counts is religious experience. And with religious experience comes ecstasy. That’s a perfectly good word, and we shouldn’t be afraid of it. It comes from two Greek words: “ec” meaning “outside” and “stasy" means "to stand." In ecstasy we stand outside ourselves or are beside ourselves in the face of something that fills us with awe and wonder.

 

Up there on the lofty heights of Mt Tabor, Peter is ecstatic.  He is emoting. He is crying out, "Oh how good it is for us to be here!" So good that he wants to stay up there and linger on in the glorious glow of that moment.  He even wants to dig in and hunker down for good: “Lord, let’s build three shelters up here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah” (Mk 9:5).  Not only is Mt. Tabor high, the Apostles also are high.

 

At least in church

Where, if anywhere, should we be able to expect religious experience, if not in a sacred place like a synagogue or a mosque or a church? After all, we humans construct and consecrate these edifices precisely for that.  Where, if anywhere, should we be able to hear voices and, by gum, reap some ecstasy and uplift to carry us through the hard long week ahead, if not here in the Sunday assembly? 

 

Unfortunately, that doesn’t always happen. Karl Jung, the father of modern psychology, writes about the day of his first Holy Communion. Because of what had been told him, he was in high expectation of a great religious experience.  The day finally dawned. In familiar robes his father (who was the minister of the celebration) stood behind the altar, reading the prayers. On the white altar cloth lay large trays filled with small pieces of bread which came from the local baker. He watched his father eat a piece of the bread and then sip the wine which came from the local tavern. He then passed the cup to one of the old men.  All seemed stiff, solemn and disinterested. Finally his turn came to eat the bread which tasted flat and to sip the wine which tasted sour. Jung was expecting a great religious experience. Instead, he says, he could neither see nor guess that anything unusual was happening inside anyone. No one seemed to be seeing visions or hearing voices.

 

After the final prayer, no one was heard to cry out, "Oh how good it is for us to be here! Let’s build tents here and hunker down for good.”  No one was seen to tarry or linger on in the glow of ecstasy.  Instead, Jung writes, "All peeled out of the church with faces that were neither depressed nor illumined with joy—just faces which seemed to say, `Well, that's that.'"

 

Only gradually in the course of the following days did it dawn on him that he had had no religious experience whatsoever. What’s more,  it dawned on him that he had had a very irreligious experience. Jung found himself saying, "Oh how bad it was for me to be there! I must never go back again." And he didn't. The day of his very first Communion, he  writes, proved to be his very last one (in his book Memories, Dreams, Reflections).

Conclusion

The mother of all moments

Through fifty long years in the business I have been blessed (and also benignly cursed) by the fiercest conviction that here in the Sunday assembly, if anywhere, we should find religious experience. Here at Sunday Mass, if anywhere, we should see visions, hear voices and, by gum, reap some ecstasy to lift us up and carry us through the long hard week ahead. Through fifty long years, I have been blessed (and also benignly cursed) by the fiercest conviction that the Sunday assembly is the mother of all moments for  God’s priestly people (that’s you), and it is also the mother of all moments for me, priestly head of God’s priestly people.

 

Through fifty long years I have been blessed (and also benignly cursed) by the fiercest conviction that nothing I do all week long is more important that what I do for this mother of all moments. But I’m not so inflated as to think it all depends on me. It depends on all of us. We all must bring something to this mother of all moments. We must bring hearts capable of ecstasy—capable of standing in awe of something other than ourselves or our artificial creations to make us happy. We must bring hearts capable especially of hearing voices other than our own by turning down the noise in our lives and turning up the sound of silence. That will help to turn the Sunday assembly into a Mt. Tabor, and it will start us exclaiming, “Oh how good it is for us to be here!”


[1] That crucifix is the most prized possession of the Franciscan family to this very day. When the Poor Clares outgrew the small church of San Damiano and moved to the new Basilica of St. Clare, they brought the crucifix with them. There you can see the identically same crucifix that spoke to St. Francis. The crucifix is  considered to be the most renowned, revered and reproduced crucifix in the world.