Transfiguration: Experience of God in Jesus
Mountains are seen as locations of God-experience in many traditional cultures, and in many of the world religions. It is not by chance then that one of the classical works of St John of the Cross is called, The Ascent of Mount Carmel (1579); and more recently, Thomas Merton entitles his autobiography as, The Seven-Storey Mountain (1948).
The narration from Matthew describing the transfiguration clearly has three parts:
Going up the mountain
The moment of grace (experience of God in Jesus) on top of the mountain
Coming down the mountain with the fruits of that experience
Let us reflect on these three aspects of the gospel story and see what they could mean for us today:
Going up the mountain: the stage of preparation
What does the gospel text of today tell us about going up the mountain, more precisely, about our desire for the experience of […]