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Ah, today is the Feast of the Transfiguration!

I love this feast and I love this part of the gospel (Matthew 17:1-9.)
It’s one of my favorite decades of the rosary (luminous mysteries, fourth).
I love living the liturgical year…in our own home and our own goofy way, but being able to live out as the calendar pages by. {can you guess, this is a Catholic post?}

To read a good bit on this Feast go to the always excellent Godzdogz, here.
For a more scholarly piece go to Clerical Whispers, here.

But for me, I just love this feast. It’s a very visual event, and I am a totally visual gal. I can vividly imagine the whole scene and the shivering thrill (ok, and maybe a touch of terror) that went through the apostles as they witnessed the transfiguration and the otherworldly, well, GLORY of it all! I mean, wow!

And for me, especially as I meditate on this mystery in my rosary, I alway smile. Because I love St. Peter and his impulsive passionate nature. He reminds me, every time I think of this feast, this mystery, of my son – my Booboo. He is just like that, if he had been there, my boy would have been the one to think and say “this is SO cool! Hey, we should set up a tent!” I love that, it is so much a reaction that would happen and I love how it brings the gospel from so long ago right smack into today’s, my, world.

And for all the frenzy for special effects nowadays in movies…even in our jaded weary eyes, I’m thinking this one would’ve blown us away…will blow us away. And even Lucas and the wizards at Industrial Light and Magic can’t hold a candle to it. Which is just fun to think about.

So, I do love this feast, this mystery, this special amazing event in the life of Christ and those lucky apostles. And I cling to what this one promises….transfiguration. The changing of our very natures into something unimaginable by our puny little caged human minds.

I cling to the promise of this transfiguration – that even when I cannot see beyond the cloud and the dark, Christ himself is with me and leading the way so I too, can be transformed as I so desperately need to be. It is the promise of this transformation through prayer, and uniting my prayer and will with His, that keeps me putting one foot, one prayer, one action in front of the other.

Because it is a promise of MORE.
More than me.
More than us.
More than our minds or hearts can begin to fathom or guess or dream.

It’s a fireworks burst of transfigured self that will make us surely gasp in trembling and mind blowing glee….and we can hang on to that and cling to that in the dark of now, the mundane of today, because of this feast. It’s a gift. Pure and simple. A lesson. A gift. A promise.

They saw it. It’s real. It happened and there are three, strikingly similar unchanging accounts to document it. We are human and need that proof. Christ asks for faith without seeing (John 20:18) and yet grants us these moments of sight – literal, corneal seeing. How great is that, how merciful, how cool?

But hey, I’ll take it, with greedy hands and heart.
And I’ll think of Peter and hope to join my shout with his: “Lord it is good for us to be here!” Let’s set up a tent!

Painting by Raphael, of course.