Shining Like the Sun

Is Our Ultimate Birthright Hidden from Ourselves?

August 6 is the feast day of the Transfiguration. Generally regarded as one of the most mystical episodes in the story of Jesus, the transfiguration tells of an intimate moment when Jesus and his disciples Peter, James and John steal away to a mountaintop, where Jesus begins to glow with a brilliant white light, and is joined by apparitions of two of the greatest figures from the Old Testament. As if that were not enough, a voice booming from heaven declares, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!” Needless to say, the disciples are pretty much freaked out by the event, and I imagine it didn’t help any when Jesus instructed them not to tell anyone about it — at least, not until after the resurrection.

If the story as recounted in the Gospels (the Transfiguration appears in all three of the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke) were not amazing enough, the Renaissance painter Raphael depicts Jesus levitating as he chats with Moses and Elijah!

What are we to make of the Transfiguration? One point I find remarkable is how it appears in every Gospel except for John, which is popularly assumed to the most mystical of the four accounts of Jesus in the Bible. And yes, there’s still plenty of mystery in John’s gospel, but the Transfiguration reminds us that all four of the gospel writers saw Jesus in at least some sort of a mystical light.

Skeptics could easily pass this off as a bit of pious folklore, right up there with walking on water and feeding the five thousand: stories meant to burnish Jesus’s image as the Son of God, that have little to say to the circumstances of our lives today. But I believe the mystical stories of the Bible needs to be read mythologically, not literally. So when we encounter the Transfigured Jesus, we might ask ourselves: where, in our lives, could we benefit from being infused with supernatural light? What would we say, or ask, if two heroes of ours from the past suddenly appeared before us? And dare we believe that God — the mystery of Love — could actually love us, and be pleased with us, even if we are merely a tiny particle in the overall body of Christ? And if we dared to believe that we are deeply loved, how could that change our lives?

You and I may never glow with supernatural radiance; but it’s just as reasonable to say that we may never fully recognize how much light is within us. After all, Thomas Merton saw that everyone is “walking around shining like the sun.” If we trust Merton, then we are living embodiments of the Transfiguration: right here and right now. May we learn to live accordingly.

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