August 6th – The Feast of the Transfiguration

Living the life of faith is often hard when things are not going well in our spiritual lives. We sit and pray, yet no nice feelings of peace or warmth seem to come. It becomes just plain boring to spend time with the Lord, to the extent that when our time for regular prayer comes, even the most unimportant thing that we have been putting off for months becomes the most urgent task! Or we drag ourselves off to Church, or to our room and just sit there, wishing that time would pass….. Anyone who has ever made some sort of attempt to pray will have experienced the closeness of God – a mini Transfiguration moment, if you like, when God seemed very real and present to us. These kind of experiences are a gift, but often few and far between. When things seem less exciting, what should we do?

Well, there is much to learn from today’s Gospel (Matthew 17:1-9). Once the disciples have experienced the presence of the Lord, in all its wonder and terror, they are told to rise, and it is all over. They wanted a moment that would last forever, but they have to get up, be on their way…. after all, there are things to do. But of course, this does not mean that they have to leave the presence of God. The appearance of Moses and Elijah with Jesus – the Law and the Prophets side by side with the one who fulfills both – serves as a reminder to them (and to us) of how God is continually present. For us it is a reminder of God’s special presence in the scriptures and in the sacraments, which reveal Christ and offer him to us. So we need not tie God’s loving care of us to feelings and emotions, but trust that through our prayer, our reading of the Bible and our participation in the liturgical life of the Church, we continue to receive Christ in our lives, and be transformed by him…. transformed so that we can go into the world and make him known.