In scripture, the mountain represents a very special and privileged space where human and divine encounters take place. These encounters are high-point moments in the life and journey of a person.
The Transfiguration, in Christ’s own life and journey, stands side by side with other high-point moments: His Baptism, His Cross and Resurrection and His Ascension. In His Baptism, we first hear His mission and His identity is revealed (“This is my Beloved Son with whom I am well pleased.”) and this is reaffirmed in His Transfiguration.
In His Cross and Resurrection, He assumes His identity as the Risen Lord and completes His mission. In the Ascension, He returns to His glory and majesty that was His from the beginning and tells His apostles, and us, to continue His mission.
Fr. Benny Calpotura, SJ, who is a major influence in the spiritual formation of a whole generation of Jesuit priests and religious, often tells us that high-point moments of grace and inspiration are few and far between. Yet it is these “rare” moments that define our identity and mission and that fuel and inspire a heroic, missionary life.
Rare moments
What are these high-point moments in our life?
Pope Francis’ confession story is one such moment, when at 17 years old he goes to confession and experiences the overwhelming mercy of God, so he eventually becomes a Jesuit priest. Sixty years later he becomes Pope and makes God’s mercy one of the cornerstones of his ministry as Pope.
We reflected on the story of David from the foreword of “Discovering Your Personal Vocation” by Fr. Herbert Alphonso, SJ.
At age 16, he traveled to Bombay with his father and literally tripped over a mother and a child sleeping in the mud. He would later describe that moment when he felt it was “all there.”
He eventually “left everything behind” and put up a nonprofit corporation to help the homeless.
‘Illumination’
Adam Braun, at the age of 25, started Pencils of Promise, a for-purpose organization that helps improve education in developing countries through the building of classrooms and teacher training. This was inspired by two high-point moments.
One was when he was caught in a bad storm when he joined Semester at Sea in January 2005. At the height of the crisis, he felt an “overwhelming calm and knew without a shadow of doubt that it was not [his] time to perish … I knew I had something more to do here, and in that moment I found a sense of purpose.”
While in India, he asked a young boy begging on the streets this question, and the boy said he wanted a pencil.
This became his high-point moment, a “profoundly powerful moment of illumination” when he realized it was his “mission to eradicate global injustice” and alleviate the plight of millions of children deprived of good education.
What elements can we glean from these stories of high-point moments? One, there is an experience of getting out of their comfort zones, which can go either way. It can either “crush us or cast us among the stars.”
The helpful “tool” to not only regain our bearings but to discover our mission is prayer and/or reflection. This in turn brings us back to our story—the story of our journey. It is the gift of remembering our Judeo-Christian tradition, the grace of self-awareness and self-acceptance of Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises.
We ask ourselves now: How does our present environment encourage a prayerful, reflective, discerning heart and soul?
Today’s feast is a good reminder that we must have moments of transfiguration.
It reminds us also to go down into the world and bring the grace of this moment to others, moments that are few and far between, yet enough to inspire and fuel a life that can make a difference in the lives of many. —CONTRIBUTED