The Lord's glory

Luke 9: 28 - 36

....they saw his glory....

This second Sunday of Lent highlights the 'transfiguration'. Sleepy disciples awakened to Jesus' glory, wanting to stay on by building tents....but the life giving Word to them was "Listen to him". Experiences of God's glory, of his consolations that come in ways we cannot deny and will always remember are not too frequent. We want them to last or at least to be granted more often. The disciples would rather stay on the mountaintop, rather than go down the plain to face with Jesus his coming journey to Jerusalem. If only they really listened to him (rather than filtered through their own expectations), they would have understood that his mission included the Cross before the Resurrection. Yet perhaps in some way this experience brought faint hope of light in their hours of darkness, when they thought their whole endeavor with Jesus was a complete failure.

But maybe these experiences of beholding God's glory are not so rare (2 Cor 3: 18). Perhaps they are there but we fail to see, to hear and to touch. They don't have to carry anything so triumphalistic that some Christian traditions would have us believe - like visions and other sensory manifestations. The very sense of Jesus' presence is evidence of his glory, his risenness; whether the awareness comes in times of ease or difficulty, in quietness or in splendor.

There are many causes for our spiritual lethargy. The renewal called for during Lent may help us discover and work against the blocks to spiritual awareness. How else could we answer the call to journey with the Lord in his passion and resurrection?