The Transfiguration

Lately, I have been reading a book by Rowan Williams, the current Archbishop of Canterbury, on the lives of the desert mothers and fathers. Whatever you think of the politics of Archbishop Williams, in my view, it is fascinating reading; it describes, in great detail the men and women who lived incredibly austere lives during the final years of the Roman Empire. They came from lives of privilege and from want, and they all gave their lives to work and to "pray unceasingly", as Paul tells his followers. They were people who were ordinary and remarkable at the same time, and they have a great deal to teach us, especially those of us who are very much "in the world".

This book has been an interesting counterpoint to the Transfiguration, which we hear about in today’s gospel. In the eastern church, this day is especially important, because it has to do with how we approach prayer. The disciples, also remarkably ordinary men, follow Jesus up a mountain to pray, and there they witness him glowing white as he speaks with Moses and Elijah. The idea of light, in the early eastern church and, to some degree with us, gets bound-up with what is essentially holy; those who attain this holiness through great spiritual feats and discipline take on the glory of God, just as God takes on a human form for our sakes. There are even stories of great masters of prayer showing a visible radiance as a foretaste of the kingdom of God made manifest in them.

Mark's version of the Transfiguration happens immediately after a discussion about discipleship, in which Jesus tells his followers that those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for his sake will save it. The focus is on the willingness to take up the cross daily, of faithful endurance in the trials, large and small, that define us. We are caught in this tension: like Peter, James and John, we are witnesses to the divine presence, while as disciples, we are called to day-to-day struggles, the small things that are bound-up with our relationships, with each other and with God. Like Peter, we want to make dwelling-places for the divine, to make the grand gesture, hardly knowing what we are saying, but it is in what seems most routine that we are saved. It is not in the great foundation gift but in the simple act of saying "yes" to what we confront moment-by-moment that redeems us.

It is easy to see this in our own lives. If you are like me, we contribute to the causes we believe in. We give our time and energy to things that will serve the world we want to nurture: we want to make a difference. But faith means something more; it lies in a tension—the glory that we can glimpse only fleetingly, viewed through the lens of what is most ordinary in us. It is in what Williams calls the "relentlessly prosaic element in the journey to holiness" that we are changed, and that the world is changed with us.

The desert mothers and fathers realized all of this. They were not beggars: they plaited ropes, they wove baskets to sell, anything that would not interrupt the rhythm of their prayers. One of their great obstacles, the "passions", was akedia, sometimes called the "noonday demon". It is a kind of supreme restlessness, the feeling that says, "Is this really what it is all for? After all, I could be nicer, better, easier to get along with, holier if only the situation were different", and so we start to locate the spiritual world outside ourselves. The desert monastics understood it to be a great danger because we are an embodied people. We can indulge our fantasies, we can pretend to be dazzling, to be apart from the laws of cause and effect, but it so happens that we are involved in other people’s cause and effect. It is not the great gesture but the small thing done in great love, and the next small thing, and the next, that saves us. It is the diapered baby, the lunch made for one who would have nothing else that day, through which we are transformed.

That is why, in the Great Thanksgiving, we offer ourselves in response to what was first offered on our behalf. The fifth-century monastics were nourished by time spent in prayer and the simplest kind of work; for them, they were interwoven like strands on a rope. We too are formed by the smallest of things; the challenge is to find the wonder of God’s presence in the everyday, the ordinary and sometimes difficult things that shape us. The great work is not to greet everything with "spiritual joy and great excitement" but, in Williams’ words, to preserve the "quiet motivation to keep our eyes open", to see the presence of the holy in the everyday events that fill our lives.

There is an ancient collection of sayings by the desert mothers and fathers; one of my favorites is a conversation between two monks that is about what appears small and the greatness that lies behind it.

Lot went to Joseph and said, "Abba, as far as I can, I keep a moderate rule, with a little fasting, and prayer, and meditation, and quiet, and, as far as I can, I try to cleanse my heart of evil thoughts. What else should I do?" Then the hermit stood up and spread his hands to heaven, and his fingers shone like ten flames of fire, and he said, "If you will, you can become all flame."

My own prayer is that, even in what appears smallest in our lives, we can become all flame in the wonder of the presence of God.