Wait for the gifts

Sunday’s Gospel tells of the Transfiguration of our Lord on Mount Tabor: the quintessential image of Christian glory.

This Gospel is a bright light, literally a mountaintop experience, in the midst of our Lenten journey, but this journey also presents us with images not so glorious.

As we journey through Lent and as we journey through life we encounter images of sin, suffering and affliction. Sometimes they are more than images: sometimes they are concrete, painful realities in our own lives and in the lives of those we love.

For many people, the greatest personal affliction would be catastrophic illness – especially one that took everything away except the breath of life itself. Our imagination shudders in terror at the claustrophobic purgatory of being trapped in a lifeless body.

We know people in that dreadful state. In particular, most people know about a young woman in Florida, Terri Schiavo, whose estranged husband may try to starve her to death this coming week.

The legal and political twists and turns of that particular situation as well as the histories and agendas of all the people involved are complex in the extreme, not to mention the natural emotions of such a situation and the frustration of medical science, like all forms of human knowledge, being far short of absolute certainty.

As we consider this soul-churning situation, we look again to Sunday’s readings and these verses from the Responsorial Psalm catch our eye:

Behold, the eye of the LORD
is upon them that fear him,
upon them that hope in his mercy;
To deliver their soul from death,
and to keep them alive in famine.
Psalm 33:18-19

It is easy to imagine Terri praying these words, somewhere deep beneath the shadows of her injured brain.

None of us can hear her, of course. In her prayer, she is totally alone with God.

Does she also ask God for death? Perhaps, but the answer must come from God, for not only is God the Creator but God is also the Redeemer.

Life is God’s gift – for God alone to take back – and so too is the ultimate end, purpose, and meaning of life a gift from God – to be found in eternal life, which comes from God alone. To try to snatch that gift away – either by force or by neglect – is a mistake that can have eternally deadly consequences.

As difficult and as painful as life can sometimes be, it is better to wait for the Lord’s time - for the eternal gifts he prepares for us are greater than any temporary darkness.

We await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ,
who will change our lowly body
to be like his glorious body,
by the power which enables him
even to subject all things to himself.
Phillipians 3:20:b-21

And that leads us back to the Transfiguration:

And he led them up a high mountain by themselves.
And he was transfigured before them;
his face shone like the sun…