Fr Mark Schultz

Dear Friend,

In a quirk of our lectionary, we read Saint Mark’s account of the Transfiguration today…though the Feast of the Transfiguration is tomorrow (6 August), and the Office Readings for the Feast don’t include a Transfiguration narrative from the Gospel.  The readings for tomorrow, though, are rich and wonderful and lead to a deeper engagement with the Mystery that the event of the Transfiguration reveals, so we’ll leave considerations of that facet of the Mystery for tomorrow!

There is, though, a dimension to the reading I want to explore with you today, and it’s related to verses 9 and 10: “As they [the disciples] were coming down the mountain, he [Jesus] ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.  So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what this rising from the dead could mean.”  Beloved, I cherish these moments in the Gospel where it’s explicitly revealed that the disciples were on a journey of faith with Jesus; that they didn’t know what was ahead, even when Jesus told them in no uncertain terms; that they were being asked to live into a vision of what is possible for God and for us-in-relationship-with-God that was bigger than anything they could name, ask for, or imagine.  They questioned “what this rising from the dead could mean.”

I would imagine, too, that even after the Resurrection, the disciples questioned what it could all mean.  Sure enough, Acts, the Epistles, even the Revelation to John all depict the community wrestling in one way or another with what it meant, struggling to understand what’s happened, struggling to voice, to describe, to live a growing apprehension that the world had changed, had been undone and was being re-made into a thing of glory both marvelous and wondrous strange…and nothing could ever be as it was before ever again.  What it meant to be alive had shifted.  Something new had happened, was happening, and all of humanity was being invited into this newness.

The fullness of God’s goodness was beyond the disciples’ understanding.  Dear Friend, it’s beyond our understanding, too.  The gift not only of comprehending this, but of leaning into this with all our being, of knowing that God’s horizons are broader than ours, can be a gift of great comfort and extraordinary joy.  And it can also mean an experience of spiritual anguish, of uncertainty, of a disorienting kind instability.  Many mystics of our tradition have spoken of this experience as being plunged into a Dark Night.  And the assurance we’re given from these fellow travelers on the Way of Love, is that God is accomplishing in us a work that we cannot yet understand or imagine…and God is also fitting our understanding to the work God is accomplishing, to the end that: when the time is right, the goodness of God at work in us and in the world around us will newly dawn in us from an unlooked-for, widened, and widening spiritual horizon.

In the meantime, the mystics say, we’re called to faith.  We’re not called to puzzle out the Mystery or explain it away or attempt to wrap our minds around it—we’ll find, after we’ve done those things, that what we hold is not a Mystery but our own preconceptions about how the Mystery should work.  We’re called to let the Mystery grow us in ways we do not yet know even how to desire to grow.  We’re called to let the Mystery hold and uphold us through the darkness.  We’re called not to avoid the Dark Night, but to plunge into it, the light of faith leading the way.  And this is faith not in ourselves to get through whatever it is we’re going through, but faith in God, trust in God’s grace, to guide us and lead us to the place we are meant to be.  Trust in the One who knows the good and desires for us the good for which we can neither ask nor imagine…because that One is the Font and Source of all Goodness.  Trust in the One whose faithfulness is the ground of our faith. 

Beloved, as we’re drawn to question the Mystery (as we frequently are)…I hope we can train our questions to lead us to the edge of our knowing, and trust that God will lead us, by grace through faith beyond that edge into a Mystery in which we discover ourselves fully known, fully alive, fully aflame with love as we walk with our Lord Jesus Christ.

Under the Mercy,
Fr Mark+