Fr Robert Hendrickson

Dear Friends in Christ,

Today’s Gospel is the story of the Transfiguration. One of my favorite places to visit in the Holy Land is the Mount of Transfiguration. It’s a place where the weather changes on a dime. In one minute it can be sunny and clear, the next rainy, and the next foggy. The places shifts and changes with brisk winds and winding paths.

You make your way to the Church of the Transfiguration. It’s a stunning space. It crowns the Mount with tall towers and glittering mosaics. All along the way, and once you arrive, you’re aware of a deep…Presence. It’s a place that feels apart from time and yet deeply held in it.

Your time there feels set apart somehow too. That’s the simplest definition of holy — set aside for reverent use.

I suppose the way there is like life itself. It can change on a dime. Its seasons are unpredictable. Its path is winding and it’s turns sometimes sharp. We live this life sometimes feeling like time is rushing, carrying us along, and sometimes like we’re paused as the world spins too quickly.

Our lives are themselves sites, again and again, of Transfiguration. We live them sometimes seeing so clearly God’s radiant blessing. We find ourselves in those times and places where we fear to turn away lest we lose the moment. The Christian journey is one in which we pray and serve and worship and more so that we become more deeply aware of these moments — and so that we see the truth that the whole of our life, the brief moment that it is, is holy.

We too, for all our days and in all our diverse hopes and longings, are set aside for God’s purpose. We too, can be holy. We too can be a way for people to see God’s light shining. For we, for all our days, are the beloved of God. His children. And living by that light can only change us and make us too signs of his Presence on the way,

Yours in Christ,

Fr Robert