Moments of Transfiguration

Today's gospel featured the Transfiguation of Christ. Before some of the terrified apostles, the Divine Christ shines through the human Chirst. "This is my Son Whom I love" speaks God the Father. "Listen to Him." These ordinary men are vouchsafed a peek at what awaits all men if only we do listen.

Father Lopez was the celebrant at today's Mass at St. Victor's, Los Angeles. He suggested that we, too, experience Transfiguring moments, where the Presence of God Himself, in all Three Persons is manifest. Our priest said that his experience, this week of Transfiguration,was seeing a new grandfather embrace his new grandchild at a hospital. Think" he suggested, "of your experiences of Transfiguration." You have had them.

Funny he should say that. We have had much needed rain these last days. My bed is in the living room for I have been making improvements to my apartment, beginning with what seems endless plastering and painting, with the help of my father's brother, my uncle Steve. The bedroom was the second, and so I moved the heavy tempurpedic, in pieces into the living room, already painted in a lovely "orange confection" as the color is called courtesy of Home Depot. This morning the day dawned with a pristine sunshine that glanced off the walls and lit the new color. On the way to Mass, touched by breeze and the sight of after rain blue and cotton clouds, I felt particularly free and oddly safe. I actually thanked God for the day and for my experience of it, pointing out to him, in disclaimer, that I realized that by tomorrow, my gratefulness of today could easily dissipate into the internal gloom of tomorrow. But for that time, on the way to Church, in Church hearing my priest describe his moment that resonated with my moment, and driving down to Long Beach for a long delayed color (there were three inches of gray!) and trim, I was glanced by the Divine. It was change. It was change I begged to be made permanent. And though I know that in this life, such moments are transient, they give me such hope for the future, actually the eternal which has no past, present or future. To experience the Divine Presence can only be exponentially the feeling of today.