This Sunday coming up we will hear from the same Evangelist about the Transfiguration. Far from presenting us with the seemingly powerless man in barren places, just keeping it together in the face of trials, we see Jesus the Christ, the Son of the living God. He is manifested in Glory, as He will be known in the Resurrection. The three Apostle witnesses, Peter, James and John see Jesus in a dazzling vision, with Moses and Elijah by His side. Moses represents the Law, Elijah the prophets: together they represent the Old Testament that foretold the coming Messiah. This vision, powerful but short lived, is meant to give these three pivotal disciples hope, a memory they can latch on to when the horror of the Passion unfolds, and they are themselves tempted to lose hope.
In many ways we live between these two realities in the Christian life. We may not always be in the desert, thirsty and hungry for God's presence, rather we may find that most of life is pretty mundane. We got to school or work, maybe we are retired. We have our routines that eventually become ruts. We go to Mass on Sunday, maybe try to pray the rosary daily or read the Scriptures or a holy book. We may be tempted to wonder if these practises of piety are really useful because we don't feel anything. There can be extreme moments of crisis in our lives: the death of a loved one, losing a job, suffering a serious illness, where we really do feel alone and abandoned.
On the other hand maybe we have been on retreat, or went to some type of charismatic prayer service, or had some other peak moment of prayer. We felt the presence of the Lord very clearly. Maybe we came back to the Faith after having fallen away, and feel the Lord directing us, drawing us in to His embrace. We have had that Transfiguration moment that changed our lives. Then we get discouraged because that feeling doesn't last.
The danger I'm thinking of here isn't so much that we'll want to "stay on the mountain," as Peter suggested (though that is a possibility), but rather that we may go chasing after experiences to keep the spiritual high going. Jesus call us to Faith, which St. Paul tells us works through love (Gal. 5:6). Faith isn't a feeling, but a gift that animates how we live. It guides our actions. It is a supernatural virtue that expresses itself through the actions of our lives. It is a habit that itself forms in us the other supernatural virtue of charity. In truth, the two things go together, for as the letter of James tells us, faith without charity (good works) is dead (2:17). This type of faith is only true when it transcends the feelings of a particular moment. Faith is meant to be manifested in how we treat others when we feel like doing the right thing, and more importantly, when we don't.
What do I mean by chasing after experiences to keep the spiritual high going? It could be filling our weekends with retreat after retreat or charismatic prayer services. These are certainly not bad, but if we are under the impression that the faith is only alive in us when we feel it, or are experiencing a spiritual high, then we aren't really following the Lord out of love, but out of emotional need. In a way we are trying to "stay on the mountain," rather than taking those special moments of insight as inspiration and hope.
The devil uses this chasing after the spiritual high to tempt us, as well. Many people come to me distressed that they don't feel consolation in prayer, especially in charismatic prayer. They hear others talking about how the Spirit is alive in their heart, and how Jesus speaks to them. Those who haven't had these experiences wonder what the problem is. They begin to think that their faith isn't real, or worse that their is something wrong with them that God is punishing them somehow. These seeds of doubt are planted by the enemy so that the weeds of despair may grow.
I don't mean to be picking on charismatics. We have a very active charismatic group in our parish, with many of its members numbered among the leaders of the broader community. But there is a danger when we put too much of a stress on feelings in the Christian life. We can equate consolations and emotional states of mind with faith. As Archbishop Sheen might have put it, faith isn't tested in the short spiritual highs but in the long pull of living our life in Christ over the decades.
Another example of chasing after a spiritual high involves becoming preoccupied with Marian apparitions. Again, I'm not a skeptic. I've made pilgrimages to both Guadalupe and Lourdes, and have Fatima high up on my bucket list. Both visits represented profound, dare I say life changing events for me. But in the end I had to go home and live the devotion that was enkindled in those sacred shrines. Those moments of connection with the Mother of God were meant to spur me to greater union with her Son by imitating the virtues that made her the first disciple.
It was tempting to want to stay and gaze at the mysterious image she left us at Tepeyac: contemplating her posture, and all the prophetic power contained therein. I would have loved to have just stayed in the Grotto by the River Gave, touching the wet rock while remaining dry, just below where our Lady stood, caught up in the natural beauty of the Pyrenees that lift the mind and heart to God. In both cases how wonderful it would have been to just build a spiritual tent, staying hidden, just Our Lady and me. But that's not the point of those apparitions. There is a reason our Lady only appears for a limited time in any of her apparition sites. She doesn't call us to come and stay. She asks us to come and pray, be recharged - renewed, and then to go back home to follow Jesus more closely. She calls us to change our lives, repenting of our sins. She calls us to be peace makers. She asks us to imitate her who, when she received the angel’s message consented, taking the Son of God into her body and her heart. She then immediately went out and served her cousins Elizabeth.
We need those moments on the mountain top, gazing at a miracle imprinted on a tilma, or in a quiet grotto caught up in prayer, as long as we remember that they only last a moment. They are meant to live on in our heart, reminding us of the greater glory God has in mind for us. The sad truth is that most of our discipleship is spent in a desert of drudgery. It's changing diapers and cleaning the toilet. It's filling out reports and filing paperwork. It's doing our homework and feeding the dog. It's doing the million little trifles we are board by, but when they're done for love these small acts make us saints.
We live between the desert and the mountain top. Most of our lives on planet Earth don't reach either extreme of desolation or exaltation, but is lived somewhere in the muddled middle. May the highs encourage us, strengthen us, give us courage for when the bad times come. May they also get us through the ordinary monotonies which can seem just as unbearable. Most of all, we need to perceiver in prayer and charity, with God's grace, when we feel the high, but especially when we don't, for it's in those moments Christ makes us saints.
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