When we hear the account of the Transfiguration, we may think simplistically that something special happened to Jesus, and the disciples saw it. Bully for them. But we are here, now, and we have never seen it! How can we believe it?
Indeed, what event made a big difference to yourself and the people you live and work with? A silence descends on us - most of us live our lives in the mundane, not the miraculous.
But something must give hope, meaning and focus. Or why else would people live such heroic lives, doing ordinary things extraordinarily well. Be they the stay-at-home parent, the shift worker who only sees their children when they're asleep, the lonely long distance commuter who sees not Moses and Elijah, but the red tail-lights of a traffic jam with the accompanying swish of wipers or a jammed carriage filled with the tinny sounds of not so personal entertainment devices.
What keeps us going – because something certainly does and prevents us from what early Christians called "acedia", "the noonday devil", namely, a sadness that can take you over for no apparent reason.
Look carefully this 70th day after Christmas, or the Glory of God may pass us by and we miss it. As you search for something…someone to make you happy, we just may miss what God has sent as our Transfiguring moment. The beauty of a dependent child, hand trustingly in yours, a familiar landscape shot through by a shaft of light to surreal beauty, or what we do for others. We need to be mystics of the mundane.
(Comments to Tom at tomascox@eircom.net )