Getting Ready to Pray                     

Devotion, prayer, liturgy are calls to simple and honest closeness. To try to figure it out and explain it cheapens it and flattens it out into a practice rather than a delight.

Many of us orient our lives, in varying degrees, to and from the Eucharistic liturgy. We try also to be women and men who pray. We will see that Abraham and Isaac have an extreme close calling with God. Peter, James and John experience an unusual coming together and communion. All five will go off into the regular, back-down-the-hill living of their lives.

Their faith seems to be strengthened, but at the same time their understanding seems to experience befuddlement. They would naturally be asking themselves about the “realness” of what had just happened.

Some Thoughts 

We hear first of the terrifying story of Abraham’s being tested by God. He is called to take his only son Isaac to a distant place and sacrifice him by the knife and then to burn him on an altar which Isaac would help build. Abraham does take his son, who helps carry the fire and the wood, and off they go in a journey of trust. Upon arrival at a divinely-appointed hill, the dirty deed is set in motion, no questions asked, except by Isaac who asks about the lamb to be slain.

At the point of the knife’s being about to enter Isaac who has been bound and placed on the altar, the voice of the Lord’s messenger calls for a timeout. Abraham has proven his faith so that he is not only the father of Isaac, but the “Father of Faith” and the eternal model for the People of God. A ram is tangled up in a near-by bush and so God has provided the means for the sacrifice. One of the great joys of human intimacy is that it goes beyond reason. I enjoy asking couples whom I have the privilege to be preparing for marriage, “Why do you love her/him?” The relationships I trust the most are those who fumble around for words which might express some good reasons. Love is not reasonable. When there are many verbal reasons, I suspect this is a transaction and not a transfiguration. 

The Gospel presents us with the “Transfiguration,” or the “the Changing of the Garb.” Peter, James and John go up a hill with Jesus. They have a most intimate encounter with Jesus, God the beyond, and of course, with themselves. Jesus dazzles his followers with a state of glorification. Moses and Elijah are seen conversing with Jesus.

Moses is the “man of the Law” and Elijah the “man of Prophesy.” Jesus is the fulfillment of the Law and the prophets, and the “voice” again ordains him as “My beloved Son.” The terrified trio is encouraged also to “listen to him.” 

Suddenly, there they are, just the four again and nobody else, no other sounds. They leave with this experience and their questions about what it was about. They are charged not to speak about it until the “rising from the dead,” and they did not understand this either, but kept on walking back down from this hill of intimacy. 

I love the Eucharist for so many reasons, but the very prime reason is that it defies adequate intellectual explanation and I love that freedom from the factual, the scientific, the demand of my arrogant mind.

The Eucharist is more than a transfiguration; it is a total transfer from a something to a Somebody. The Somebody’s changing of the other somebodies who gather around the Holy Place is also unexplainable, but real.

We never know if our prayer was real. Abraham is our Father of Faith and our brothers of faith walked down that hill with questions, doubts and wonderings about what in heaven’s name was all that about.

Questions do not dampen faith, cheap answers do. Living the faith is the proof of intimacy, just as living out married love intensifies and proves the leap.

I will walk before the Lord, in the land of the living.
I believed, even when I said, “I am greatly afflicted.”
(Psalm 116)