"His clothes became dazzling white." (Mk. 9:3)
Mount Tabor
March 4, 2012, 2nd Sunday of lent
March 4, 2012, 2nd Sunday of lent
Genesis 22: 1-2, 9,
10-13, 15-18
Romans 8: 31-34 Mark 9:2-10
A reading
from the holy Gospel according to Mark
Glory
to you, Lord.
Jesus took Peter, James, and John and led them up a high mountain apart by themselves. There He was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white - whiter than anyone in the world could wash them. Then Elijah appeared to them along with Moses, and they were conversing with Jesus. Then Peter said to Jesus in reply, "Master, oh how good it is for us to be up here! Let’s build three shelters here - one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah." He hardly knew what to say, they were so terrified. Then a cloud came, casting a shadow over them. And from the cloud came a voice saying, "This is my beloved Son. Listen to Him!" They took a quick look around but did not see anyone but Jesus only with them. As they were coming down from the mountain, He charged them not to relate what they had seen to anyone, except when the Son of Man had risen from the dead. So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what rising from the dead meant.
Gospel of
the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord
Jesus Christ.
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Introduction
Purim – an age-old story
This coming Thursday, March 8,
2012, is the Jewish Feast of Purim. It celebrates the survival of the Jews marked for
death in Persia in the 5th cent BC. According to the Book of Esther, a henchman of the Persian king planned a
general massacre of Jews, and he set the date by
casting dice. “He ordered dice to be cast to find out the right day and month
to carry out his plot.” (Esther 3:7) Dice in Hebrew is `purim.’ Hence the Feast
of Purim is the Feast of the Dice. A day of fasting immediately precedes Purim,
and the Book of Esther is read in the synagogue. On Purim Jews exchange gifts
and make donations to the poor.
We live in the immediate memory
of the Holocaust, which marked for death six million Jews in the Nazi concentration
camps of Auschwitz, Dachau and Buchenwald. The Book
of Esther and the Feast of Purim are about the age-old story of the `persecuted
Jew.’
The Transfiguration
Jesus’ forty-day ordeal in the desert is always the
theme of the 1st Sunday of Lent in all three liturgical cycles. (Mt. 4:1-11; Mk. 1:12-13; Lk. 4:1-13) The Transfiguration of Jesus on Mt. Tabor is always the theme of the 2nd
Sunday of Lent in all three liturgical cycles. (Mt. 17:1-8; Mk. 9:2-8; Lk. 9:28-36) The mountain on which the Transfiguration
took place is called Mt. Tabor in Christian tradition. On Tabor Jesus’
face shines with glory, and His clothes become dazzling white. And a voice from
a cloud proclaims, “This is my beloved Son.” On that height 3 earthly witnesses (Peter, James and John) and 3 heavenly witnesses
(Moses, Elijah and the voice from heaven) testify to the fact of the Transfiguration.
And that satisfies the Old Testament law requiring 3 witnesses to attest to the
truth of any fact. (Dt.: 19:15)
In
his second epistle Peter personally and stoutly testifies to the
Tabor experience.
My very own eyes saw His splendor and
glory. I was there on the holy mountain when He shone forth with the glory
given Him by God his Father. I heard that glorious, majestic voice calling down
from heaven, saying, “This is my much beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.”
(II Peter 1:16-18)
Up there on the lofty heights of Mt Tabor, Peter is ecstatic. He is emoting and crying out, "Oh how
good it is for us to be up here!" It’s so good that he wants to dig in and
hunker down there for good: “Lord, let’s build three shelters up here, one for
you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” (Mk 9:5) Not only is Mt. Tabor high, Peter also is
high. On Tabor something spectacular is taking place. Christians call it
a Transfiguration, and psychologists call it a religious experience.
Paul’s religious experience
A religious experience
can happen not only on a lofty height like Mt. Tabor but also down in the sinful
valley of human existence. St. Paul of Tarsus had a religious experience as he
was on the road to Damascus to persecute Christians there. Suddenly a light
from the sky flashed around him, he fell to the ground, and he
heard a voice.
(In a religious experience one often hears voices.) The voice cried out, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” (Act
9:1--5) That experience turned Saul of Tarsus into St. Paul - the great Apostle to the Gentiles.
Augustine’s religious experience
St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430), a rounder who had
begotten a son out of wedlock, had a religious experience in the serene garden
of his villa. In his Confessions[1] he
writes that one day he heard a voice which kept saying, “Take and read!
Take and read!” Augustine at first thought it was kids at play outside his
villa’s wall. Then suddenly seized with a strange impulse, he picked up the Scriptures which lay near at hand, and they
fell open to Paul’s epistle to the Romans: “Let us behave decently as in the
daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and
debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. Rather, let us put on the Lord
Jesus Christ, and let us cease dwelling on the flesh and gratifying its
desires.” (Rom. 13:13-14) That experience turned Augustine into the great
Bishop of Hippo in North Africa and a great doctor of the Church.
Francis’ religious experience
St. Francis of
Assisi (1182-1226) had a religious experience as he was praying before an
ancient crucifix[2] in a
dilapidated chapel of San Damiano. In his prayer he asked, “What, Lord, do you
want from me?”To his surprise he heard a voice reply. “Francis, repair my Church!”
The simple man thought the voice was calling him to repair the rickety chapel
of San Damiano. As history would prove, that experience was calling Francis to
become the father of the great Franciscan Family, which would repair the Church
down through the centuries, far more powerfully than Luther or the Council of Trent.
Jung in high expectations of a religious experience
Karl Jung, the
father of modern psychology, relates how he was in high expectation of a
religious experience on the day of his very first Holy Communion. Because of
what had been told him, he expected the event would be a truly religious
experience, forcing him to exclaim as did the apostle Peter on Mt. Tabor, “Oh
how good it is for us to be here.”
In familiar
robes, his father, the minister of the celebration, stood behind the altar,
reading the prayers. On the white altar cloth lay large trays filled with small
pieces of bread which came from the local baker. He watched his father eat a
piece of the bread and then sip the wine which came from the local tavern. His
father then passed the cup to one of the old men. All were stiff, solemn, and
it seemed to him, uninterested. And though he kept looking on in suspense, Jung
could not see nor guess whether anything unusual was going on inside of them.
He saw no sadness and no joy. And then came his turn to eat the bread which
tasted flat, and to sip the wine which tasted sour.
After the final
prayer, no one was heard to cry out, "Oh how good it is for us to be here!"
No one was heard to say, “Let’s build shelters up here, and linger on.” No Mt. Tabor
had taken place! Instead, Jung writes that after the final prayer "all
peeled out of the church with faces that were neither depressed nor illumined with
joy, but faces which seemed to say, `Well, that's that.'" Only gradually in the course of the following
days did it dawn on Jung that nothing had happened, and he found himself exclaiming,
“Oh how bad it was for me to be there! I must never go back again." His
first Communion proved to be his very last! (Memories, Dreams, Reflections by Jung)
Mt. Tabor is for Mt. Calvary
Mt. Tabor is not a mountain in and for
itself. There’s no digging in up there. There’s no building shelters, hunkering
down and curling up comfortably in a religious high up there. “We’re getting
off this mountain,” Jesus says, “and we’re going down into the valley of real
life.” (Mk. 9) The special Preface for this 2nd Sunday of Lent says
the high of Mt. Tabor is for the low of Mt. Calvary which lies ahead:
On your holy
mountain Jesus revealed Himself in glory in the presence of his disciples in
order to prepare them for His approaching death.
Conclusion
Nothing better
There’s nothing worse
than experiencing a boring service which sends you rushing out of church “neither
depressed nor illumined with joy” but with a face which simply says “Well,
that's that!” Such an experience can eventually send you out of church for
good! That’s what it did for Jung. On the other hand, there’s nothing better
than finding yourself on Mt. Tabor after a church service, and exclaiming, “Oh
how good it was for me to be here today!
I’m ready now to go down into the valley of real life and face the week
before me. And what’s more, I’m
definitely coming back next Sunday!”
[1] Book VIII,
chapter 12 of the Confessions
[2] That crucifix, an icon painted on
canvas and applied to a cross of walnut wood is the work of an unknown artist.
It now stands in the church of St.
Clare in Assisi as the most prized possession of the Franciscan family. It is
the world’s most reproduced cross.
