The Tranfiguraion is described in at least two places in the Gospels.  It is where Jesus appears to three of the Apostles, Peter, John and James in his heavenly form where “His appearance changed from from inside to out.”

As the days of the week go by and I say my rosary I’ve noticed that I have the easiest time remembering the sorrowful part where Christ carrys the cross  and the hardest time with the luminous part where  Christ is Transfigured.  Thinking on that I realized that I have carried an endless amount of wooden timbers on my back in my day as a carpenter.  I knew exactly what that feels like.   But the opposite was apparently happening with The Transfiguration, the Fourth Luminous Mystery, which seemed like I could never bring forth.   What was going on there?   Could I change that?

So I jumped at an opportunity to give a reflection on the Transfiguration for Mass on one of the Lenten Sundays.  Yes, I will get closer to it somehow and it will be my friend and I will be able to remember it.  So, this last weekend I spent at a retreat with a bunch of bible scholars and I thought perfect,  I’ll corral one of those guys and he will fill me in and that’s all I’ll need.  But there is a flaw in that.  To have one of the scholars fill me in would give me a  better  intellectual understanding maybe but I already had that to some degree and would that help me to remember any better?     See the difference between that and hauling heavy timbers on my back as that relates to carrying the cross.

But fortunately I had a dream one of the nights at the retreat and it was the answer to my problem, it would provide me with the link that I needed.   The gist of the dream was meeting an incredible woman who did ” change her appearance from inside out. ”   I was mesmerized by her personality, her way.   I was  totally “in heaven” traveling and just being with her.  But here is the twist, she had a major injury to her face, the area around her right cheek bone had been at some time badly mangled.  I had never seen anything like it before and there it was to stay.  But  at the same time I had never seen anyone with that mastery of letting their inner light shine so brightly that even that major problem was so amazingly overshadowed.   This light was so overpoweringly that nothing else seemed to matter.

We all get injured in more ways than one as we hang around this life.  We can be so used to thinking that your bodies totally represent who we are or who Christ is but that is not so.  As important as our bodies are to each of us we always have to remind ourselves that it is only a vessel for our spirit, for Christ’s Spirit.  And that is what will conquer our injuries and in the end even our deaths.

Love, Felipe.