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On This Week's Prompts for Personal Meditation
On Epiphany Day we prayed, "O God, by the leading of a star you manifested your only Son to the peoples of the earth: Lead us, who know you now by faith, to your presence, where we may see your glory face to face." Today, we witness this glory face to face with Peter, James, and John, in the luminous Cloud of Presence.
Moses and Elijah discuss with Jesus his exodus : "his departure which is to be accomplished in Jerusalem." And now, "face set toward Jerusalem," we resolve also to turn toward that dark path of self-sacrificial love.
I don't believe with Charles de Foucauld (The Last Word) that we're here on earth "only" to suffer. But life offers plenty of suffering, and Christians put themselves in harm's way for love and to bear others' suffering "following our gentle Savior along a dark and thorny path."
In John's Gospel Jesus admonishes his friends to "walk while you have the light... believe in the light, that you may become children of light" (12:35-36). For these last days of Epiphany we contemplate with the eye of the soul that Light that never changes (meditation one) and the soul as dwelling place of ineffable glory (meditation two). But then we turn our face toward Jerusalem, the confusion of our particular lives, and the cost of bearing Light in a dark world (meditation three).
Have a good end-of-Epiphany meditation - Suzanne
For it is the God who said,
"Let light shine out of darkness,"
who has shone in our hearts to give the light
of the knowledge of the glory of God
in the face of Christ.
2 Corinthians 4:6
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Meditation One
the Light that never changes
I entered into the secret closet of my soul, led by Thee; and this I could do because Thou wast my helper. I entered, and behold with the mysterious eye of my soul the Light that never changes, above the eye of my soul, above my intelligence. It was not the common light which all flesh can see, nor was it greater yet of the same kind, as if the light of day were to grow brighter and brighter and flood all space. It was not like this, but different: altogether different from all such things. Nor was it above my intelligence in the same way as oil is above water, or heaven above earth; but it was higher because it made me, and I was lower because made by it. He who knoweth the truth knoweth that Light: and who knoweth it, knoweth eternity. Love knoweth it.
-Augustine 354-430 Confessions, book 7 chapter 10
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Today on Tabor in the manifestation of your light, O Lord,
your light unaltered from the light of the unbegotten Father,
we have seen the Father as light, and the Spirit as light,
guiding with light the whole creation.
Orthodox liturgy, Feast of Transfiguration
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O God, who before the passion of your only-begotten Son revealed his glory upon the holy mountain: Grant to us that we, beholding by faith the light of his countenance, may be strengthened to bear our cross, and be changed into his likeness from glory to glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
collect for the Last Sunday in Epiphany BCP
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| The Transfiguration, Unknown Master, 16th Century, Hermitage Museum |
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Meditation Two
all light, all face, all eye
When the soul is counted worthy to enjoy communion with the Spirit of the light of God, and when God shines upon the soul with the beauty of his ineffable glory, preparing her as a throne and dwelling for himself, she becomes all light, all face, all eye. Then there is no part of her that is not full of the spiritual eyes of light. There is no part of her that is in darkness, but she is transfigured wholly and in every part with light and spirit.
Just as the sun is the same throughout, having neither back nor anything irregular, but is wholly glorified with light and is all light, being transformed in every part; or as fire, with its burning sheath of flame, is constant throughout, having neither a beginning for an end, being neither larger nor smaller in any part, so also when the soul is perfectly illumined with the ineffable beauty and glory of the light of Christ’s countenance, and granted perfect communion with the Holy Spirit and counted worthy to become the dwelling-place and throne of God, then the soul becomes all eye, all light, all face, all glory, all spirit.
Pseudo-Macarius (4th Century), Spiritual Homilies, Alphabetical Collection “H,”1,2;Coptic Apophthegms, Paris, 1894 in Celebrating the Saints, Devotional Readings for Saint’s Days Morehouse Publishing
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Meditation Three
coming down off the mountain
When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the little space which I fill, and even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I am ignorant, and which know me not, I am frightened, and am astonished at being here rather than there; for there is no reason why here rather than there, why now rather than then? Who has put me here? By whose order and direction have this place and time been allotted to me?
-Blaise Pascal 1623-62 Pensees, 205
Bitter and dark and desolate
Are Love's ways in the beginning of love;
Before anyone is perfect in Love's service,
We often become desperate:
Yet where we imagine losing, it is all gain.
How can one experience this?
By sparing neither much nor little,
By giving oneself totally in love.
-Hadewijch 13th century
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The Last Word
God sometimes allows us to be in such a profound darkness that not a single star shines in our skies. The reason is that we must be reminded that we are on earth only to suffer, while following our gentle Savior along a dark and thorny path.
-Charles de Foucauld 1858-1916
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