Gospel Commentary: Plunged into Darkness

By Fr. John Riley
HERALD Columnist
(From the issue of 3/8/01)

The Gospel for this week — the Second Sunday of Lent — is traditionally an account of the Transfiguration of Christ. Taking Peter, James and John aside, Jesus ascended the slopes of Mt. Tabor. At the summit, the second Person of the Trinity experienced in His humanity a communion with His Father so intense that His visible form was changed. His three closest apostolic companions snored through most of it (as they would sleep through Christ’s darkest and most desperate hour on another mountain outside of Jerusalem). Awakening suddenly, they were astounded to behold their Master in glory, and to hear the Father’s thundering testimony to His beloved Son from the darkness of the overshadowing cloud.

Every human person is a pilgrim. In the face of Eternity, the time that passes between the first moment of our conception and the instant our soul and body part company, consists of a series of carefully ordained and orchestrated "occasions of Grace." The avenues by which Divine life and love are communicated to the human soul are many and diverse. Using liturgy and sacraments … through prayer and pain … in Scripture and Tradition … our Father relentlessly seeks to bring us safely home.

God works as patiently and lovingly with us as He worked with Peter and John, the apostles and the holy women. Although we do not yet have the privilege of gazing into His holy face or of hearing the sound of His voice, we all too often take for granted the intimacy of eucharistic communion with Jesus and the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit in our souls. Christ has not left us orphans, but has called us His "friends." The drama of our journey, like that of the apostles, plays itself out against a "backdrop" of light and darkness.

The Transfiguration was for the apostles a moment of light. We too are granted "lights" — in prayer, consolation and encounters with inspiring individuals. But we, like the apostles (and like Jesus Himself) are also at times plunged into darkness — Jesus’ encounter with Lucifer during His 40-day retreat in the wilderness, the "Hour of Darkness" when the minions of hell took Christ captive, or the "eclipse" of light that marked the moment when the jaws of death closed on the humanity of God-made-Man on Good Friday.

In our lives we suffer confusion, pain, doubts, temptations to despair — elements of what St. John of the Cross called "the dark night of the soul." God allows (and at times even wills) these trials for us — but not to punish us. The author of the inspired Book of Judith observes, "not for vengeance did the Lord put them in the crucible to try their hearts, nor has he done so with us. It is by way of admonition that He chastises those who are close to Him" (Jdt 8:27). Moments of light and consolation serve to sustain us during the times of darkness and temptations — for it is in the shadow of the cross we are tried and tested and forged into the saints God calls us to be.

Our effort then should be gratefully to accept from God not merely the consolations but also the sorrows and crosses that He permits, knowing that in weakness His strength is brought to perfection within us. Occasionally we may receive glimpses of the light and glory that crowned the summit of Tabor those 2,000 years ago, but we must always be ready to stumble through Lent and the valley of shadows that this life at times can be, confident that our pilgrimage will only be at an end when our hearts rest in Him.

Fr. Riley is administrator of St. Louis Parish in Alexandria.

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