Transfiguration on the Last Sunday of Epiphany

Transfiguration and Last Sunday of Epiphany

Church of Transfiguration Mount Tabor

"If we want to find God, then honor God within ourselves, and we will always see God beyond us. For it is only God in us who knows where and how to look for God."­—­­ Richard Rohr Adapted from The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See (The Crossroad Publishing Company: 2009), 159-161.

Today is the last Sunday of Epiphany, where we say goodbye to Alleluia and prepare for Ash Wednesday and the first day of Lent. On Sunday, we hear the story of the Transfiguration of Jesus when he is revealed on a high mountain to three of his disciples as the incarnation of God. Anyone in 12-step recovery can immediately identify with transfiguration, seeing the light, a moment of clarity, encountering the God who has been there all along within us. Still, we never saw the light within because we were busy making "dwellings" for other idols, alcohol, food, drugs, work, etc.

Moments of transfiguration occur in our lives when we are transported from deep unconscious sleep into conscious awareness, when we see, feel, taste, and touch God within. Transfiguration is about experiencing our true nature, the part of God inside ourselves. It is the moment when all else falls away, and we are simply of God and desire to turn our life and our will over to the care of God. It is that moment when we let go and let God.

Richard Rohr believes we cannot see God in others until we first see God within ourselves. So, recovery is seeing God first within ourselves, which leads us to see God in others. We encounter the person who once annoyed us. We notice a tiny glimpse of the face of God, and our only response is now love.

Frederick Buechner reminds us that as we see God within ourselves, we begin to see God in situations we never saw before: "the face of a man walking his child in the park, a woman picking peas in the garden, sometimes even the unlikeliest person listening to a concert, standing barefoot in the sand watching the waves roll in, or just sitting with friends at a Saturday baseball game in July. Every once in a while, something so touching, so incandescent, so alive transfigures the human face that it's almost beyond bearing." 1

Transfiguration is the message and the promise of a new way of living, seeing God's face in others and ourselves.

God’s presence is always there. We only have to open our eyes, our ears, our minds, and our hearts to see the ever-present God, as did the disciples that day.

Today, we are gathered online across many miles to celebrate the new eyes that transfiguration continually brings to our lives and to the face of every person we encounter.

1Frederick Buechner in Whistling in the Dark (HarperSanFrancisco 1988), p. 120.

Joanna. joannaseibert.com. https://www.joannaseibert.com/

 

Bishop Hibbs: The Jesus Prayer

 Bishop Hibbs: The Jesus Prayer

“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God,

Have mercy on me, a sinner.”

I remember being at Camp Allen in Texas for the first time at a Community of Hope International meeting with Mary Earle as the keynote speaker. As I look over her books, I find this newly published 20th-anniversary edition of An Altar in Your Heart: Meditations on the Jesus Prayer by Bishop Robert Hibbs with a Foreword by Mary Earle.

The Jesus Prayer has been my mantra in the early morning and at bedtime. I pray the words during any time of anxiety, fear, or temptation during the day or night, especially during medical tests or procedures for my family and me. It is my feeble attempt to pray without ceasing.  

I have known Bishop Hibbs for years through work with the Episcopal Recovery Community, but I was not aware of his work on the Jesus Prayer. As I share my connections with Bishop Hibbs with Mary, I learn he died a year ago in April. Mary preached the homily at his service.

I thank and honor him for the support he gave me and so many others in recovery by sharing this book with you. An audio CD of his lectures at a retreat is included in the book. The Cajuns call this a lagniappe, a little something extra. For years, Bob Hibbs was the primary voice for recovery in the Episcopal House of Bishops.

Saying the Jesus Prayer is like using a prayer rope or beads in our heads. Bishop Hibbs relates the story of Cardinal Mindzenty and Father Eschmann, who survived torture and solitary imprisonment by staying connected to God with the Jesus Prayer.

The first words of the Jesus Prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God,” remind us of Jesus’ divinity and his humanity. Hibbs believes this is essential in keeping us in a relationship with Jesus. These first words of the prayer, with Jesus’ name, express Easter, the Alleluia part of the prayer.
The last phrase about mercy expresses the meaning of Good Friday. At this same conference, Sister Carol Perry reminds us that in this request for mercy, we ask for God’s mercy rather than God’s justice for how we have lived. Hibbs believes we always live in the tension between Easter and Good Friday.

Bishop Hibbs reminds us that this is an oral prayer that can be said aloud whenever possible, making the Jesus Prayer part of our being. He cautions us not to be discouraged, as we become distracted while we say it.

Instead, we gently return to the prayer without judgment on ourselves. Treat distractions in the same way we encounter in centering prayer. We might see them as barges moving down the Mississippi or any favorite river. We are to let them pass on down without interacting with them.

Eventually, the prayer develops a rhythm in our lives. It becomes a gift from God, closely related to the beating of our heart, a constant, habitual recollection or awareness of God’s presence. Hibbs also reminds us that when we pray the Jesus Prayer, we attempt to connect to Jesus, God, the Trinity above and beyond us, and to Christ in our neighbor and ourselves.

For people in 12-step recovery, this is where the steps intersect with the Jesus Prayer, as we “sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God.” (Step 11, Chapter 5, “How it Works,” Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, 2016, p. 85)

Sometimes, I modify the prayer to the Agnus Dei, the fraction anthem, after breaking the bread in the Eucharist. “Lord God, Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy on me.”

While we meet with someone for spiritual direction or with spiritual friends, we give them our utmost attention. However, having the Jesus Prayer running through our mind and body is a way to stay connected to the Spirit, speaking to Christ in both of us.

Joanna  https://www.joannaseibert.com/

 

 

 

Seeing and LIving in the Present Moment

   Richard Rohr, Poe: Seeing and Living in the Present Moment

  “Most people do not see things as they are, because they see things as they are!” Which is not to see at all. Their many self-created filters keep them from seeing with any clear vision.”

—Richard Rohr, Center for Action and Contemplation, daily Rohr Meditation.

Edgar Allan Poe also gives us more clues about having a clearer vision in “The Purloined Letter.” The Paris police chief asks a famous amateur detective, C. Auguste Dupin, to help him find a letter stolen from the boudoir of an unnamed woman by an unscrupulous minister who is blackmailing his victim. The chief of police and his detectives have combed the hotel where the minister lives, behind the wallpaper, under the carpets, examining tables and chairs with microscopes, probing cushions with needles, and found no sign of the letter. Dupin gets a detailed description of the letter and visits the minister at his hotel.

Complaining of weak eyes and wearing green spectacles, he disguises his eyes as he searches for the note. Finally, he sees it in plain sight, in a cheap card rack hanging from a dirty ribbon. He leaves a snuffbox behind as an excuse to return the next day, and switches out the letter for a duplicate.

Rohr is calling us to put on a new pair of glasses, perhaps 3-D glasses, to see the depth of what is in plain sight immediately around us in the present moment.

Guides and friends in our community, and especially children, remind us to meet God in the present moment. They remind us to listen to God’s call to live in the present moment, especially as we heard together the stories of the season after Epiphany in our Sunday Lectionary readings.

Epiphany means an illuminating realization.

 The season after Epiphany has called us to see more clearly and live in the present moment. We have a few more days to ponder this before Lent.