Transfigured Lives: TEAM Work!

I have been asked to give a condensed version of my few words on the Transfiguration the other day. I’ll do my best!

When you think about it, it must have been quite amazing for Peter, James and John to find themselves with Jesus on Mount Tabor. He was shining with light, and with him were the two representatives of the foundations of Israel’s relationship with God: Moses and Elijah. In their own persons they sum up the Law and the Prophets. Jesus, the expression of all God wants, included and went beyond them both. He is the translation into human terms, into flesh and blood, of God himself. So, the three disciples glimpsed something of the full reality of Jesus. And they saw his flesh and blood in an utterly new way. They witnessed matter transformed.

Then came the voice from the cloud: ‘This is my beloved Son, listen to him!’

What the three disciples saw is the destiny of each one of us.

Eventually we will all be full of light, transfigured. If God truly is love as we believe, it cannot be otherwise. Love, if it is genuine, wishes to give the beloved everything that it has, all its riches; so God wishes to fill us with himself, with his life, his wonder and beauty, his light.

But, and this is cause for real rejoicing, here and now we can begin to live transfigured lives. It’s not something just for a longed-for future, at some distant and undefined point, probably beyond death.

God shows us how: ‘This is my beloved Son, listen to him!’

If we listen to Jesus, the full life that comes to us from God begins to enter into us, begins to fill us with light, begins to transfigure us.

The real question is how can we listen to Jesus, God’s beloved Son? How can we do so really and truly in our everyday experience?

We need to be attentive to his voice, speaking in the Spirit, in our hearts. It is there if only we will open ourselves up to it. It is a profound intuition of what we must do, the deepest part of our conscience. When we follow it, we have a sense of joy, of lightness, of release. When we ignore it, we feel heavy, saddened, as if we have not lived up to our real potential.

It is vital that we improve our hearing! There are, I think, two ways to do this: by deepening our prayer life and by deepening (what we could call) our love life. I shall focus mostly on the prayer side at the moment, but will say something of the other later on.

As a way of remembering how we can pray more deeply, we can use the initials TEAM, and so:

Time with God. Set aside a moment every day which is just and only to be spent with God, and for no other purpose. God alone. It may be as little as ten minutes, or it may be, even better, half an hour. This quiet time could be the happiest part of the day, dallying with your most beloved. It is possible that you don’t know what to do, how to go about it. One easy way is to take a book you find inspiring, and of course the best one is the Bible!, and read it slowly, thoughtfully. Where something strikes you, lay the book aside and talk with God about it. Then, when you have said and understood all you need, take up the book again and read on. God is waiting for you, within you. It’s as if the door is ajar and only needs a little push to open up. The hand to push the door is this meditative reading.

Examination of conscience. At the end of the day you can look over it to see how you have done. Alongside saying thank you for the good things and sorry for the failures, you can ask yourself two questions: ‘What has brought me closer to God today?’ and ‘What has taken me away from God today?’ Like this you can learn from experience.

Arrow prayers. These are short prayers, little darts of love that can be fired at God. All that is needed are a few words, such as ‘For you, Jesus’, ‘You, Lord, are my only good’, ‘Please help me, God’, ‘Look after this, my God’, ‘Holy Spirit come!’, ‘God alone’. It doesn’t matter what the words are. Take your pick! But by using a short prayer like this (anywhere: bus stop, street, shop, bedroom, kitchen, garage, school playground), you keep your focus on God.

Morning and evening prayer. Just a few prayers, certainly including the Lord’s Prayer, at the start and the end of the day can make a huge difference. Morning prayers offer all to God, so that everything is offered before it happens. Evening prayers confirm the offering, placing everything firmly in his hands.

And that’s it! Living like that will sharpen our spiritual ears. We can be a team with God.

But it is not all that needs to be done. We have also to deepen our way of loving other people. Without love for them our prayer will dry up. Just as, if our prayer does not make us grow in love, it is fruitless. The amazing thing is that if we spend the whole day in loving, really loving, other people, at the end of it we find our hearts full, not so much with all the things that have happened, but with God. It’s as if heaven draws near and touches us with itself. A breath of infinity seems to lift our heart. God is not a theory but a presence, overwhelming and gentle, and we feel him.

It makes sense, really. Because Jesus says that whatever we do to others, he takes as done to him (Matt. 25:40). So if we love others, do things (even the most simple) for them out of love, be with them out of love, relate to them out of love, that love goes straight to Jesus.

If we love Jesus, he loves us back.
It’s not that we own him, but that love is like that.

God offers us so much. If we hear Jesus more clearly, we will be caught up in God’s own life, become like Jesus. And being other Jesuses our lives will be transfigured. Here and now.

Who could ask for more?

The Revd Dr Callan Slipper
is a member of the Foculare Movement
and a welcomed friend at St Gabriel's