Heaven’s light

 Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. (Luke 9:28-29)

I can see this, somehow. There would seem to be no analog, nothing that compares to this moment on the mountain when the inner soul of Jesus filled the fullness of his outer appearance with the glory of heaven’s light.

His interior union with the Father shimmers through his finite, mortal body, unveiling the secret of his identity and revealing, once and for all, what we are intended to know, to feel and to become, one with heaven’s light.

The inner eye of my heart conceives the vision, if only because I have stood in the gaze of souls who loved truly, deeply and beautifully, their eyes glistening with a light that hinted of a world of beauty beneath and beyond all that is, a world more real than the ground beneath our feet or the touch of our beloved’s hand.

Such is the light filling Jesus on the mountain. We desperately need this vision. When we lose it, when we forget it, the triviality of the ordinary, the repulsive violence that fills the daily news, and the smug egotism of the powerful tempt us to nihilistic despair, which may become the great spiritual malady of our era.

When that takes hold, the light in our souls can be eclipsed by the capricious will of the powerful who indulge their whims to shape a world of their choosing, a world where love, beauty, commitment, grace, generosity and other virtues have no place or purchase.

Such is the sordid state of American politics, about which we may feel powerless to change, a state that … if we fixate there … dims the light of Christ in our lives, stealing our joy and shrouding our days in a cheerless, gray cloud.

This is why we so badly need the vision of Jesus shimmering with heaven’s light on the mountain. The light of God shines there, drawing us to come and see and never doubt that heaven’s inextinguishable radiance is not now and never shall be eclipsed.

The luminous glory shimmering in the very clothes of Christ is a vision of eternity. Holding it before our eyes, it fans the flame of faith, hope and love within us. 

Even more, it stirs our desire not just to see heaven’s holy light … but to stand inside that light, enveloped in its shining, so that our hearts are one, united with our Lord, knowing what is in him, tasting the sweetness of eternity.

Standing in heaven’s light, we feel the world of beauty beneath and beyond all that is … where those who mourn shall laugh, where those who want shall be full, where suffering is turned into redemption and the powers of death shatter like glass.