the
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I r e c e n t ly r e a d a n a rt i c l e
by Shane R app
in The American Conservative by an Orthodox Christian named Rod Dreher entitled “Beauty and Transfiguration” which examined what Christ’s Transfiguration has to do with our lives. Surely it is one of the oddest moments in the gospels: shining face and clothes, descending prophets, booming voice, and then…nothing. Back to business as usual. Strange, to say the least. But what Dreher suggests is that we have all had transfigurative moments, that at times in each of our lives the grey film of the Fall is peeled back and we see things “as they really are” and become like Peter and James and John that day when gazing upon their Lord. It is not altogether different from what C.S. Lewis proposes in The Great Divorce, where Heaven is not so much different from this world but more real, thicker and richer and fuller to the point that we appear as ghosts in a land where even sunlight has weight. When I reflect on this idea that, as St. Paul says, we “see dimly now, as in a mirror” (1 Corinthians 13:12), I am brought back to my first transfigurative moment. After my sophomore year at Benedictine College, I decided to remain on campus over the summer to work, train for soccer, and focus on my faith life through prayer and spiritual direction with Fr. Bruce Swift. Through the witness and encouragement of friends, I had begun a conversion of sorts, finally accepting my faith as my own and ready to face up to its demands, and I thought a summer near the monastery could be the jump-start I needed as I began my journey anew. After the first few weeks, however, I felt stymied. There were no mystical visions or fits of ecstasy, no immediate dissolution of my sins, no mass conversions of my friends and family inspired by the courage it took to live off my parents’ money with my friends in my favorite place in the world for a whole summer. I didn’t get it. What I know now is that, as the author/blogger Mark Shea puts it, “Grace is grace, not magic.” I was waiting for the magic-Jesus-wand to turn me into a man with no temptations and no faults and no struggles. Didn’t happen. But what He did give me was a moment I will never forget. It was not a vision of Mary. It was not a dream of an angel. It was a transfiguration. One night that summer, I simply didn’t want to pray. It was late, I was tired, and I just wanted to go to bed. But as I lay down, the gruff voice of Fr. Bruce kept echoing in my mind, reminding me that I was not allowed to sleep until I prayed. So I grudgingly got out of bed, walked out of Memorial Hall, and cut through campus to the adoration chapel in the back of St. Benedict’s Church. After being let in the door by an elderly gentleman, I knelt down to pray in front of the Eucharist and tried to focus. Almost immediately I became aware of a prompting to leave the chapel. It was odd, and I won’t call it a “voice” per se, but it was definitely there, an urging of sorts, quite clearly telling me to go.
18
Kansas Monks
