Sunday Reflection with Fr Robin Gibbons: 16 March 2014

The Transfiguration - 16thC icon

Second Sunday in Lent Year A

Changing seasons brings with it significant shifts of mood and outlook, who among us cannot but lift up our hearts and spirits a little at the returning sunshine and the emergence of flowers and new growth? In northern climes, the lengthening daylight hours give us more time to do things, especially outdoors, we feel perhaps as Genesis suggests, the blessing of God a little more obviously and I hope we also ask for blessing on our world and its people.

But it’s still Lent and thoughts need to return to the journey we make with all other Christians with the Lord at this time. It’s good to take a small part of each day, just to be alone, and let God speak to our hearts, for part of prayer is our reciprocal listening in the depths of ourselves, for the still, small voice.

On my Saturday wandering around the market town of Bicester doing my shopping, I suddenly caught several evocative smells, the scent of flowers from a flower-stall , the warm, new baked bread and cooking from one of the pubs, with everyone enjoying the sunshine, it felt good to be alive. Suddenly into my head came the strong image of the Transfiguration, Peter said ‘ Lord, it is wonderful to be here’ and at that moment I felt it to be so, yes, it is good to be alive, to be human, to have the luxury of being free when so many are not, but it was a touch of Gods blessing on me, it is good to be me too!

The Transfiguration is one of my favourite feasts, it is very loved by Eastern Christians because like the changing season, it hints at what we one day shall be. There on the Mountain with Peter, James and John, the Lord is transfigured, changed beyond all imagining into light brighter than any we shall know. One of the greatest icons of this feast is in the St Catherine’s Monastery, Sinai, there Christ is revealed in brilliant white, calling us to our destiny with Him. It is a total encounter that shows us what we too will become. I thought then of all the dead I have known and how they as we shall be, are caught up in the love of the God, no longer hidden by the cloud, but seen face to face.

Fr Robin Gibbons is an Eastern Rite Chaplain for the Melkite Greek Catholics in Britain.