Le blog de la Bergerie
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Le blog de la Bergerie
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Of all the things that one could wish to be in this life,
a pilot, a president or a princess, a Nobel prize candidate or an American Idol
winner, if someone had told me years ago that what I l want to be more than
anything else in the world today is to be a disciple, I would have been bafffled and incrudulous! But my own spiritual journey took many twists and turns and
started rather late in life but it brought me where I am today and for that,
I am extremely grateful. I am Catholic, I am grateful and I know what I want:
I want to be a disciple of the Lord!
And I have to thank Pope Benedict XVI book on "Jesus of Nazareth" for making
this clear to me. His book is terrific, a very fertile research on "the face
of Jesus", a wealth of scriptural commentaries exposing all the various links
involved, unraveling for us the various layers of this amazing mystery of the
Word Incarnate. I highly recommend it because everyone will benefit from it,
from the biblical experts to anyone interested in deepening their faith, included
the simple disciple-wannabee like me. But the truth is that he wrote some beautiful
and profound pages on discipleship and on the Kingdom of God and he showed how
intertwined they are and how it is only in being a true disciple of Jesus that
we can have access to the Kingdom, to the glory of God. The theme of discipleship
runs through the whole book as a golden thread, especially in the section on
the Beatitudes, illuminating the path with the "promises resplendent with the
new image of the world and of man inaugurated by Jesus, his 'transformation
of values'. When man begins to see and live from God's perspective, when he
is a companion on Jesus' way, then he lives by new standards". Thus the "Beatitudes
express the meaning of discipleship… and a disciple "immersed in communion with
Christ" (1). Benedict XVI opens them up one by one, pairing them and showing
how each one of them is a stepping stone on the journey. He shows the constant
struggle in both the ancient world and in today's global affairs to replace
the powers of chance with the one true God, to "exorcise the world from the
poisoning of the spiritual climate all over the world that threatens the dignity
of man". He says that the mission to exorcise and to heal is to establish a
new Kingdom. He is very explicit about the Kingdom not being a thing or a geographical
dominion, but it is he, Jesus himself. The glory of God is now "a person", it's Him, he is both the door to God and God Himself !
Benedict XVI says that the real experts in opening up God's words, the true
interpreters of scriptures are the saints and he is right. I can prove it! There
is one verse that I have always found very puzzling and it is "There are
some here who will not taste death before seeing the glory of God" (Mark
9:1). I heard it said before that he was referring to the end of the world and
that with time passing by, with every Apostle dying one by one (they all eventually
got to taste death), some people began to wonder what Jesus really meant. I
have even heard it said in some circles (especially the ones attracted to de-construction)
that maybe Jesus made a mistake…
This riddle was just solved for me and it was done the way Benedict XVI pointed
out. On Saint Ephraim's feast day (2), I ran a Google search and found various
Orthodox sites with information on his life and samples of his writings and
I discovered the most amazing explanation of the verse mentioned above. Ephraim,
a Deacon in the second century in Syria, wrote that what this verse is talking
about is the upcoming Transfiguration moment.
I have a very special fondness for the Transfiguration: do you realize that
he was transfigured before his Passion? Right there and then,
his divinity is affirmed in front of the 3 Apostles by 2 OT witnesses, the Law
and the Prophet. It is a fantastic "Trinitarian moment" with the Father's voice
pointing to the Son like a laser beam, the Son reflecting the Father's glory
like a mirror and the power and love of the Holy Spirit bathing this moment
in the most dazzling light and, in the process, opening up the minds of the
witnesses to the truth of what is going on. In a nutshell, that is what I see
every time the Transfiguration is mentioned.
So when I read what Saint Ephraim said:"The men whom he said would not taste death until they saw the image of his coming, are those whom he took and led up the mountain and showed them how he was going to come on the last day in the glory of his divinity and in the body of his humanity", a light went up in my mind! Eureka, I thought, that's what he was talking about! This verse is in all 3 synoptic Gospels and it is immediately preceding the Transfiguration in each one of them. I can't thank you enough, dear Saint Ephraim (3). You wrote: "He led them up the mountain to show them who the Son is and whose he is. Because when he asked them "Whom do men say the Son of man is? They said to him, some Elias, other Jeremias or one of the Prophets. This is why he leads them up the mountain and shows them that he is not Elias, but the God of Elias; again that he is not Jeremias, but the one who sanctified Jeremias in his mother's womb; not of the Prophets but the Lord of the Prophets who also sent them. And he shows them that he is the maker of heaven and earth, and that he is the Lord of the living and the dead. For he gave orders to heaven and brought down Elias and made a sign to the earth and raised up Moses. And so on the mountain he showed his Apostles the glory of his divinity concealed and hidden in his humanity". So Saint Ephraim was right, Jesus was alerting his disciples to what some of them were going to be allowed to see.
In his own chapter on the Transfiguration, Benedict XVI expounds on the eschatological
dimension because, Yes, it is pointing to the end of times, to that final hour
where the glory of God will be over all and evident to all, but it is also extremely
Christological since it points to Christ as the key to God. It is the "irruption
and inauguration of the messianic age. On the mountain, they learn that Jesus
himself is the living Torah, the complete Word of God". There is one more insight
that I gained from this chapter: it has to do with the Gospel of John, the one
Gospel written by one witness of the Transfiguration.
You have to admit that, although every moment with Jesus must have been special,
the Transfiguration had got to be one of the key events, one of the "super-moments".
The veiled was lifted for a short while and John and Peter and James were allowed
to see the glory of God, were permitted to see Jesus transfigured, conversing
with Moses and Elijah; they got to hear the Father's voice and to feel the power
of the Holy Spirit… … What an incredible moment to go through! Years and years
later, John's writings are still infused with that glory and I can hear echoes
of the Transfiguration moment in the very beginning of his own Gospel, in those
most famous and stunning verses:
"The Word was with God and the Word was God… In him was life and the life was
the light of men...
And the Word became flesh and pitched his tent
among us"...
The once perplexing verse of Mark 9:1 is now clear to me. Like any other profound
insight, it was actually quite simple but my ability to "get it" was triggered
by the fertile soil of Pope Benedict's reflections on Jesus and was brought
to completion by the wise words of a Deacon in the early Church. And for this,
the circle of my gratitude goes from the West to the East, embracing the two
lungs of the Church (4), and, consequently, the very first fruits of my willingness
to be a disciple were a newer, better and fuller understanding of scriptures.
So when I think back to all the voices who insinuated that, maybe, Jesus got
confused for a few minutes and did not know what he was saying, I can only recommend
to them that they listen to the Saints carefully, that they read Pope Benedict's
book and that, if they email me their name, I will offer my own prayers to the
Holy Spirit, begging that they be given one tiny spark of light to bring them
one inch closer to the truth because it sure makes a difference.
MicheleSzekely@2007-2022