2nd Sunday of Lent Reflection: Transfiguration Through Woundedness
Franciscan Reflections From The Hermitage – Transfiguration Through Woundedness – Second Sunday of Lent Year B – Mark 9:2-10
We are of the Light… but we are not the Light… thus we stand in silent and humble contemplation of the eternal and unchanging Light of the world. “Listen, and you will live… Incline the ear of your heart.” The words of St. Francis of Assisi in his Letter to the Entire Order are an invitation to listen to Christ, the “true Wisdom of the Father”.
This contemplation becomes a way of looking… a way of observing… a way of discovering… a way of recognising the presence of God in this world. External material and bodily appearances become potential means of profoundly seeing and believing the mystery of God.
The created world becomes transparent, and thus the traces of God can be recognised in it. The sole premise for contemplation is “spiritual eyes”, that is, the ability to see everything with the eyes of the Spirit.
Our steps through this Lenten journey will lead us through and beyond death so that we may become people of the resurrection. “Listen, and you will live.”
When we are stripped of our illusions, our pride, and our grand posturing… it is Truth that pours Light through the cracks of our woundedness. It is only in this moment and in this space that we are given a choice whether or not to return to the source of Love who is also our healer, our joy, our hope, and our life. This is the only source that can lead us from darkness to light, from despair to hope, and from death to immortality. It is only from the source from which our original face will manifest.
Your life story is a beautiful and mysterious story and without any doubt, your story reveals that you have been wounded along the way. You’ve been wounded because you received God’s first love through the brokenness of those who reflected that love on you – your father, your mother, your brother, your sister, your grandparents and so many others.
They are people who loved you to a greater or lesser degree, but who were limited because of the wounds of their own lives. Sometimes they loved you in ways that were painful for you. They wounded you – not because they wanted to, but because they are broken people.
Within each of us is a kind of deep breakage that is often called original sin. Our parents inherited it… so did you and I. We are each born to love but we cannot love unconditionally. This is wonderful and terrible. We grow because of it and we suffer because of it.
What is important is that we try to integrate this wondrous and incredible mystery: we have been touched by God’s first love through channels that were broken. Through our woundedness, we are ushered into the true experience of that ‘ first love.’ (Mosteller, 1998 pp. 30-31)
From the desert, we continue our journey with Jesus to the mountain of revelation, for it is here that the true entwined human and divine nature of Jesus the Christ is revealed. It is here too that our own face is revealed and made in the image of the Christ.
Here on the mountain of revelation, we are called to put aside the practice of investigating words and imposing meaning and interpretation on the ineffable experience of that luminal space between our temporal world and that which is transcendent.
First, we discard the judgements of the mind that are addicted to its definitions of what is useful and useless, important and unimportant, to be cherished or discarded. Now we release those beloved phrases, glib piety, and slogans that speak to the pretences of whom we are compared to our idols and scapegoats.
When we allow that internal and transcendent Light to shine inwards through the cracks of our brokenness to recognise and resonate with that original Light of the Spirit within us; now we will behold our original and true face. This is our transfiguration received through the gift of woundedness.
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