sabbath Seeing

 

Good morning! Second only to Friday evening quittin' Time, Saturday morning used to be my favorite Time of week, so from the end of first week of first grade in September 1941 until about fall 1980 when I first got put on the preaching schedule at Mount Calvary Parish in Pennsylvania, and Saturday became a prep day and Sunday a workday instead of my Sabbath day of rest. My years as a parish priest I designated Monday as my Sabbath, but it didn't work the years we lived in a rectory at the corner of Trinity Church and U S Highway 98,

until after my father died in July 1993, and I named Sunday afternoon to Wednesday morning as my Sabbath so as to look after my mother living alone in The Old Place, and to raise my Kristen, who was six months old at the Time and living with her mom and brother in our house next door. Looking back, maybe those were my best Sabbath years, though after retiring from Apalachicola, I continued the Monday Sabbath while serving the next three parishes. 

Until, starting spring 2009, it didn't work because I began attending Monday staff meetings back home at HNEC. But one of any number of blessings of covid if we choose to find silver linings or even the Hand of God in storms and darkness, is Zoom meetings where instead of shave shower dress and drive to the office, one splashes one's face, puts on a hat instead of coming one's hair, and pulls a clean shirt on over the pajama shirt so as to make a screen appearance.

Anyway, Sabbath, and here I am on Saturday, August 6, which on the church calendar is Transfiguration, forty days from Holy Cross Day September 14, my birthday; and, in the Bible for Jesus, from mountain to mountain, glory to shame, blinding light to raging darkness, "this is my Son" to "truly, this man was the Son of God".

Mix of topics and feelings this morning. I'm not at all a spiritual person, though, as this morning, I call myself up short from Time to Time more or less to see ὁράω https://biblehub.com/greek/3708.htm where I am in life. This morning awareness and memory that on this day in 1945 we dropped the first atomic bomb, on Hiroshima, and a few days later another on Nagasaki, as part of bringing World War Two to a halt and saving hundreds of thousands of young American lives that would have been lost in the planned invasion of Japan. There are people today who condemn us for Hiroshima and Nagasaki - - if you care to remain on good terms don't say that in front of me, I was there and you were not - - but, finding a blessing in retrospect, it was the right Time and from there on out a searing lesson in what should never be allowed to happen again. There are moments during the Russia atrocity v Ukraine that it seems the Time has come to target Moscow, but there will never again be a right Time for use of nuclear weapons, and so How to deal with the madman is an almost unanswerable problem.

But today's occasion, a spiritual morning, now and then to gauge myself and call myself back to a former Time or former Times when that really good, useful, helpful and inciteful NT Greek word ὁράω had me somewhere else entirely and I might wish to be there still, or again; or perhaps to return, but find Thomas Wolfe right.

At any event, reading some helpful and enlightening spiritual words this morning, meditations; one from a dear friend of longstanding, that I'll hold close; another from a chance email from the Catholic Spiritual Direction site spiritualdirection.com by Grace Abbruzzo, “Night Vision: A Reflection On The Transfiguration” and remembering my own very personal, affirming, and immensely encouraging night vision of nearly forty years ago, “I AM speaking to you, Tom Weller” - - such that I’m copy-and-pasting Abruzzo’s piece for today. If, like me you are generally doubter, skeptic, agnostic about such things, all the better, because I found it almost inexplicably helpful:

Night Vision: A Reflection On The Transfiguration

by Grace Abbruzzo

I often receive images in prayer, but that night in prayer group they were different. Usually, the images were personal—if not for me, then for someone else with me. They were usually something to encourage or inspire, or perhaps (gently) challenge or correct. That night I saw visions of things happening around the world. They were at first glance terrifying—suggesting disaster, a reason to run in fear.

One image was of an explosion that produced a raging inferno—all I could see around me were flames. But then the lens seemed to shift, zooming out so to speak, and I was given a “big picture” view. I saw that the explosive fire was in fact the launching of a massive rocket ship on a beautiful sunny day. I saw that what at first seemed evil was in fact something powerful and positive. Then I heard: “What the enemy intends for evil, God intends for good.”

In another image, I saw in the sky a massive dark cloud, looking ominous. It then morphed into what looked like descending parachutes, or clusters of balloons, only they were made of a very pale beige mud. I sensed they were delivering assistance, hope, and ultimately victory—all of which God desired to bring about, and was inviting us to pray for. But my attention was being drawn to the mud.

I recalled how, in the Gospels, when a blind man came seeking sight, Jesus first put mud on his eyes. Surely the blind man must have been surprised—for just a moment, his vision was no doubt much worse! But what momentarily darkened his vision was the very means of his healing. 

These images (and others like them) came two years ago, in early August of 2020, and I would have forgotten them, had it not been for the feast that followed, the Feast of the Transfiguration. 

In the days leading up to the feast, these images and themes burned in my mind, and I heard repeatedly the words “Night Vision.” Soldiers are given night vision glasses, that enable them to see even in the dark. 

It was on the occasion of the Transfiguration that Jesus gave night vision glasses to Peter, James, and John. 

Jesus often ascended the mountain to pray, but this time He invited His closest disciples to accompany Him, to glimpse His glory. This ascent and that glimpse of glory were both to prepare for and foreshadow another ascent, and a very different kind of glory. When Jesus ascended Calvary and died on the Cross, the glory of God’s unfathomable love was lifted up for the world to see—a feast we celebrate exactly forty days after the Transfiguration, in the Triumph of the Cross.

In the moment, of course, His crucifixion did not seem like glory, but rather fearful defeat. For us too, what God is doing will often be obscured by signs of failure, danger, and even death. Like the apostles we need night vision glasses from Jesus—to be schooled in faith and trust, so that when things seem dark we will be able to see purpose and plan and hope. We are invited to hold fast to the glimpse of glory revealed in our mountaintop experiences and to let memory and hope sustain us. We are invited to remember the Triumph of the Cross, to see in those moments of darkness the promise of a glory greater than what we could imagine. 

Night vision glasses are not given to armchair warriors, but to soldiers—those sent out to do battle. In Matthew 13 Jesus promises that “the gates of hell will not prevail” against the church.  I have heard it said that we often interpret this defensively, as in no matter what is leveled against the church, she will survive. But the Scripture language is actually more proactive—as though it is the Church thrusting a battering ram against the gates of hell—and the gates of hell will not prevail, will not be strong enough to sustain this onslaught. 

The Cross is this battering ram. We are being called to go to battle with Jesus on behalf of His people, with the confidence of His victory and the assurance that His church will prevail. We can only have this confidence if we first grow in intimacy with Him, allowing Him to replace all of our fears and false humility with a strong conviction of our identity as beloved sons and daughters destined for glory.

I don’t know what this battle will look like—I don’t think it will look anything like we expect, and perhaps not like a battle at all. Jesus waged battle as a baby in a manger, as a gentle healer, as a feeder of the multitudes, as a teacher, and ultimately as lamb on the cross. He waged battle by allowing God to show Him each day where to show up, what to do, what to respond to.  

In liturgical Lent, we give 40 days to fasting, almsgiving and prayer, with a focus is on doing something to prepare for Easter. What if we spent these 40 days, between the Transfiguration and the Triumph of the Cross, focused on receiving? What if we draw close to Him and allow Him to show us a new way of seeing?

 

 

 

 continued the Monday Sabbath

started taking