DAZZLING WHITE

A friend called to say her teenage daughter had attended a youth retreat and came home transformed: she was radiant with love. We laughed, wondering if she had met a “novio” – a sweetheart. And wondered also if that lover might be Jesus. Who was the real lover she encountered?

Earlier chatting with other friends, one commented that retreats are essential in helping us connect with God, especially during this time of Lent. They take us to new spiritual heights. But often the new “high” is fleeting…lasting only until we come back to the real world. And so it is worth asking, just as above about the real lover…What is our real world?

How do we discover it…and how do we respond to it? Peter and company saw the radiance of the transfigured Christ, and yet the evangelist Luke tells us, in Peter’s response to build three tents, “He did not know what he was saying” (Lk 9:33). Perhaps because he got so carried away with what he saw outside himself that he failed to understand that the temple to be built had to be within him…the radiance that awaited discovery was already within his soul…and ours.

How easy it is to focus on the external, to get carried away with the brightness that the world offers, and to strive to transform our minds, our bodies, our looks, our temples/houses accordingly. Just today it was reported that a rough chunk of diamond was sold for $35.3 million – a new record. And yet daily the Transfigured Christ dies in record numbers in the mud and on garbage dumps as if of no value.

Our focus gets distorted by worldly values and lights. They blind us to the presence of the Inner Radiance. Yet it is there to be found. There are a couple stories which illustrate this. The first involves a sidewalk beggar, sitting on an old crate. A passing holy nun is stopped by the mendicant, asking for change. She responds that she has no money, but has an even better gift for him. She asks him to look inside the crate on which he is sitting. Her question stirs his curiosity, and breaking the crate open...he finds it filled with precious stones. A similar story tells of a holy friar returning home on a country road. He finds a bag filled with gold coins. Later he stops to rest, whereupon a robber demands his valuables. The monk cheerfully gives him the treasure he had found. The robber leaves him only to return a short while later and says to him, "Give me the real treasure you possess that allowed you to give me these coins so easily." How do we discover the real treasure within our bodily "crate"? Perhaps we need others to affirm it in us, to more clearly see it ourselves.

Some years ago a very dear friend, Sr. Lucida, (as lucid and bright even at 95 as anyone I have ever met, who so fully radiated holiness and love) wrote, “By evening of the morning you departed, the floodgates were opened and my heart sought comfort in tears. Your loving presence in my life has released all the love and admiration I hold for you and ignited a new surge of intensity to the ‘Light’ of my life. You have graced my life with God’s presence and made me aware of God’s continual, unsuspecting way of blessing me.” Her loving statement attests to what I so strongly believe, “What people say about us, says more about them than about us.” And yet her kind words and generous affirmation has been invaluable in helping me to seek the Christ within.

If we are searching for the True Light in our world today, why not start the quest by looking within…and affirming it in others, too?