Happy Feast of the Transfiguration!
It’s hard to believe that August is already underway. Before we know it, students will return to campus, fall sports will gear up in earnest, and the leaves will turn Abbey Lane into a glorious riot of color. I’ve always loved fall, and I can’t wait to enjoy another new year at Belmont Abbey.
Even before season openers or student orientation, however, we actually get a foretaste of another, deeper form of glory this weekend. On Sunday we celebrate the Feast of the Transfiguration!
I love to imagine how Christ’s divinity radiated within and through His humanity, how St. Peter got so excited and unsettled that he started proposing an encampment, and how the New Covenant shone forth in conversation with the Old, with Moses and Elijiah, there on the mountain. And it feels particularly appropriate, here on the threshold of new beginnings at the Abbey, to contemplate the way Christ fulfills and extends the Old Testament’s promise beyond our wildest expectations, shedding new light on the past and giving us, in Himself, new and luminous hope in a future already begun.
Though He invites each of us to climb different mountains with Him, we are all called to witness, in our churches and our homes, how near and how powerful His love really is, and how vibrantly it brings our history and our hope together. We may not always understand the “how” or the “why” of past and future – of suffering and someday resurrection – but in His Transfiguration on Mt. Tabor, Christ invites us to trust Him: that He, who took on our humanity without losing his divine nature, will transfigure our earthly lives with the radiance of His divine love.
So on this beautiful feast, let’s join the monks of Belmont Abbey – and Benedictines everywhere – in a joyful celebration of hope, trusting that in all things, past, present, and future, God will be glorified. That all will be well, and more than well… Alleluia!
