“Jesus’ transfiguration was an experience of his divinity shining through his humanity. In that brilliance, Peter, James, and John, saw more clearly the fullness of who Jesus was. It was beyond anything they had seen or experienced before. This transfiguration took their breath away. Though they might not have been ready to receive this insight, they were privileged to be there. They were changed by the experience.
When we see people as they truly are with the Divine in them, we see a transfiguration. Perhaps we are not ready to see it, but we would be lucky and privileged to see it, to be changed, transformed, by the experience.”—Father Jim Caime, St. Francis Xavier Church, Rockhurst University, August 6, 2023
After mass, they walked into the light and back to city street that, northward, fell in gentle slope to creek lined with parkway, trails, and vein of natural beauty among constructed urban stone.
Reaching creek, church and campus high on hill behind, reflecting on spoken words and homily, Emma asked, “Have you ever lived that?”
Delaying answer, pretending not to understand, Ryan questioned back, “Lived what?”
“The change? A witness to divinity in another?”
Ryan paused, looking on the creek, its bed lined with cement by the foot, laid a century ago to equally line the pockets of politicians and mobsters that ran the city’s ballot boxes and business. It had been a hustle then, but like many abuses of the past, in time, there arrives a reconciliation, atonement and peace and after-beauty from what began as ugliness and wrong. The creek had become beautiful, more cement added—for trails and stepped ledges of the creek’s bed that held water in its bed even through August aridity, and when running made for cascade of sight and sound as current spilled over the walls.
It was never imagined that way. In beginning, it was only hustle; but such the creek and bed became; a vein of beauty in stretch of city that, year by year, seemed more distant from the ideal while church and school looked over all from promontory of the hill.
“I have,” Ryan answered, saying no more, constraining an emotion.
“When?”
Ryan only shrugged, looking down to path and trail they walked together.
“It happened, and I didn’t even know what it was until after it all had lived: what I saw, what I felt, how I was changed. It happens, and there’s a shift and you don’t even know and can’t explain, but then everything after’s different—changed, just like you.”
Emma listened, looking forward up the bed of creek where in distance, a dreamed-Seville appeared in show of red-clay spires above parkway and nearer city-scene.
“How do you know that’s what it was?” Emma asked.
“You just do. Some things are just that way. You can try and rationalize, explain away, but it doesn’t work like that. That’s not Divinity. God and intercessions into life are not rational acts.”
“What are they?”
“Miraculous: wonders of an absurd!” Ryan laughed, soft. For so long, he had lived entirely rational, needing purpose, plan, and aim; but ever since, he lived with little care, at will and whim to where God might lead as inspiration guided and affected.
This was what he true believed.
“I read a book years after, about another struck and moved in the same way. He wrote imagery of the moment and vision—crimson and golden heart, a message, God’s favor for a woman…” Ryan paused, catching and holding thought. “In the book, he caught himself as he spilled in sharing then vowed he would write no more of the vision until he was able to give it justice…”
Emma listened, but Ryan silenced continuation of the thought.
“And what did that mean to you?” Emma asked, wishing explanation of the vision.
“That I should do the same. It is too grand to speak so lightly of; and all of it should be regarded with the wonder and holiness that’s seen.”
Absent words to say himself, he turned to those that God provided. Ryan spoke on in ending, “It’s just like Father said, ‘When we see people as they truly are with the Divine in them, we see a transfiguration. Perhaps we are not ready to see it, but we are lucky and privileged to see it, to be changed, transformed, by the experience.’
That’s exactly how it was…”
They walked together in after-silence, sun as golden halo high in blue and open sky, contemplating inspirations in quiet chambers of soul-castles.