Reading the Gospels - Matthew 17
It is good that we are here.
Let’s get this straight.
Peter, James and John are taken up the mountain and confronted with the dazzling transfiguration of Christ. Oh, and Moses and Elijah pop in for the ultimate hangout! There’s not a chapter that pops more mystery into three verses than the beginning of Matthew 17!
Although I’m trying to read these chapters with new eyes, I have always enjoyed and been amused by Peter’s most obvious response: “Lord, it is good for us to be here… I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.”
It is good for us to be here…It always feels like that on the mountain top.
“Let’s just stay here,” we think. “It’s better up here. Who wants to walk down and into the ‘real world’ again?”
Of course, it is exactly back to the “real world” to which we are called. We cannot stay on the mountain, detached from life. The mountain is a place of retreat, it is never where our mission is.
Years ago my wife and I were vacationing with her family in Jasper National Park in Canada. One day we committed to the arduous task of climbing to the top of one of the mountains overlooking the town. It was one of those hikes that probably wasn’t as long as we recall it to be, but in my memory it looms large as absolutely exhausting.
When we reached the top, we plopped down our stuff and splayed out on the ground. We laughed with a mix of anguish and astonishment from what we had accomplished and what we were seeing.
“It is good that we are here,” we said, probably, but not really.
After an hour or so, we decided it was time to head back down. As we did, we passed others on their way up. In many of them we recognized what we were feeling when we were in their place. We could see in their faces the question, “is it worth it?”
We started offering unsolicited advice. “Keep going. It’s gorgeous up there.”
“Don’t give up, you’re so close.”
It became our mission to provide encouragement to those who had not yet reached the summit.
This is the mission of the Christian life - to tell others how good it is at the top of the mountain, even while you’re walking back down the hill into whatever comes next.
For the apostles, the “whatever comes next” is bleak indeed. We go from the dazzling Jesus of the transfiguration to the foretelling of his death and resurrection within the same chapter. It’s almost like one story of heavenly light is intended to counterbalance the looming darkness that is to come.
Addendum: The Catholic Mass
It should not be lost on Catholics in all of this that the Eucharist, received at every Mass, is called “the source and summit of the Christian life” by the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1324).
To receive Jesus in the fullness of his presence - body, blood, soul and divinity - is a closeness to God that even the disciples could not have imagined.
Notice, then, that having visited the “source and summit” of our faith we conclude each Mass with a commandment: “Go and announce the gospel of the Lord.”
The word, Mass, itself comes from the word “missio” from which we get “mission.”
The Mass is our most important place of rest. It is a respite at the summit. It’s so tempting to say, “it is good that we are here,” and to try and remain forever in the safety and security of the church. But that’s not where our mission is. Our mission is down the summit, out in the world.
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