November 29th

The Transfiguration

I will very carefully preface this (since my mother is exactly one half of my readership) that I love my name. It rhymes, which is awesome and the most discussed feature, there are all kinds of wonderful role models for me to look up to (saints and monarchs and just awesome women - I've even been reconciled to my intended name saint Catherine of Siena this past summer when she featured in a class I took and I learned she was awesome) and it's common these days but I make it my own. It fits me and I love it.

But I've never liked that the name "Katherine" means "pure." Because that's not a lot of pressure or anything.

It always angered me - you mess up one time and then BOOM! you're not pure anymore. Oh well. And you can try to change "purity of spirit" to mean more of an innocence, but purity and innocence are both things that can be lost - that's why they're so precious and remarkable. I know two young women I could describe this way who DO know about the darker side of life, but there's still an "unspoiled" feel to them.

And I don't like that as an aspiration, because it's not something you're working toward achieving so much as it is something you are actively (or passively I suppose) not trying to lose. And that's like that stupid phenomenon (which is inexplicably still going on apparently) of The Game - in which the only rule is, if you think of The Game you lose and have to announce, "I just lost The Game." In short, you can't win The Game any more than you can win with purity. You can only lose.

And why play that game? (I myself quit playing The Game long ago).

What does this have to do with The Transfiguration, you ask? Well, I was trying to pray and meditate on the decade and I was thinking about how surely I've kind of covered everything about this particular story in the Life of Jesus (heh). I remembered a homily that stuck with me (I'm not sure why) about this story which is completely unlike the usual Coming Down the Mountain or Taking Time to Spend on the Mountain that I usually focus on to one degree or another with this story. Father Manger described a conversation in heaven about how Elijah wouldn't want to come down alone, so they go get Moses so that they can both go down to meet Jesus on the mountaintop (it might have been the other way around). And I thought, "What was with that story? (I don't remember it's point) Isn't it more likely that they are symbols of the entire Jewish line of prophets leading here?"

And then I realized, they're not just any prophets and they're not even (just) the two biggest (and biggest name) Jewish heroes. They are the two (I know there are others but they're not as prominent) who have been taken up. They're the ones who haven't died. Elijah and the Fiery Chariot, Moses on the Mountain on the border to Canaan. They're the ones the Promise of No Death applied to retroactively (and literally since as it turns out we still die all the time - subject for another time what a moment it must have been for all the other apostles when James died in Jerusalem if they hadn't figured out the No Death thing was to some degree metaphorical).

So the three beings on that mountain were not only all "of the Earth but not of the Earth" but untouched by death. They were pure of that stain. Us, we'll have our bodies restored to us in a process that I can't really imagine or understand, but we'll have died. And Jesus now, in a paraphrase of the description in Life of Pi, is God with the smell of death on Him. Death has touched even God, though it was defeated, it still touched him.

The three beings, the two greatest prophets and the Messiah who was fulfilling their promises, were all pure, free of death, untouched by it. And the loss of purity was more beautiful, but only BECAUSE the purity was a big deal, because it was a beautiful thing in itself. And for us to understand that, we had to see that purity in its full form. If you tell this story before the Crucifixion, as Jesus made the three mere men promise they wouldn't, then it's about glory and the dual nature of Christ. But it's about seeing the fullness of Jesus's purity, without the stains of sin and death, before he sacrifices both. To see the beauty of that purity about to be actively traded for our salvation.

I think that's why those three men saw it. So that they, and through them we, would know and understand the fullness of what God sacrificed when He died for us - when He let Death touch Him and remain forever a part of Who He was. That purity was actively sacrificed, given as a gift. And it wouldn't have been important if the purity weren't beautiful.

The moment of having the purity and the moment of losing it were both important. Purity and its loss can both be beautiful. It's only a loss if the purity was precious, and it's only a gift if it's a loss.

Perhaps there's a reason I've always connected with this story beyond its usefulness in Going Forth Talks and my perpetual bemusement with Peter's response. It's about the destruction of purity that is about a loss and an improvement.