One morning last week when I was driving to spiritual direction, the sky was blue and sunny and the temperature was quickly climbing through the 80s, when suddenly I was alarmed by a dark cloud shrouding the highway ahead of me. At first I thought it must be smoke from a large fire nearby! I slowed down a little. But as I kept driving and entered the mysterious darkness, I discovered that it was simply a large, solitary, low-hanging cloud, apparently too heavy and tired to rise up in the sky on this hot mid-morning.
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| Icon by the hand of Mother Iliana |
In reality, I was at a low elevation on a flat highway in Ohio, and the cloud had come down very low…but I felt like I had been lifted up to the level of the clouds. In the Old Testament, when God revealed Himself to Mankind, He often did so in the form of a cloud, such as on Mt. Sinai. Man longed to speak to God face to face, but we couldn’t look at God and live (Exodus 33:20), so when the time came, God became Man. At the Transfiguration on Mt. Tabor, God again spoke out of a cloud, but the Incarnate God (Jesus, the second Person of the Trinity) also revealed the glory of divinity through His body—the glory for which we are created to partake of through grace—and the Apostles fell on their faces in awe. In becoming incarnate, God came down to us like that cloud I drove through—except in a much more tangible way—in order to raise us up in glory. The Anaphora of the Divine Liturgy of St. Basil beautifully proclaims:
When the fullness of time had come,
you spoke to us through your own Son,
the very one through whom you created the ages.
Although he is the reflection of your glory and the express image of your person,
sustaining all things by his powerful word,
He did not deem equality with you, God and Father, something to be grasped;
rather, while remaining everlasting God,
he appeared on earth and lived among men.
In becoming incarnate from the holy Virgin,
he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave,
conforming himself to the lowliness of our body,
that he might conform us to the image of his glory.
As I drove last week, the cloud was down with me, but it was an image to me of being raised up. On Mt. Tabor, Mankind was shown the glory for which we were made and in which we hope. Were the Apostles Peter, James and John on earth or in heaven? In Jesus, the two are brought together. Let us burst forth with a jubilant hymn of thanksgiving!
