Simon Marsh

‘This is my Son, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’ We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven, while we were with him on the holy mountain. So we have the prophetic message more fully confirmed. You will do well to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.

2 Peter 1.16-19

 

 

KNOWN TODAY as the “Desert Fathers” the earliest Christian monks inhabited the desert land of the Middle East from the end of the second century AD and were the foundation upon which later monastic founders, including St Benedict, built their way of life. A great deal of the teaching of the Desert Fathers is expressed in the form of anecdotes. Here is one such story:

Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, “Abba, as far as I can, I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?” Then the old man stood up and stretched his hands toward heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, “If you will, you can become all flame.” *

 

Members of God’s family we are, nonetheless, caught up in the process of becoming the sons and daughters of God: being “changed from glory into glory”. Peter and James and John were present with—and to—Jesus upon the holy mountain—where they’d gone expressly “to pray”. And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. Peter, James and John knew without doubt (“the prophetic message fully confirmed”) that this transfigured man was the Son of God himself—in the very company of heaven—by means no more convoluted than that he was at prayer. And wonder of wonders, that’s what we’re about in our Eucharistic worship today: for “If you will, you can become all flame.” 

* Joseph of Panephysis—The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: Translated by Benedicta Ward, Cistercian Studies Series, number 59. This is saying 7 of Abba Joseph—p.103