“‘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.” (2 Pt 1: 17-18)
Mountains in Scripture are places of encounter with God. God commands Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac, atop the peak of Mount Moriah…God gifts the Law to Moses amidst the fearsome smoke and din of Mount Sinai…God’s spirit visits Elijah in the form of a barely audible breeze just outside a cave on Mount Horeb…and in today’s gospel, Jesus, the God-man, reveals his divinity to his closest disciples, Peter, James, and John, jolting them awake as they slumber along the slopes of Mount Tabor.
It is only fitting that we ascend mountains in order to meet God, because they symbolize a fundamental reality: God is above, we are below. We have to reject sin, reform our lives, free ourselves from what is fleshly, base, and low, and rise above the spirit of the world in order to reach God.
However, literally, not figuratively, most of us do not live on the mountain, and the vast majority of humanity dwells in the lowlands. We are inexorably compelled to find God in our ordinary lives and to accustom ourselves to journeying with him in darkness.
In When the Well Runs Dry (2000), the late Thomas Green, S.J., internationally recognized authority on spiritual direction and discernment, relates how during a retreat he was granted a mystical experience of God’s light, only to realize that he felt more secure in darkness.
“For some years, prayer had been dark and God seemed far away. It seemed I spent most of my time complaining and crying out for relief. Then, one day, during a retreat I was making at the Carmelite convent in Naga City…in the Philippines, the Lord suddenly returned. …It was morning—I remember well, because when noontime came and I went to lunch I was walking on the clouds. Yet, as I ate, I just as suddenly realized that I was much more secure in the dark! …more secure from myself and all in me that could spoil love.”
Kahlil Gibran, the third best-selling poet of all time, wrote, “After a thousand years I climbed the sacred mountain and again spoke unto God, saying, ‘My God, my aim and my fulfillment; I am thy yesterday and thou [art] my tomorrow. I am thy root in the earth and thou art my flower in the sky, and together we grow before the face of the sun.’
“Then God
leaned over me, and in my ears whispered words of sweetness, and even as the
sea that enfoldeth a brook that runneth down to her, he enfolded me.
“And when I descended to the valleys and the plains God was there also.”
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