Transfiguration ... Mystery of Light

Peter Paul Rubens

I think of this mystery as light ... I think of a great light, a luminous cloud.  At Fatima, in one of the first apparitions of the Angel, the children described the apparitions as light: In the middle of that light appeared a cloud in the form of a young man.  Later when Our Lady appeared, Sr. Lucia described it:  "In that light which was God" - the children at Fatima experienced it as such when Our Lady opened her arms.  "And we saw in an immense light that is God ..."

It's difficult to paint light without losing the figure - but I like abstract images which do that, I think they effect the sense that you are caught up in the light, in the cloud, as it were.

Brian Strobel

The Prayer of Recollection can be like this ... it seems to me St. Peter indicates it so when he speaks of the 'prophetic message' - "You do well if you pay attention to this as you would to a light shining in a murky place ..."  That light which is God - shinning in the depths of my soul.  

Transfiguration

Remembering Hiroshima ... forever.

"At first, without electricity or radio, we were cut off from the rest of the world. The following day cars and trains began arriving from Tokyo and Osaka with help for Hiroshima. They stayed in the outskirts of the city, and when we questioned them as to what had happened, they answered very mysteriously: “The first atomic bomb has exploded.”

“But what is the atomic bomb?”

They would answer: “The atom bomb is a terrible thing.”

“We have seen how terrible it is, but what is it?”

And they would repeat: “It’s the atomic bomb…the atomic bomb.”

They knew nothing but the name. It was a new word that was coming for the first time into the vocabulary. Besides, the knowledge that it was the atomic bomb that had exploded was no help to us at all from a medical standpoint, as no one in the world knew its full effects on the human organism. We were, in effect, the first guinea pigs in such experimentation.

But from a missionary standpoint, they did challenge us when they said: “Do not enter the city because there is a gas in the air that kills for seventy years.” It is at such times that one feels most a priest, when one knows that in the city there are 50,000 bodies which, unless they are cremated, will cause a terrible plague. There were besides 120,000 wounded to care for. In light of these facts, a priest cannot remain outside the city just to preserve his life. Of course, when one is told that in the city there is a gas that kills, one must be very determined to ignore that fact and go in. And we did." - Pedro Arrupe S.J., From a talk given in 1950

Blessed Paul VI died on this day in 1978 as well.