Someone has finally gotten to the heart of
Peter’s desire when, on the Mount of Transfiguration, he blurted out: “Lord, it
is good that we are here. If you wish, I will make three tents here, one for
you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah” (Matthew 17:4; cf. Mark 9:5; Luke
9:33). That someone is Paul D. Scalia, author of the collection of essays
titled, That Nothing May Be Lost. In
his selection, “His Transfiguration, and Ours,” Scalia writes,
Perhaps Peter’s words are
ill-timed. But his response shows how the human heart ought to respond in the light of Christ’s glory: “This is what I
have always desired. . . . I was created for this. . . . I want to remain in
this presence. To behold is to be held.”[1]
Those exclamations, “This is what I have always
desired. . . . I was created for this. . . . I want to remain in this
presence,” remind me of the response uttered by the unicorn Jewel when he
arrived in Aslan’s Country in C. S. Lewis’ fantasy novel, The Last Battle: “I have come home at last! This is my real
country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life,
though I never knew it till now. . . . Come further up, come further in!”[2]
The final scenes in The Last Battle are among the few places where Lewis portrayed the
fulfillment of this innate human desire. In reality, Lewis wrote mostly about
the anticipation of such glory. For
example, in his sermon “The Weight of Glory” Lewis acknowledges,
We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that
is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words—to
be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into
ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.[3]
As my friend Wayne Martindale points out, “Lewis
believed that every desire is at its root a desire for heaven.” Thus, Lewis
picked up on King Solomon’s observation in Ecclesiastes (3:11), “that God has
put eternity in our hearts,” and on St. Augustine’s assertion, “Our heart is
restless, until it repose in thee.” Accordingly, “Nearly all of Lewis’s works .
. . have the aim of arousing this desire for heaven or showing us how to live
in proper anticipation of our true home.”[4]
Like Peter, we all, at times, are blessed by
momentary, fleeting glimpses of glory that Lewis called Joy. In fact, those
grace-filled moments played a part in his becoming a Christian.[5]
And as a Christian, he put them in perspective.
I believe. . . that the old
stab, the old bittersweet, has come to me as often and as sharply since my conversion
as at any time of my life whatever. But I now know that the experience,
considered as a state of my own mind, had never had the kind of importance I
once gave it. It was valuable only as a pointer to something other and outer.
While that other was in doubt, the pointer naturally loomed large in my
thoughts. When we are lost in the woods the sight of a signpost is a great
matter.[6]
Yet like Peter, we want to enshrine our
mountain-top experiences, to live in them. But Scalia reminds us that a voice
responded to Peter's desire: “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well
pleased. Listen to him!” (Matthew 17:5).
Listen to him! Scalia writes that the command
should bring to mind, first and foremost, our Lord’s Passion.
The journey up the mountain had
followed Jesus’ first prophecy of His Passion: “Jesus began to show his
disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders
and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised”
(Mt 16:21; cf. Mk 8:31; Lk 9:22).[7]
Peter hadn’t been able to listen to Jesus. He
couldn’t comprehend Christ’s suffering and death; nor could he fathom the
resurrection. Following Christ to Calvary was unimaginable. Thus, “Peter, who
wants so much to remain on the mountain, must first learn the path of the
Passion.”[8]
Glory is the goal. The road to glory goes by way of Calvary.
It’s true that Peter’s words were ill-timed.
Yet, his response shows that we were created to desire the glory Christ
revealed that day. Eventually Peter followed his Savior to the cross, and he
came to that place where he would shout for joy: “This is what I have always
desired. . . . I was created for this. . . . I want to remain in this presence.
To behold is to be held.”
© Stan
Bohall, December 4, 2017
[3] Clive Staples Lewis, The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (New York: The Macmillan
Company, 1949), 12-13.
[4] Wayne Martindale, Journey to the Celestial City: Glimpses of Heaven from Great Literary
Classics (Chicago: Moody Press, 1995), 130-131.
[5] See Clive Staples Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life (New York: Harcourt,
Brace and Company, 1955), vii-viii.
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