Only Jesus

I am on the road again this weekend, or actually, more off the road, as I spend my weekend in the retreat house attached to the Siena Monastery in Drogheda, of our enclosed Dominican nuns... It is nice and quite here, and it will give me two days away from my desk in which I can focus on saying a few prayers...

I just want to share something that struck me after I wrote my last reflection, last Tuesday. It was the line:
Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more except Jesus. -Mark 9:8

I was thinking, that this great event happened, Jesus appears in all His glory, clouds and thunder appear, suddenly there stand Moses and Elijah! Excitement, fear, everything at the same time... and then suddenly... They looked around and they no one except Jesus...

My question is, would I be disappointed?
And it seems to me that a first reaction is that maybe I would... But this ties in exactly with my previous post! On our journey through life, on our journey with God, weds get the moments of experiential closeness, excitement of knowing God! But those times come and go, they help us to strengthen our faith, but they are not fundamental... If it was only about experiencing sensations then our relationship with our Lord would not have a lot of depth. As with human relationships, there is much more to it then some occasional experience.

So our reaction should be, when we discover that it is 'only' Jesus who is with us, a reaction of joy, because Jesus is indeed with us! And as I wrote in my last post, he comes down with us, down from the mountain, down into our ordinary life, down with us towards His cross, where He offers himself out of pure love of us!