This is a strange story, but
then the Bible is no stranger to strange stories. A burning bush, a plague or
ten, fire and smoke on a mountain, a glowing face; the Holy shows up and things
happen that can’t be explained and people change. That’s the whole point of a
theophany or a close encounter of the Holy kind. You are supposed to change and
people are supposed to notice. But sometimes change, like a glowing face, needs
to be veiled so that nothing gets in the way of whatever it is that God wants
to do. The veil on Moses’ face allowed those who were afraid to come near and
hear what it was God wanted to reveal through Moses. It might be that the
church in our day and age “veils” the ways that don’t make sense to those
outside the faith. Veiling is not hiding. In our context it is taking seriously
that the language of the church is no longer the vernacular of the common culture. So we veil what might separate us by
speaking the universal language of the human condition without denying that
which has caused our face to shine; the encounter with the Christ who came down
off the mountain of transfiguration to climb the hill of suffering for the sake
of the world.
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