The Mountaintop

For those of you who may not have heard, I was ordained to the priesthood on Thursday evening. The service was spectacular, even with a sung Eucharistic Prayer; I couldn't have scripted it better. SHW and I returned from PA last night and I'm back in the office for the foreseeable future. It is fortuitous that the readings for the Last Sunday in Epiphany speak directly to my life right now. Like Moses, Joshua, Jesus, Peter, James, and John, I have found the mountaintop. Kneeling before the bishop until my knees hurt comes second only to my final goodbye to the kids at St. Thomas for spiritual mountaintop moments. I met God face-to-face again on Thursday night, and though I don't believe there was any sort of ontological change, that is to say my DNA has not been altered, I was, for a while, sitting high atop that mountain.

And like Moses, Joshua, Jesus, Peter, James, and John, I too was forced to leave the mountain. I had to return down the path and find myself once again in the plain; I'm not in the valley quite yet. See, for me, the mountaintop is a bitter sweet place. It is sweet because it is as high as we can go in this life. It is bitter because it is as high as we can go in this life. I come to terms with my humanity on the mountaintop. I'm still a sinner; God comes down to me.

I think most of us have had similar experiences. Be it the top of an anthill or a mountain we have all gone up only to realize that we must go back down. For some the thought of having to return is too much so that they never venture up. Others work hard to stay up as long as they can, to no avail. Those who seem to get it right however are like Jesus; they go up, they get empowered, and they return ready to do the work to which they have been called; even if that means not revealing just how great the mountaintop was; if for a moment.