Lenten Meditation, Second Sunday of Lent 2025

The Grave of Emily Dickinson at West Cemetery, Amherst, Massachusetts

Scripture¹ – Luke 9:28-36 – the Transfiguration of the Christ


I do not know the name of the film technique, but it is one that is deployed all the time in movies. We see the characters in a scene looking toward something that we, the viewers, cannot yet see. The Director wants us first to “see” that something in the reactions on the faces of the characters who are looking at it. When this technique is used, we experience a compelling need to see what they are seeing: “Quit showing us their faces; turn the camera around and let us look too!”

On that night (I am convinced that this happened at night after they had been all day among the crowds below), those three closest friends of Jesus saw, indirectly, what Jesus, as well as Moses and Elijah, were beholding – the very heart of God, the Trinitarian relationships. St. John of the Cross in his poem The Living Flame of Love³ wrote:

The disciples saw the Trinity first in the reaction on the faces, and in the very being, of Jesus, Moses, and Elijah. Perhaps the disciples felt an urgency flare in them (but only after they had moved through the terror that had overcome them up there on the mountain) causing them to ask Jesus: “Please, let us see too what you were seeing?” Or as later the apostle Philip requested:


Perhaps later, when those three asked Jesus about what had happened, Jesus replied, “You are missing the point by being preoccupied with what you saw happen to me, in me, and through me up there. What I wanted to show you was the Father, my Father and yours, whose Face I am always beholding – “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name.” Pray that my Father will grant you to see what I see.”

Such a striking scene from the life of Christ! I suggest that we are not meant to pay attention to the light, the effulgence on the face and clothes of Christ (by far the striking aspect of this scene – that glorious light!) but to the physical expression of his body  as it reacts to, responds to the everlasting Light.


Did He suddenly look up with eyes wide open, or turn His head looking fiercely into the faces of His three best friends? What was the change the disciples noticed happening on His face – from what expression to what? What did they see in His eyes? What was the change they heard in His voice? What were the movements of His arms and hands? Were His arms opening out with palms open, a gesture of surprise and welcome? Were they pulled in with hands over His heart as if profoundly moved by something, and feeling that intensely, His heart racing? Did He suddenly fall to His knees – an obvious change of posture? Was His face mobile and bright, and his voice musical with laughter, mouth open and teeth flashing and head thrown back?

A Poem - Emily Dickinson, #479 ⁸

A note about reading an Emily Dickinson poem: There is a quality of reality that comes through when reading her poems – the rhythm in them; the puzzle of them. One does not need to “figure out” what she means to be significantly affected by what she is able to convey. I feel her fierceness, confidence, and startling freedom of spirit come through way before I, by careful attention to each word and line, begin to “catch her drift.” So, before you feel daunted by this poem, enjoy it. The scholar A. Habegger noted: “She freely ignored the usual rules of versification and even of grammar, and in the intellectual content of her work she likewise proved exceptionally bold and original. Her verse is distinguished by its epigrammatic compression, haunting personal voice, enigmatic brilliance, and lack of high polish.”

Observations and Insights –

“Because I could not stop for Death” – In this “denial of death” ⁹ world in which we live, we might have expected her to write “would not stop” or even “will not stop”, rather than “could not stop”.

In a proper Christian understanding of Life, Death is not an enemy of our human nature, but the created means by which we can finally and fully define what each of us made of the life that was given us. Death for us is Life considered under the aspect of its ability to be completed; the work of Art now finished; the “thread” found and not lost – John 19: ³⁰ After Jesus had taken the wine he said, ‘It is fulfilled’; and bowing his head he gave up his spirit.¹⁰



Consider a novel and how its last chapter does not “kill” the story being told, it does not void the novel of its meaning, rendering it a waste of time, but rather it brings the novel to its memorable and satisfying completion. We, the readers, finally grasp the whole arc of the great story – beginning, middle, and end.

Perhaps Dickinson, a composer of 1,800 poems, and perhaps any writer, is constantly practicing death when he or she recognizes that his or her written essay or poem or novel is done, and lets it be done.

For a writer to accept this “enough”, to recognize and to accept the completion shown him or her in the text – the story or poem or play or novel tells the author where it wants to go - spares him or her from the dreary vulgarity of a story or poem or sermon or speech unable to find its end.

It is the refusal of an end not the acceptance of it that vacates a story or poem or novel or sermon … or a life of its meaning. Perhaps this is why Dickinson uses the word “kindly” for Death, conveying to us its striking courtesy.

“Ourselves – And Immortality” – We are intrigued that the poet wrote “Immortality” and not “– Mortality” as we might have expected in a poem in which Death is so prominent a character. In this “Carriage” there are three passengers … unless either Immortality or Death is the one driving the Carriage for the other two. If they both are passengers with her, then we are left wondering, first, who is driving the Carriage and, second, we are struck that the poet associates Death and Immortality as fellow travelers as if they belonged together, each serving the interests of each other, rather than cancelling each other out. Our Christian poet understands how and why they belong together and not as enemies.

“The Dews drew quivering and Chill" – No one can be non-emotional about his or her own death. The poet, in an earlier line of this poem, had just ridden by those heedless children at play,


who are completely unaware of their mortality. But now the Carriage carries the poet past a cemetery. Suddenly she experiences the “quivering and Chill” of her mortality experienced as unavoidable. She lacks clothing capable of keeping her warm against the attack of this existential fear. ¹² In her emotions, Death appears as coldly impersonal. But then the closing lines of the poem:



Prayer: “O God, who have commanded us to listen to your beloved Son, be pleased, we pray, to nourish us inwardly by your word, that with spiritual sight made pure, we may rejoice to behold your glory.”

¹ This is the Gospel being read in Catholic churches today on the 2nd Sunday of Lent.

² The New Jerusalem Bible (New York; London; Toronto; Sydney; Auckland: Doubleday, 1990), Lk 9:27–29.

³ As was his custom with his major poems, St. John of the Cross includes with it his extensive and profound commentary on its meaning.

⁴ St. John of the Cross, The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez, Third Edition. (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 2017), 640. These are the last two stanzas of “The Living Flame of Love”. As to what this “flame” is, John of the Cross comments, p. 641: “This flame of love is the Spirit of its Bridegroom, who is the Holy Spirit. The soul feels Her within itself not only as a fire that has consumed and transformed it, but as a fire that burns and flares within it, as I mentioned. And that flame, every time it flares up, bathes the soul in glory and refreshes it with the quality of divine life.”

⁵ The New Jerusalem Bible (New York; London; Toronto; Sydney; Auckland: Doubleday, 1990), Jn 14:8–9.

⁶ The New Jerusalem Bible (New York; London; Toronto; Sydney; Auckland: Doubleday, 1990), 2 Co 3:15–18.

⁷ Phillips Brooks, “O Little Town of Bethlehem”, from the first stanza.

⁸ The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition, edited by R.W. Franklin (Cambridge, Massachusetts: the Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1999. Alfred Habegger in Britannica – “Readers respond, too, to the impression her poems convey of a haunting private life, one marked by extremes of deprivation and refined ecstasies. At the same time, her rich abundance—her great range of feeling, her supple expressiveness—testifies to an intrinsic poetic genius. Widely translated into Japanese, Italian, French, German, and many other languages, Dickinson has begun to strike readers as the one American lyric poet who belongs in the pantheon with Sappho [610-570 BCE], Catullus [84-54 BCE], Saʿdī [1213-1291], the Shakespeare [1564-1616] of the sonnets, Rainer Maria Rilke [1875-1926], and Arthur Rimbaud [1854-1891].”

⁹ Wikipedia notes: “The Denial of Death is a Pulitzer Prize winning book in 1973 by American cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker, which discusses the psychological and philosophical implications of how people and cultures have reacted to the concept of death. The author argues most human action is taken to ignore or avoid the inevitability of death.”

¹⁰ The New Jerusalem Bible (New York; London; Toronto; Sydney; Auckland: Doubleday, 1990), Jn 19:30.

¹¹ The New Jerusalem Bible (New York; London; Toronto; Sydney; Auckland: Doubleday, 1990), Eph 2:10.

¹² The “quivering” refers to the “Dews”, which suggests that the air moving by the Carriage causes the dew drops on its surface to “quiver” in place – the Poet keeps us aware of the movement of the Carriage to the West – “the Sun passed us”. However, “quivering” also evokes the Poet who has gotten chilled, who is shivering. But following the reading of Vendler (2012), perhaps we are meant to associate “quivering” with FEAR, mortal fear, that Death, who at first seemed “kindly” and “Civil” has brought her close, too close now not just to an idea of Death, but to her death. She is becoming frightened.