What is the difference between these two scenarios? First, a grand scale spectacle unfolds before your eyes in all of its magnificent glory and you behold something incredible that you have never seen before. Second, you stare at a work of art in a museum and become moved by it, gain understanding from it, and behold something glorious that you have never seen before. Some might say that these are just two ways of saying the very same thing.

Today’s Gospel contains the story of Jesus appearing in dazzling white before three of his followers, standing alongside two long deceased famous people, and amidst foreboding black storm clouds and a booming voice from God saying: “This is my beloved son. Listen to him.” That was a big scene and there was nothing at all subtle about it.

Don’t you wish you could experience something like that? Something big which would make your faith easier? Something that would make the presence of God in your life more obvious? I certainly do.

But I wonder…

I wonder if the kind of transfiguration that is more likely available to us to experience, however, is better captured by the words of author Jonathan Swift when he said: “Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.”

As Catholics, we are well acquainted with that concept. We hold a little piece of bread in our hands and see in it more. We read a thick book full of poems, stories, songs, and letters and say it is… more. We follow an ancient carpenter from Nazareth and know he is… more. We belong to an institution that has a long and complicated history and believe it is… more. And we relate to each other, hopefully, in ways that demonstrate that we are all… more. Fundamentally, this is the notion of sacrament, because in the sacraments, we see more.

As much as I would love to get the grand spectacle, the blockbuster movie, the hit-you-over-the-head-and-leave-little-doubt version of faith, I have come to expect instead the quieter, seeing-what-is-invisible form of it instead. That is, the rendition of faith that requires… well… more faith.

But make no mistake about it… the end game is the exact same. And it’s why all of us are here in church today. It’s why we choose to follow. Because we seek… the more. We want to rise above the ordinary and experience extraordinary instead. We hope to find our way through darkness and into the light. We forgo the gains of this life for the even greater gains of the next. We take hold of our suffering and pair it to Christ’s, knowing that it’s only for a time and that if we follow this ancient carpenter from Nazareth, only joy and peace await us.

We are here because of the more.

But that will not likely come to us in a burst of a bright light, the unmistakable mark of a dramatic miracle, or from a booming voice of God that shakes the ground. Instead, it’s more likely to come in the form of a faint breeze, a soft whisper, and us grasping clumsily for what we hope lies up ahead of us.

So, I myself have stopped searching for the blockbuster movie version of faith. Instead, I’m taking in the faint breeze, trying to listen to what I hear in the whisper, and reaching toward Christ… knowing that he is always near.

This is our faith. This is how we see the invisible. And this is how we find… more.