We often want to "set up booths." When we feel good with God, in some "spiritually comfortable" setting, in a community, in a monastery, in the Church... We think it is very proper and pious to want always to be here.

Little Therese of Lisieux wrote:
"To live by love is not to set up booths,
Even after climbing Mount Tabor:
It is to go toward Your voice that calls,
To look at the Cross without turning one's gaze away."

When we want to "set up booths," we want to stop, to get stuck in spiritual experiences that are pleasant to us, to keep them for ourselves. At times we need this; spiritual rest is necessary. Jesus took with Him onto the mountain those who would have to be with Him in the garden of Gethsemane. He wants us to go farther, so that we do not seek the experience of His presence, but always and everywhere live as if we were on Mount Tabor, even when we do not feel and do not see the light of Tabor. This light must be within us.

We may never again experience this joy of the Transfiguration, but it is enough for us to know what awaits us ahead, and Who awaits us on our path, at times heavy and thorny. But He walked a more difficult path, and He, our God, wants us to follow Him.

The disciples go up after Jesus, become witnesses of His transfiguration, see His glory, and hear the Father's word about the Son. Three evangelists tell of this event, and all three connect it with Christ's words that some of His disciples will see the Kingdom of God come with power. If this really was a "taste of the Kingdom," then how does the disciples' experience differ from ours?

We, like them, try to follow Christ (sometimes successfully, sometimes not, just as they did); we believe in His glory, in His divinity; through His words in the Gospel we hear the voice of the Father... The only thing we lack is the experiential sensation, as vivid as the one that seized the disciples then in the radiance of unearthly light. But have we not been told: "...blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed" (John 20:29)? Do we not taste the Kingdom even before death, uniting ourselves by faith with its Source?

Paul calls faith that which, having previously remained invisible, now reveals itself. Of course, if by faith he meant some theological concept or even simply a worldview, this phrase would sound mysterious. But judging by the context, by faith the author of the letter understands, first of all, unconditional faithfulness to God and to the covenant once concluded with Him. With this understanding of faith, much becomes clearer. Of course, if we based our hopes only on something human, even deep faith, these hopes would still hang in the air: for the course of history would hardly change radically because of our faith, even the deepest, and the Kingdom would not draw one iota closer to us.

Faithfulness to relationships with the One on whom both earthly history and the Kingdom depend is another matter. Such faithfulness truly becomes a pledge that everything promised to us by God, everything we hope for on the basis of His words, will one day truly become the reality of our life. And not simply become so in the future, but is already becoming so: for faithfulness to God also means participation in the fulfillment of His plans, those very plans with which the promises He has given are connected. Our faithfulness becomes His instrument, and then it turns out that the formerly invisible designs of God are being fulfilled and becoming visible, including through our faithfulness. And this faithfulness opens the road into the Kingdom for us, becoming the pledge of the fulfillment of our chief hope.