KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 16 January
Transformed by the renewing of your mind
It is a wonderful phrase from Paul’s Letter to the Romans: “Be not conformed to this world; but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.” It complements Luke’s story of Jesus as a boy of twelve being “found in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them and, and asking questions,” read in Chapel this week. These passages are traditionally read on The First Sunday after Epiphany and highlight the epiphany theme.
They reveal what belongs to the educational project, namely, the manifestation or making known of the things of God which complement, correct, perfect, and certainly challenge the things of our humanity; in short, epiphany (or education!) as transformative. Paul is suggesting the deeper meaning of the quest of the Magi-Kings who make the long hard journey to Bethlehem seeking the truth of God. They are transformed by what they see and adore, changed into something better we might say. As T.S. Eliot intuited, they are “no longer at ease” in their former places.
Being conformed to this world contrasts with being transformed by the renewing of our minds. The idea of renewal suggests something that has been lost and is to be recovered, a deeper sense of what belongs to the truth of our humanity. The Magi-Kings found Jesus in Bethlehem. Here, in the only story of the boyhood of Jesus in the Scriptures, he is found in the Temple engaged with the doctors of the Law. What does it mean? What is the epiphany here for us that just might signal a change for us? As Augustine says, “we shall be changed into something better” – in melius renovabimur.
There is something universal in that sensibility. We seek for something more and better than what belongs to our worldly pursuits which ultimately cannot satisfy the restlessness of our hearts because the goods of this world pass away. “Our hearts are restless,” Augustine famously says, “until they find their rest in thee,” in our abiding in God’s eternal love. It launches his Confessions which is about the universal journey of the soul and its conversion to the abiding truth of God. But only because of two things that complement one another: our seeking or desiring and the epiphany of God to us.