Transfigured by God–And a Watch’s “Beep, beep”

Today’s reflection is by Terry Gonda (she/her), a lifelong Catholic and spiritual director. She and her wife, Kirsti Reeve, are music ministers at their Jesuit parish in Detroit. She previously served for 36 years as music director at a campus ministry parish before being fired by the Archdiocese for legally marrying Kirsti. Rooted in Ignatian spirituality and the wisdom of the mystics, she now co-leads a lay Catholic community—formed from the remnants of her former parish—grounded in synodality, radical welcome, and spiritual accompaniment. Her story is featured in Cornerstones: Sacred Stories of LGBTQ+ Employees in Catholic Institutions.

Today’s liturgical readings for the Second Sunday of Lent can be found by clicking here.

The most important moments in Scripture begin with disruption. Can I learn to anticipate, embrace and even dance with God in these holy hijacks towards a more fruitful faith journey? The liturgical readings for the Second Sunday of Lent shed some light on such interruptions.

Both the Transfiguration and Abram stories hold the same tension: when God interrupts our carefully constructed sense of reality, our reaction is to want either clarity or containment.

God offers neither.

God offers presence.

In the first reading, Abram hears a voice that upends everything: Go. Leave your land, your people, your father’s house. No map. Just a promise that blessing will somehow flow through his willingness to trust. Today’s psalm and second reading root that trust in mercy and grace: in Christ alive within.

In today’s Transfiguration gospel, the disciples are overwhelmed by multiple eruptions — light, cloud, voice: “Listen to him.” In their fear, Jesus touches them: “Do not be afraid.” Peter will spend the rest of his life learning how to trust that one voice over the others.

Listen to him. Do not be afraid: these are directives for the interior life. For LGBTQ Catholics especially, this practice can be essential for spiritual and mental sanity.

In 2006, during my first Ignatian silent retreat. I decided to experiment with intentional sacred disruption.

That retreat (like all of mine) held the tension of being lesbian and Catholic — and the inevitable conscience formation of being open to being wrong in theology, yet clear about the gift and fruits of my love with my wife, Kirsti. I also prayed for wisdom, and for shame to be healed, knowing how deeply it distorts our image of God and our discernment.

I set my retro Casio watch to beep every twenty minutes. Each beep beep was a cue to bow inwardly, be present in the moment, reverence Christ within, practice acceptance of what is, know I am the Beloved, and…trust. Over and over. I started to soften and break open.

One afternoon in prayer as I asked for guidance, sunlight flooded the room and I looked up to see a brilliant rainbow stretched across the ceiling. I laughed with joy and then cried grace-filled tears, resisting my instinct to analyze the physics of it. I wanted to receive it first.

Eventually I traced the rainbow to its source: a ray of sunshine was bouncing off a CD that my dad had given me which was lying on a side table. Printed across it were two titles: Letting Go of Anger and You Are My Beloved.

I froze as it all landed on me. A ray of light sending a message of surrender and pure grace from my Father…the moment I needed it, creating rainbows on the ceiling.

More weeping and laughing flooded in. Not because every LGBTQ theological question was settled. But because belovedness had interrupted shame.

The healing washed over me for days.

As the retreat was ending, I rejected the common end-of-retreat notion that I had to “come down off the mountain.” I decided the mystic carries the mountain within — a transfigured way of seeing. I would just happen to be going into work now, wearing something besides sweat pants, and talking to other people!

To make this concrete, I reset the watch to beep at two minutes before each hour. In meetings, in conversations, in the kitchen — beep beep — I would bow internally, reverence, accept, trust.

After a couple of weeks, something curious began to happen. At times the “beep beeps” felt poignant, like God was weighing in on a topic that was being discussed. The first few times, Kirsti and I laughed the coincidence off –until about the 15th time it happened in a month. I dropped to my knees in the kitchen, started crying and said, “When are we going to stop laughing? What is happening!?”

What was happening was disruption…and awakening.

I began to see how easily we construct our little cardboard realities like boxes over our heads. We cling to them — our religious certainties, our fears — and, like Peter and his tents in today’s gospel, we want to defend and protect them. But opening myself up via the watch ritual has allowed for a series of fruitful and grace-filled disruptions for which I am grateful. 

After setting the watch aside for a few years, Kirsti surprised me with a new one last November. I’ve returned to the practice, and the dance has resumed: reverence, acceptance, belovedness — and now, “I surrender all of this to Your Grace. Trust.”

I need this practice. Before I speak for justice, I must know my source. Shame and fear turn justice brittle. As today’s readings remind us, from belovedness — Christ within — courage grows roots, and fear is transfigured. For LGBTQ Catholics, that distinction can mean the difference between opening doors or hardening walls.

Belovedness and Oneness are the mountain I now try to carry with me. (The watch just beeped — I’m not kidding.)

Do not be afraid. Listen. Trust — and go.

Beep beep.

–Terry Gonda, March 1, 2026