FEAST OF THE TRANSFIGURATION OF THE LORD
Being Attentive to the Mystery
(Dan 7:9-10/2 Pt 1:16-19, 13-14; Ps 97; Lk 9:28-36)
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“You will do well to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place.”
These words in the second reading from St. Peter, a witness to the transfiguration, invite us to ponder this mystery, let this feast strengthen our faith in Jesus Christ Risen as Son of Man, Son of God and crucified Messiah, and empower us to be radical disciples open to redemptive suffering in our lives.
The liturgists chose the readings for this feast well. In the first reading, Daniel recounts his own personal heavenly vision about a “son of man” given all “dominion, glory and kingship” that prefigures the transfiguration. In the second option, St. Peter, a witness to the transfiguration, recalls his experience of that life-changing event, including the voice of God that he heard, and encourages us to ponder and draw meaning and strength from it for ourselves.
The gospel from St. Matthew focuses us on the event itself, packed with symbolism and meaning. The journey itself to the mountaintop is a gesture that indicates an encounter with God, a desire for a theophany. Jesus takes with him three leaders of the early church: Peter, the first pope; James, the leader of Jerusalem church where it all began, and John, the longest living apostle and our last link to the apostolic are.
Suddenly, two great Old Testament figures appear: Moses, the great lawgiver and leader of the exodus out of Egypt, and Elijah, the great prophet who experienced his own personal exodus from this world into the heavens on a fiery chariot as his successor Elisha looked on with wonder and awe – also prefiguring the transfiguration. These five witnesses from both Old and New Testaments underline the importance of what was to transpire.
St. Luke notes that Moses and Elijah were speaking to Jesus about his departure, or exodus, “which he was about to accomplish in Jerusalem” (Lk 9:31) How ironic that in all this glory and awesome brilliance, their conversation would be about the passion, suffering and death that Jesus was to undergo in Jerusalem. The message is clear – the way to glory, to eternal life, is through the cross – through some suffering that when accepted by us without resentment or bitterness, as Jesus did, places us within the kingdom of God.
The other purpose, in the light of that suffering, was to give the apostles strength to face the imminent suffering of Jesus, and to begin to understand the role of redemptive suffering in the life of the early church, as well as to give us that same strength in the face of our own often seemingly meaningless suffering. As Richard Rohr OFM likes to say, it takes either great suffering or great love to teach us the deepest meaning of life. We are called to see the Cross as a blessing.
The bright cloud and voice from heaven is the blessing the Father gives to Jesus, a blessing that empowered him to accept the suffering that awaited him. At his baptism in the Jordan, those words prepared Jesus to reject the temptations of the false gods in the desert – an over-attachment to possessions, prestige and power. Here, they prepare the disciples for the scandal of the passion.
This is a reminder of the importance of blessings in our own lives – especially the blessing of fathers over their sons, and mothers over their daughters. Blessing comes from the Latin benedicere, which means “to speak well of.” When parents affirm, praise and speak well of their children, that blessing imparts a powerful inner strength, self-confidence and self-worth to the children that equips them to face all the challenges that life will throw at them. As one young boy put it, “I desired even just one light punch on the arm by my father, more than all the love of my mother.” It is that gesture that seems to transfer the energy of the father to the son, and that transferred the Father’s energy to Jesus.
Fr. Robert Imbelli, in an article on the transfiguration, offers this reflection: “Jesus transfigured not only fulfills the Torah and the prophets, he recapitulates in himself all God’s dealings with humanity. Jesus concentrates and intensifies all the spiritual forces of the universe, and redirects them toward the awe-struck disciples. They receive him as they are able, ‘grace answering to grace.’ For he is the true, if not always recognized, desire of every human heart.”
A last lesson of the transfiguration is that we are not to try to cling to any consolation from God, any even slight and subtle spiritual experience, for its own sake. These consolations are meant to strengthen us for service to a struggling humanity, and to support us when the going gets difficult. Peter understandably wanted to build three tents to keep that spiritual high going, but Jesus took them down the mountain, and even predicted his passion on the way. It was only his resurrection that would fully realize his own exodus back to the Father – helping us understand why he would demand they say nothing to anyone of this experience until “after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”
The Eucharist is a foretaste of the heavenly glory the apostles glimpsed on that day upon the mountain. We too hear the Father’s voice, and we too experience transformation – as the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Jesus, and we in turn become more fully the Body of Christ in the world.
Finally, we are also invited to descend the mountain, to set out from this celebration, forgiven, healed and nourished, to spread the Good News of who Jesus is, as radical disciples open to redemptive suffering for the sake of the gospel and the world.
