Tag Archives: Transfiguration of Christ

The Transfiguration and the voice of the Father

11 Saturday Mar 2017

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transfiguration-of-JesusIn the gospel (Mt. 17:1-9), our Lord takes Peter, James and John up on a high mountain and is transfigured before them.  Our Lord’s face shone like the sun and his clothes became white as light.  Moses and Elijah appear and converse with our Lord.  Peter wants to build three tents on the spot but while he is speaking we are told that a bright cloud cast a shadow over them.  This immediately gets our attention, something utterly unique is occurring.  How can a cloud be “bright” and what does it mean that it casts a shadow over them?

From the cloud comes a voice, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.”  Immediately upon hearing this voice the apostles fall prostrate and we are told that they were very much afraid.  The “falling prostrate” was automatic.  There was no question.  It had to be done.  The fear also was automatic.  It too was the most appropriate and really only true response that could be given.  The fear given was not our so common little fear of saving our own skin and preserving our little self and ego.  No, it was the visceral fear of the sinful creature suddenly brought into the presence of the One with no sin, the One who alone is holy.

In the very beginning we are told that humanity (in Adam and Eve) walked in the garden in the company of God and freely talked with Him.  Through sin, we were cast out of the garden, we lost that free and intimate relationship with God not because God is wrathful as we so often are but because God is truth and cannot abide the un-truth of sin, because God is good and cannot abide the un-good of sin, because God is beauty and cannot abide the un-beauty of sin.

Humanity’s deepest yearning is to once again abide in the garden with God and to live in that free relationship.  The history of the people of Israel can be read, in part, as a striving to regain that intimate friendship.  Moses (the one person so highly favored by God) begged to see the glory of God and God only granted him the briefest view “of his back” because God knows that no creature wounded by sin can look on his face and live (Ex. 33:18-23).

Jesus Christ is that greatest and most sacred mystery of the Word of God enfleshed (who emptied himself of glory and took the form of a slave) who has come to take upon himself the weight of our sin and be that bridge, that sheep gate and shepherd to return us to intimate relationship with the Father.

It is no coincidence that in our Lord’s discourse of the Last Judgement (Mt. 25:31-46) it is the Son who returns in glory to judge humanity.  Even the sinner can look on Jesus Christ who is the Word enfleshed.  The one we looked upon and who was pierced for our offences.  But only those found righteous through Christ, who have been thoroughly washed clean of sin will enter the presence of the Father who can abide no sin.

Our deepest yearning for full friendship with God is so entwined with our deepest fear of knowing how far we have indeed fallen.  But God is merciful.  Christ comes over to the three disciples locked in fear.  He touches them and says, “Rise, and do not be afraid … Do not tell the vision to anyone until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.” 

We walk toward Jerusalem with our Lord…

The Transfiguration of our Lord: Extraordinary and Ordinary

20 Saturday Feb 2016

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The Transfiguration of our Lord by Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo

We can say that Lent is an extraordinary time lived in an ordinary season. We fast, we pray, we do works of charity – all while we also go about the ordinary rhythm of our lives.  We still go to work, we still go to school, we visit with one another, we pay bills…  The ordinary rhythm of life continues on even while we make the extraordinary journey of Lent.

We have echoes of this “extraordinary in the ordinary” in our readings for this second Sunday of Lent. In the gospel (Lk. 9:28b-36) our Lord takes Peter, James and John up on the mountain to pray.  The three disciples experience the transfiguration of our Lord as he is in prayer to the Father.  They catch a glimpse of the truth of who Christ is and they are awestruck … but the world continues on.  The other nine disciples were probably about the duties of an ordinary day, for the people in the closest village it was just another day like any other.  The world did not stop even as this amazing event occurs.  Peter, understandably, wants to remain in this extraordinary experience but the gospel goes on to say that he “did not know what he was saying.” Our God does not disdain the ordinary.  For God the extraordinary and the ordinary are not opposed.

Just as Jesus took the three disciples up the mountain to pray, we are told that God “took Abram outside” to see and count the number of the stars (Gen. 15:5-12,17-18).  Our God values our company.  He does not like to walk alone.  Even with the surreal and mystical image of animals being sacrificed and Abram in a trance, God binds himself to an ordinary group of people, Abram’s descendants, in order to walk with them through the running of time and history and thereby bring them (and through them all of humanity) into the fullness of his Kingdom.  Christ himself values our ordinary company.  The gospels are consistent in this message.  Christ does not see himself as some tragic, solitary hero.  Christ binds himself to his ordinary, little group of followers even as he is fully aware of their weaknesses and their limits.

“Yes,” says the author of Philippians, “our citizenship is in heaven” and to this we direct our lives but we now live our lives here in this world so “stand firm in the Lord” (Phil. 3:17-4:1). Our actions here in our ordinary world and lives should reflect the extraordinary glory of our citizenship in heaven which is the hope we journey toward.

For God the extraordinary and the ordinary are not opposed. The same ought to be true for us.  We can be awakened, our eyes can be opened to see the extraordinary in the ordinary if we allow ourselves to be “taken up” by Christ.  Just as Christ took the three disciples up the mountain to pray, just as God took Abram outside to gaze at the heavens, we need to allow Christ to take us and pull us away from our own selfishness and draw us into his own life.  If we allow this to happen then we can participate in a greater reality, our eyes will be opened and we will begin to see as Christ sees.  We also can be transfigured.

It has been said that the transfiguration “means breaking boundaries. It means contemplating how good the Lord is, how wide his horizons are, and how deep the demands of his Gospel are.”  May each one of us be a little more transfigured during this extraordinary time lived in an ordinary season.