Second Sunday of Lent, Year B—2000
I often find myself saying this or that
reading is one of my favourite passages of scripture. Well, this one certainly
deserves to be in the top ten. The transfiguration. There is so much food for thought
that every time you look at it you see different things.
Moses and Elijah appear with Jesus; we know
that they refer to the law and the prophets and that their presence indicates
that Jesus has come to fulfil all that they hoped for.
Moses
led his people into the Promised Land, but he never got there himself. But now
he is there. And in what company! With Elijah the greatest of Israel’s prophets
and with Jesus the long awaited Messiah. We tend to think of the presence of
Moses and Elijah as confirming who Jesus was; demonstrating to the apostles
that Jesus is the one to whom Moses and Elijah, the Law and the Prophets,
pointed to.
But looking at it another way, just think
how Moses and Elijah must have felt being there on the mountain with Jesus in that
moment of special communion with the Father. This was the moment for which
their whole lives and all the mighty works that they performed was but a
preparation. What satisfaction they must have experienced.
And the Church in choosing that first
reading brings that other crucial figure from the Old Testament into the
picture—Abraham. And we have that marvellous story of the sacrifice of Isaac—or
rather the non-sacrifice of Isaac.
One can hardly imagine what went through
Abraham’s mind when God told him to take Isaac to the mountain and offer him
there as a burnt offering. This child who was so long awaited and whose birth
itself was a complete miracle suddenly picked out to die by this hard taskmaster
of a God.
But Isaac does not die. He is a
prefigurement of Christ; God’s only Son, who was even more long awaited and who
is also sacrificed on the mountain of Calvary. But he is too spared from the
power of death and rises again to bring salvation to the whole human race.
By presenting these three great patriarchs
from the Old Testament the liturgy shows us the wonderful continuity that
exists between the Church and the People of Israel. Like them we journey to the
promised land. Like them we have our patriarchs, just for recent examples look
at John XXIII, Paul VI and now Pope John Paul II—tremendous leaders, frequently
misunderstood, but universally acknowledged as wise old men who have done their
level best to discern the will of God for his people. They are our modern day patriarchs.
And in the Church of the New Testament we
have our matriarchs too like Mother Teresa, Edith Stein and Therese of Lisieux
who also show us the way God wants us to live our lives in the world of today.
This moment of transfiguration or theophany
is a marvellous mystery. In the most traditional interpretation Jesus is
assured of the Father’s love before he undergoes his passion and death. And
this is perfectly valid. Jesus was both fully human and fully divine and in his
humanity surely needed encouragement and the assurance of the Father’s love
just as we ourselves would have needed it.
But the Transfiguration was also for the
apostles; and through them therefore also for us. In the Transfiguration the
assurance is given that the Father and the Son are one and that all that is to
come—the passion and death of Jesus—is part of God’s plan for our salvation.
The apostles saw the glory of the Lord; it
was too great for them to even begin to appreciate and they burble nonsense
about pitching tents. They want to be doing something instead of simply being,
simply resting, basking in the glory of the Lord.
Some important writers speak about the
Transfiguration when explaining the stages in the spiritual life. There are
periods of great activity in our prayer life, especially at the beginning when
we go around praying for every one and everything. I suppose we could compare
this to Christ’s public ministry.
But then comes a moment or moments of
transfiguration. Special moments when we sit down to pray and no words come but
we are overcome with a powerful feeling that God loves us. It might not last
long, and we frequently can’t explain it to others, but it was sheer bliss
while it lasted. The spiritual writers compare this to Christ’s Transfiguration.
But don’t be deluded that this will last
forever because then comes a period of desolation, a period when God seems very
far away. It is as if having shown us the depths of his love he withdraws and
leaves us on our own for a while. Sometimes this lasts a very long time indeed
and our faith is sorely tested.
The spiritual writers sometimes call this
the dark night of the soul. We can compare it to Christ’s passion. The best way
to look at it is as a period of growth in the darkness. If you’ll excuse the
analogy, it is like a small shoot covered in manure; it is seemingly wiped out
but all the while the roots are being deeply nourished and in due time it will
burst forth as a remarkably strong and vigorous plant.
These are just some of the phases of the
spiritual life that are important to know about. Maybe they make sense to you,
maybe they don’t—if so don’t worry. Perhaps it is too soon to know how they
apply to us, often we can only tell with long hindsight. Frequently we go
through these phases in our youth and then go through them all over again but
in a much deeper and more mysterious way in our adult lives.
The Transfiguration is a deep mystery and a
worthy subject for our meditation. Just take for example even out of context
those words when the vision went away: Suddenly when they looked round, they
saw no one with them any more but only Jesus. If we could see only Jesus
what would our lives be like? They would be transformed beyond recognition.
If in all those around us we could see Jesus
we would be beginning to see the world as it really is. We would be seeing the
hidden world of the Kingdom, which is a truer version of reality than anything
that we can perceive with our senses.
Dig deep into the Gospels, look below the
surface, meditate on the words of Jesus—see his words as addressed personally
to you. Then scripture will become what it is—the living Word of God. A book
filed with spiritual insights—a love letter from the King of Heaven personally
addressed to you.