THOUGHT FOR THE WEEKEND

This Second Sunday of Lent, many of us hear the account of Our Lord being transfigured. This year, Matthew’s description is read.(Matthew 17:1-9).

The Lord Jesus’s face shone like the sun and His clothing became as bright as the light — not merely “light”, but “the light”.

The entire concept and reality, encapsulated in the word “light”, blazed forth from Jesus who is “Light from Light”, “the Light of the world” (John 8:12).

For a brief instant, the Lord Jesus drew back the curtain of Heaven and the radiant glory of who He is shone forth, upon the three chosen disciples, in dazzling splendour.

We are told that He was talking with Moses and Elijah. St Luke tells us they were discussing His “exodos”, His “passing”, which He was to accomplish in Jerusalem (Luke 9:31). The event of the Lord’s Transfiguration is located immediately after He predicts His suffering and death.

His “passing” is, in effect, His breaking down, by His Cross, the barrier erected between our world of darkness and death and the world beyond, of Everlasting Light, the place of His abode, with His Father and the Holy Spirit.

Moses and Elijah represent the law and the prophets — the means by which God had sought to draw His people into communion with Him and cause them to remain in His Love; but now, the death and resurrection of the Beloved Son will fulfil what was foreshadowed in the law and foretold by the prophets. Jesus is the completion of the law and every prophetic utterance is realised in Him.

The disciples present did not immediately understand. Only later in life would they join up the dots and see the loving plan of God in its entirety.

We are the same. Often it is only when we look back on life’s events that we comprehend how the Lord was taking care of us.

At times in our lives we did not — and do not — see how the Lord was leading us. We are called, nevertheless, to trust Him anyhow, to abandon ourselves in all circumstances into His loving care.

He is drawing us in His footsteps (Song of Songs 1:4). We, too, will be transfigured by His glorious light.

Behind the veil, in the place He has prepared (John 14:3) we shall see Him as He really is (1 John 3:2), with the Father, in the Glory of the Holy Spirit.

What makes no sense here will be understood there fully (I Corinthians 13:12).