The Gift Of Beautiful Change
Based on the Bible Reading for the Second Sunday of Lent: Matthew 17: 1-9
If you were a non-believer or a skeptic, what would you say about today’s Gospel reading? Probably something like, “I just don’t believe it! Is it real, or just something invented or imagined by the Gospel writers?
Imagine somebody talking to two people who have been dead for hundreds of years! That in itself is fantastic enough, but then you hear God talking out of the cloud, like a scene from the movies!
The Transfiguration event, although puzzling to many, must have seemed important enough to be reported in all the Synoptic Gospels, and in the Second Letter of Peter. The transfiguration is a revelation of the authority of Jesus, “This is my beloved Son, listen to him.”
Here Jesus is demonstrating an aspect of his authority different from that shown by his numerous miracles. While his miracles were always aimed at healing the sick, alleviating the suffering, and the sinful, in order to show the power of God, the Transfiguration reveals Jesus’ very identity: who he is.
The legal and the prophetic traditions had been in tension with each other since the time of Moses. And by the time of Jesus, the Pharisees had exalted the importance of the law at the expense of the prophetic spirit. Jesus unites together in his person the Jewish law, symbolized by Moses, and the prophets, symbolized by Elijah.
Jesus does not simply acknowledge the unity of these aspects of faith; he unites them in his person: his face dazzled; his clothes became brilliantly white; he is speaking with Moses and Elijah. This is God’s Son. He is the authority of God himself.
And that brings us to the question – What does the Transfiguration, and the revelation of Jesus’ authority mean for his disciples then, and for us today? We know what happens to the disciples sometime after this transfiguration. They themselves become transfigured – not in a dramatic way like that of Jesus, but each in his own unique way.
Theirs are not the transformation that happens suddenly, dramatically, or miraculously. In fact, after Jesus’ arrest, Peter still denies him three times. Yet, Peter’s own transfiguration takes the form of his ability to become in time a leader among the disciples. And his courageous witness eventually leads to his own sufferings and cross – following Jesus’ own path.
So, in today’s Gospel, God enters the conversation of Jesus, Elijah, and Moses in order that it can, in time, touch more people. The mission of the disciples is precisely not to keep the message to themselves, but to open it to all.
The disciples were afraid after the revelation. Why? Why would they be afraid? Perhaps their fear is not the fear of something frightening, but of something awesome and overpowering. After all, even the words “awe-inspiring” “awesome” and “awful” come from the same root meaning. It is a very human reaction to the astonishing, overwhelming event that has just happened.
But why, then, does Jesus command the disciples to keep his awe-inspiring transfiguration a secret? Why would Jesus not want them to proclaim it openly? One explanation is that it is not unusual for anyone to share his true and deepest identity at first only with those closest to him. Besides, the people were not yet ready for the revelation. They were still waiting for a triumphal political messiah.
Revealed as God’s Son, Jesus wants to share this divine life with us, his followers. This power of God is “transfigurating,” transforming. Today, however, it is not too clear to some of us that we need transformation, nor do we want to be transformed.
Many of us are, for the most part, fairly satisfied and complacent. Our illnesses can be taken care of by medicine and diet, our guilt and frustration by self-help books and psychiatrists, our boredom by our omnipresent entertainment industry. Thus we have to be willing to open up the space for transformation.
The transfigured and risen Jesus himself offers the power to heal, forgive, and restore. Many stories of many Saints and sinners alike testify to their own sharing in this transforming power. Sometimes it is our families themselves that need transformation. Some people complain that their
biggest crosses are borne in their family relationships.
We can have jealousies over siblings who are “favored,” guilt over broken relationships, and bickering over money and inheritance. Catherine of Siena, a fourteenth century Italian saint, had such a family. When she turned twelve, her parents tried to get her to devote more care to her personal appearance. She submitted for a time to having her hair dressed, but soon repented of it. She then declared that she would never marry, and when her parents tried to find her a husband, she cut off her hair.
The family tried without success to overcome her strong determination. She was scolded regularly, and forced to do all the menial work of the house. Because she was known to love privacy, she was never allowed to be alone. Even her bedroom was taken from her.
Ultimately the family gave in to her wishes to enter a religious order. She eventually became a gifted spiritual writer and the highly trusted adviser to popes. St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, also spoke of such transformation. He himself underwent a kind of radical conversion, as he recovered slowly after suffering from a broken leg at the battle of Pamplona.
What followed for him was a period of intense prayer, full of what he called both the highs of “consolation” and despair of “desolation.” After he recovered, he began the life of a pilgrim, going from one holy place in Spain to another.
In time, he was given the gift of great mystical powers and insight. He called the direct experience of joy and peace he received in prayer a “consolation without intermediate cause.” It was God’s transforming action in his life: a moment of extraordinary, unexplained, empowering encounter with the Lord.
Though most of us probably have not encountered these kinds of dramatic experiences of consolation, all of us who have the gift of faith have gone through some kind of transfiguration. Oftentimes it is very ordinary.
Lent is a time when we can look back with the eyes of faith on how God’s loving grace has been transforming our lives. How he is gradually and steadily bringing about our own salvation history.
In this season of Lent, we are grateful for the times in which we too have found special inspiration in our own lives. We ask the Lord to give us the memories by which we can make them come to life again for us.
We also ask the Lord to give us the eyes to see transformations in our lives and in the lives of those around us.
And we also ask the Lord to continue to reveal his power to us His power that allows us to see clearly His love for us and our own inviolate dignity, and that of others.