Sometimes we have a wonderful, magical experience in our lives that can last only a moment or two that we want to capture forever. It can be something as simple as a connection with a good friend or a quiet moment at Mass after receiving communion or watching a beautiful sunrise. Such a moment can give us a sense of inner peace or it can make us feel one with God and his creation. Then, as suddenly as that magical experience happens, it is gone. I bet a lot of you have had experiences like that. We can never recreate the magic of that moment. We cannot possess it or make it last forever. Before we know it, that magical moment in time ends.
In a way, moments like that are transfigurations, just like Jesus’ transfiguration that we hear in today’s Gospel. A transfiguration can bring light into our lives. It can lift us out of our complacency and our busyness. It can give us a glimpse of God’s glory and majesty. In our over-full, too-busy lives, these moments often seem few and far between, but in a way, that is what makes them special. We get so preoccupied by our concerns and our to-do lists and our daily chores, that a transfiguration moment may not grab our attention. Such a moment is certain a gift of the Holy Spirit. With the sense of awe and wonder not appreciated very much in our modern world, we need to remember to look for the glory of God in the midst of our ordinary daily lives.
There are other traps we can fall into as well. We can be like a bumble bee going from flower to flower, searching for a mountaintop experience where we think we will find God, failing to see God where he is already present in our daily lives. Then we have Peter who tries to cling to this moment of escape that he finds on the mountaintop in today’s Gospel. He wants to build a tent and camp out there. Peter wants to prolong this mountaintop experience and to control it, making it last as long as possible.
Yes, there is the glory of Christ’s transfiguration. But also Jesus spoke to Moses and Elijah on the mountaintop about what he was going to accomplish in Jerusalem, which includes his passion, his suffering, and his death. Like Peter, perhaps we too struggle to understand the true meaning of what took place there. Christ is transfigured with the light of his glory, but his passion and suffering are not detached from his glory. The apostles have a hard time accepting that, since after the mountaintop transfiguration Peter denies Christ three times and he and others do not stand by Jesus on his way to the cross.
Notice that Jesus was not up on the top of the mountain with David the King or Aaron the priest. Present with him at the transfiguration were Moses, whom God employed to librate the Israelites from slavery and Elijah, the great prophet who called the Jewish people back to their faith. On our journey of faith, we need to be set free from the things that are keeping us in chains, from truly being able to practice our faith. We need to be prophetically challenged to see the need for renewal and repentance. Jesus of the transfiguration calls out to us on this Second Sunday of Lent to awareness, authenticity, and transformation.
We might wonder why Jesus chose to bring Peter, James, and John with him on the mountaintop that day. Perhaps Jesus sensed that these apostles could begin to understand his destiny to obey the will of the Father even unto death if they could have a sense of the glory of the resurrection that awaited him, the glory promised to him by the Father. Through the illumination of the transfiguration, they caught a glimpse of that glory, even if they were not yet ready to accept the reality of Jesus’ cross. Jesus knew that they would eventually see that the reality of his glory and the reality of his cross were not opposed to one another, but that the cross and resurrection were two expressions of Jesus' love for us, two aspects of Jesus' victory over sin and death.
This ties into the theme of gratitude that we have been reflecting upon during this holy season of Lent. Gratitude does not mean being thankful for only our joys and our blessings. Gratitude is deeper than that. According to author Troy Amdahl, we are to be thankful for the difficult times that help us grow, to be thankful for our limitations that give us opportunities to improve and transform. We are to be thankful of new challenges that greet us in life, as those challenges help us build our strength and character. We are to be thankful for the mistakes and wrong turns we make, for the valuable lessons we learn from them.
During Lent, we are called to go to the mountaintop with the Lord, to embrace the totality of our lives, including our suffering, as we stand in awe of his glory. Indeed: no suffering, no trial, no hardship, no sin, no frailty, no weakness can separate us from the love of Christ. This Lent, we are invited to climb up the mountain with Jesus. He invites us to be transformed and enlightened through our relationship with him.
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