TRANSFIGURATION: Vision from above

Mark 9:2-10

“Twins, a sister and brother were talking to each other in the womb. The little sister said to the little brother, ‘I believe that there is life after birth!’ Her brother protested: ‘No, no, this is all there is. This is a dark and cozy place, and we have nothing else to do but to cling on to the cord that feeds us.’ But the little girl insisted: ‘There must be something more than this dark place, there must be something else where there is light and freedom to move.’ Still she could not convince her twin brother. The little sister said: ‘Don’t you feel this pressure sometimes? It is really unpleasant and sometimes even painful.’ ‘Yes,’ he answered, ‘what’s special about that?’ ‘Well,’ the sister said, ‘I think this pressure is there to get us ready for another place, much more beautiful than this, where we will see our mother face to face! Don’t you think that’s exciting?”
(Unfortunately I do not know the source.)

The feast of the Transfiguration of Christ celebrates the revelation of Christ's divine glory on Mount Tabor in Galilee. The transfiguration occurs in a context where Jesus has just revealed to His disciples that He would be put to death in Jerusalem. And the disciples, especially Peter did not understand that; they where not convinced that this can happen to the Messiah. This is why Jesus took them up to the mountain where, "he was transfigured before them."

This experience of the transfiguration was, therefore, God’s way of delivering the disciples from a crisis of faith. The cause of their crisis of faith was the way in which they saw people and things around them. They needed a vision from God’s point of view, to see that in spite of the death sentence hanging over the head of Jesus, God was still with him, God was still in control of events, God would see to it that in the end he triumphed over his foes. What Peter and his fellow disciples needed was for God to open their eyes and then give them a glimpse of God’s abiding presence with their master Jesus. God helped them out of it by enlightening their vision so that, at least for a moment, they could see from God’s own perspective. In that story the twin brother did not believe there was anything beyond what he could see and hear and touch while his twin sister believed there was a life beyond what she could see and hear and touch. In the Transfiguration, Peter, James and John saw that there was more to Jesus than what they could see and hear and touch, they got a glimpse of the future glory of Jesus’ resurrection.

Mark, in the account of today tells us that as Christ was transfigured, two others appeared there conversing with Him: Moses, representing the Old Testament Law, and Elijah, representing the prophets. Thus Christ, Who stood between the two and spoke with them, appeared to the disciples as the fulfillment of both the Law and the prophets. Remember what Jesus said to his disciples that the commandment on love, upon which “hang the entire Law and the prophets,” was not simply the most perfect morality, but Divine life itself, without which a person cannot become fully person. So, the transfiguration of the Lord is also the revelation of God’s love to his people. It is this God’s love in Christ which shone forth on the Mount of Tabor, because He was the first to love us.

The transfiguration of Jesus in our Gospel is not just about Jesus. This experience is also in the life each one of us. The brightness was not something added to Christ but the manifestation of His true divine nature. For Peter, James, and John, it was also a glimpse of the glories of heaven and of the resurrected body promised to all Christians. The transfiguration of Jesus reminds us that through our baptism we are members of the glorified body of Christ. When we were baptized God put his seal on us. What was that seal? The Holy Spirit; we were sealed with the Holy Spirit on the day we were baptized; we were marked out as God’s property, belonging to God. Through baptism we have a share in God’s nature. Today God ensures us of Jesus’ glory so that we will have the courage and desire to follow him, even to Calvary. What we have to do is to listen to him as the beloved son of God. A good opportunity to ask ourselves: How far we are on the path of our own transfiguration. How we are living our baptismal commitments. How do we manifest God’s love to our brothers and sisters?