Short Lent Talk 1: The Transfiguration – we let our light be seen (by Fr Simon Dray)

The Second Sunday of Lent is also called ‘Transfiguration Sunday’, for the Gospel speaks of Jesus taking Peter, James, and John up the Holy Mountain, where he is transfigured in their sight. As part of our parish mission, to ‘let our light shine’, we consider the Transfiguration, as an inspiration to let our own light be seen.

In 2013, when I visited the Holy Land, I had dinner in the house on Mount Tabor, served by a community of recovering drug addicts and alcoholics. What better place than the Mountain of the Transfiguration for these young people to discover the truth of who they were and the ‘emptiness’ of addiction to worldly vices.

Mount Tabor, itself, was the site of a battle between Israelite army against the Canaanite King, for it had strategic importance in controlling the crossroads where the Galilee’s north – south route met with the east – west highway. Descending from the mountain, the Israelites attached and vanquished the Canaanites. In the second temple period, it was the custom to light beacons to inform the northern villages of the Jewish Holy Days and the beginning of new months.

It seems most appropriate, then, that Jesus would become radiant there, shinning with bright rays of light, to the north, south, east, and west. And, in the Transfiguration, Jesus lets us glimpse his true nature. His appearance changes, and his glory is seen by the disciples, announcing the beginning of something new.

He lets them see the inner light that he experiences when He spends time in prayer with his Father: his face shone, and his clothes were radiant with the splendour of the divine person of the Incarnate Word.

When we pray the ‘Lord’s Prayer’, the ‘Our Father’, we too are given a glimpse into the very heart of God. This prayer enlightens our intentions, showing us how to pray and what to pray for, and a means by which we learn how to think, love, and receive God’s love. We trade in our hard and wounded hearts for his compassionate and Sacred Heart, so that we may be perfected as the ‘body of Christ’.

With the appearance of Moses and Elijah on the Holy Mountain, Peter wished to make three tents, highlighting to us the true feast of tabernacles has appeared. The ‘Feast of Tabernacles’ remembered God’s provision in the wilderness but also looked forward to the Messianic age to come, when all the nations will flow to Jerusalem to worship the Lord.

The disciples learn that Jesus is the living Torah, the ultimate lawgiver, and the complete word of God. In seeing Christ transfigured, it is hoped that the disciples will be strengthened for Christ’s passion to come. This means that the erecting of tents is inappropriate because they are not meant to live in this moment but look forward to a future reality to come.

St Thomas Aquinas calls the Transfiguration ‘the greatest miracle’ because it shows baptism and the perfection of the life in heaven; Christ alone is the true home of the Christian, who the Creed says is ‘light from light, true God from true God’.

Indeed, on the holy mountain, this is the place where human nature meets God: the meeting place of the temporal life with the eternal life, and Jesus is the connecting point between the two, if you like, a bridge between heaven and earth. And so that we are not left in any doubt that Jesus is the fulness of the law and the prophets, we hear a voice announce from heaven, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him’.

In Christ, the words of Sacred Scripture become clear, transparent, and bright. Truly, as St Jerome said, ‘ignorance of scripture is ignorance of Christ’. May we always worship and teach with the mind of the Church, which is the mind of Christ.

On Good Friday, we will hear that it was for ‘the truth’ that Christ came into the world, and ‘all those who are on the side of truth should listen to his voice’. The only voice we should be following is the one who will go up to Jerusalem and lay down his life so that we ‘might have life and have it in abundance’.

The Transfiguration is, then, a preview of the Resurrection to come, which will be our own post-death transfiguration. In the Resurrection, there will be another intense light which burns into the burial shroud, and immense power of re-creation that turns death into life.

The ‘Turin Shroud’, whose authenticity has taken on a new lease of life in recent years, seems to show the energy produced in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The image on the cloth seems to have been burnt onto it by a massive burst of radiation, emitted in a fraction of a second. This is the intensity of energy needed to conquer death, the one reality that we all share.

But what is that energy compared to the fire of the Holy Spirit poured out on the Apostles at Pentecost and to the Church in the Sacrament of Confirmation, as the Spirit is given to us so that we may let the renewed nature of our baptism – which was our first transfiguration – be seen by the world.

As we heard from St Paul on Ash Wednesday, we are ‘ambassadors for Christ’; in fact, we are to be an ‘Alter Christus’, another Christ for the world. Now that Jesus has risen from the dead, we are able to tell everyone about ‘the things that we have seen’ in the Apostolic Church.

As the Apostle John will tell us in the first verses of his first letter,

‘That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched – this we proclaim concerning the Word of Life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We write this to make our joy complete’.

The Church continues to be the outward and visible manifestation of God’s Kingdom, and so, the kingdom is here and not yet. The Church lets people see Jesus, especially when ‘two or three gather in his name’, but especially in the celebration of the Mass and the Sacraments.

The kingdom will only be completely experienced when Christ comes again in glory, a glimmer of which is shown to us in the Transfiguration. However, this should be our motivation to ‘make disciples of all the nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all the commands that Christ has given us’, remembering his promise that he will be with us, yes, indeed, ‘even to the end of the age’.

We will, however, experience resistance to the good news of salvation, as the prologue of John tells us, that some ‘prefer the darkness to light’. Just as modern analytical science tries to shine a bright light on the object that it wishes to study, we too shine a light into the depths of a person’s soul.

The turn toward the light is not an easy move. The darkness tries everything it can to distract us. But the darkness can never overcome the light. Christ’s radiance will never dim or lose brightness, ‘for in him was life, and that life was the light of men!’

The light is a magnet for your soul. And like science, which takes apart the object of study, we find that the light of Christ, penetrates the depths of our being. And so, it can be easier and more comfortable to stay in the darkness because when God shines his light upon us, he shows up all our imperfections.

Perhaps the reason why the Enlightenment Period failed, is that a light capable of illuming every aspect of human existence cannot come from within; to keep us honest, it must come from God, the author of all life. Even the Old Testament was insufficient to find salvation; yes, the prophets were good and holy men, but they could not illumine us sufficiently, so God sent us his only Son.

It is Jesus who says, ‘I am the light of the World’. He who is like us in all things, but sin, is a light so bright that he doesn’t just light us up skin deep, but instead shines right into our hearts. When we are trapped and enslaved by sin, we are immersed in the darkness, unable to move, almost chained to it. It’s as though the darkness has arms, reaching out to consume your whole being.

Then, the hands of Christ, first stretched out on the cross, and then through the hands of the priest, stretched out over our heads in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. It is Christ who says: ‘I absolve you’, and we feel the weight of the cross leave our shoulders and our heart is again light.

In knowing that we are at ‘pardon and peace’, we begin to feel the warmth of God’s light consuming us, drawing us to take a turn towards God, a turn to the ‘right’. We are clean, pure, and filled with God’s grace.  We are no longer blinded by the darkness as God calls us onwards to continue our movement, our pilgrimage home.

In this movement from the darkness of sin into the light of God’s grace, we experience the spiritual journey of repentance. In turning away from sin, we have moved 90 degrees from darkness. But what comes next? God doesn’t only free us from the clutches of sin, Christ is calling us to live in the freedom of the Gospel.

We can say sorry to a friend for all the ways we have hurt them, but total repentance comes in our purpose of amendment and the conscious decision to love them better from this day forward. The danger is that the 90 degree turn we once made turns into complacency; it feels like a safe place in comparison to the previous darkness but once our attention becomes distracted, sin can creep up to us unexpectedly from another side.

This is also a symptom of one who has become lukewarm in their faith; for sin is still beside you and not behind you. ‘Get behind me Satan!’ so that always we may have Christ beside me: ‘Christ beside me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, king of my heart; Christ within me, Christ below me, Christ above me, never to part!’

This Holy Season of Lent, may we be ever attentive to the near occasions of sin, and take steps to avoid them. Sin still beckons us, distracts us, and tries to steal our joy. Even just turning our eye to steal a glance at sin is all it takes to turn back to the left and what we should have left behind when we were first baptised.

Staying in the light of Christ, especially in times of great temptation of struggle is recommended but we are less likely to sin when it is on show for all the world to see. The season, we pray for full conversion, to turn completely away from sin and find the true freedom and joy of the gospel.

The ‘light of Christ’ calls us to share the love and mercy that has been shown to us; to live out that love once and for all: ‘Go, and announce the Gospel of the Lord’.