THE WORD IN LENT: 2nd Sunday
Transfiguration and the lessons for daily living
March 8, 2020: Genesis 12:1-4; 2 Timothy 1: 8-10; Matthew 17: 1-9
We are invited to meditate on one of the marvelous incidents in the life of Jesus and his disciples - the Transfiguration. Peter, James and John were the three privileged ones to be there at this spectacle. But was it only a spectacle...what purpose does it serve within the whole picture of Christ's life and mission? That would be an interesting question to ask, as it comes very close to the end of Jesus' public mission. More interesting fact is that the Church invites us to this reflection during the season of lent...a season when we are intensely thinking of the sufferings of the Lord.
For Jesus, the suffering did not start merely at the moment of the arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane! It was there right through...there were moments when the people rejected him, wanted to throw him off from the cliff, despised him saying they knew him too well, endlessly asked for signs and wonders as if he were some street charlatan, and failed miserably to understand him! Jesus would have been anxious too, about how his ministry was really going on! Jesus felt the special call from the One who sent him, to stand up and to voice the call of the Lord to the people! And when he set off to understand that call and realise it in his life... he was faced with a myriad of problems. Might be that Jesus himself needed that wonderful assurance from God as a preparation for what lay in store for the coming days - the passion and death that awaited him. Secondly, it could have served as a trailer, a sneak peek for the disciples, who were in for a great trial within a few days. And the Church wants us to learn exactly these for our own life of faith too. What are those lessons?
The Glory of the Lord is always present within us. All that Jesus had to do was to merely go by himself up the mount. The Glory of the Lord is ever present within us and all that we need to do is to make time to be by ourselves. Amidst the din of daily life and trying responsibilities, we may not manage to really be by ourselves. Even our prayer moments could be so filled with thoughts and preoccupations that we fill them so much with words, figures and plans which take away the space that we could share alone with God, who wants to speak to us!
Being by ourselves... a dialogue with the core of our selves... is an important spiritual exercise that we need to do every day... call it meditation or contemplation or merely prayer or retreat or recollection spiritual exercises or yoga or whatever name you wish. It is being by ourselves that matters - alone with the Alone; alone with the One who alone matters! It is when we are by ourselves that we can really turn to that glory of the Lord which resides within us. As long as we are not by ourselves, the glory lies hidden, it remains latent.
Being by ourselves... a dialogue with the core of our selves... is an important spiritual exercise that we need to do every day... call it meditation or contemplation or merely prayer or retreat or recollection spiritual exercises or yoga or whatever name you wish. It is being by ourselves that matters - alone with the Alone; alone with the One who alone matters! It is when we are by ourselves that we can really turn to that glory of the Lord which resides within us. As long as we are not by ourselves, the glory lies hidden, it remains latent.
Understanding the Glory sends us back to our daily life. Experiencing the glory of the Lord is not to get stuck there, reminds us Jesus. Peter's spontaneous response is usually what we wish in life - when we experience the Lord's presence close to us, may be at a miraculous happening, or a mysterious turn of events, or a joyful coincidence. But in fact it is merely a preparation for a moment that is hard and trying, for a moment when difficult things would come by, for a moment which cannot be explained in normal logic, for a moment when we need an extraordinary strength to remain faithful. Let us not lose the miraculous moment in excitement, but draw the necessary strength for a later dry patch! The transfiguration of Jesus would have been running through Peter's mind all the time during the moments of darkness - the death of Jesus, the crisis of faith and the hidden life in the upper room. That is why he makes sure he writes in his letter about this event (2 Pet 1: 17-18). Peter wanted to remain in that glory when he saw but Jesus reminds him to return to his daily life!
Spending time with God...a dialogue with the source of our being... is not to remain there in that sanctuary, rapt in glory and praise, but it is to return to our daily life and live it more meaningfully; it is to take that experience into the daily life and make meaning out of it. It would become dichotomous if we experience highs with the Lord and soon return to the lows of life and keep digging there until we return for another high moment in life. No... every intimate moment spent with the Lord has to percolate into our daily life, making it more and more, however little by little, receptive and fertile. Hence the spiritually exciting moments are not so much for themselves, as they are for a sustained experience of the presence of God during the rest of our lives.
Spending time with God...a dialogue with the source of our being... is not to remain there in that sanctuary, rapt in glory and praise, but it is to return to our daily life and live it more meaningfully; it is to take that experience into the daily life and make meaning out of it. It would become dichotomous if we experience highs with the Lord and soon return to the lows of life and keep digging there until we return for another high moment in life. No... every intimate moment spent with the Lord has to percolate into our daily life, making it more and more, however little by little, receptive and fertile. Hence the spiritually exciting moments are not so much for themselves, as they are for a sustained experience of the presence of God during the rest of our lives.
The Glory of the Lord sheds new light on our days. The experience on the mount could have strengthened Jesus to walk with assurance towards Jerusalem. The experience of the disciples would have given them a new insight into who Jesus was. In a life filled with normal commitments and extraordinary sufferings, the experience of God's glory can clarify and illumine our path, preparing us to live them with newer meaning and fresher strength. St. Paul reminds us of that in the second reading today, asking us to derive strength from the Lord to bear our share of hardships.
Witnessing God so close...a dialogue that invites us to look and behold the mighty Presence... every Eucharist we celebrate is a transfiguration event, and it is an invitation to live our life with increased meaning and commitment. Should we remain the same after a Eucharistic Celebration, either we have not been by ourselves on that mount or we have been blind to that resplendent glory. After so many Eucharistic experiences, when we think of a Catholic son or a daughter leave this privileged faith community for another which lacks so many crucial revelations of the Lord, be it for whatever reasons... it is an agonising blunder. After all the eucharistic encounters if we panic at a crisis situation, be it a world level health crisis as the Covid-19 we are facing now or a national socio-political crisis or a personal crisis, what have we really beheld in those miraculous encounters that we have been celebrating? We need to realise that the voice of the Lord resounds at every Eucharist: "This is my beloved Son,...Listen to Him." If we manage to gaze at the glory of the Lord and listen to the voice of the Lord, our life will be transformed and transfigured.
Witnessing God so close...a dialogue that invites us to look and behold the mighty Presence... every Eucharist we celebrate is a transfiguration event, and it is an invitation to live our life with increased meaning and commitment. Should we remain the same after a Eucharistic Celebration, either we have not been by ourselves on that mount or we have been blind to that resplendent glory. After so many Eucharistic experiences, when we think of a Catholic son or a daughter leave this privileged faith community for another which lacks so many crucial revelations of the Lord, be it for whatever reasons... it is an agonising blunder. After all the eucharistic encounters if we panic at a crisis situation, be it a world level health crisis as the Covid-19 we are facing now or a national socio-political crisis or a personal crisis, what have we really beheld in those miraculous encounters that we have been celebrating? We need to realise that the voice of the Lord resounds at every Eucharist: "This is my beloved Son,...Listen to Him." If we manage to gaze at the glory of the Lord and listen to the voice of the Lord, our life will be transformed and transfigured.
To turn to the glory that resides within us, to return strengthened to live our life with increased commitment and to relearn the real meaning of Christian life of faith: that is a dialogue of daily life that we are called to engage in as children of God. Our daily life has to be a fruit of this dialogue and this lenten Sunday challenges us to intensify this dialogue. May the Spirit inspire us ahead.