Why Did The Transfiguration Had To Take Place?

Second Sunday of Lent (Year A)
Gen 12.1-4;  
II Tim 1.8-10;  
Mt 17.1-9

The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us that; Christ’s Transfiguration aims at strengthening the apostles’ faith in anticipation of his Passion: the ascent onto the ‘high mountain’ prepares for the ascent to Calvary. (This is why Moses and Elijah have been speaking “about his departure, which he was to accomplish at Jerusalem.”) Christ, Head of the Church, manifests what his Body contains and radiates in the sacraments: ‘the hope of glory’ [CCC 568]. This also foreshadows Jesus’ own explanation, on the road to Emmaus, of the Scriptures pointing to himself (Luke 24:27, 32).

Pope Benedict XVI commenting on the Transfiguration says,
On the mountain the three of them see the glory of God’s Kingdom shining out of Jesus. On the mountain they are overshadowed by God’s holy cloud. On the mountain—in the conversation of the transfigured Jesus with the Law and the Prophets—they realize that the true Feast of Tabernacles has come. On the mountain they learn that Jesus himself is the living Torah, the complete Word of God. On the mountain they see the ‘power’ (dynamis) of the Kingdom that is coming in Christ (Jesus of Nazareth, vol. 1, p. 317).

We have for our first reading the well-known story of Abram-our father, and how he was prepared to leave his homeland and travel he knew not where, if that was God’s will. It is a wonderful example of faith, of Abraham’s absolute faith in God, and his willingness to do whatever God required of him. God never requires of us anything that he has not done himself; or as Jesus put it, ‘You must take up your cross and follow me’. He has taken up his cross.  

We are not asked to do something he has not already done.  And we are to follow, in other words, to go where he has already gone. As St Paul says in his letter to Timothy which we heard read, “Take your share of the suffering for the gospel in the power of God.”
But no matter how strongly we believe that He is God’s Son, and no matter how much we know that we should follow Him, and even that we want to follow him, we need more than that faith – we need hope. That is what the disciples needed to help them to persevere and to follow their master to Jerusalem, to his certain death.

Right from the incarnation and the moment of his birth, Our Lord’s divinity has been hidden behind His humanity. In his public ministry, He began to teach His disciples the truth about who He is, and why He has come, and slowly they have been grasping some of what He was teaching them.
This understanding reached a climax when Peter said, ‘You are the Christ’. As soon as Peter said this, Jesus immediately made the first prophesy of His passion and death, and told His disciples that they would have to take up their cross and follow Him. That was the mood of the group against which the wonderful event of the transfiguration took place.

The Lord then goes up a mountain with His three closest disciples, Peter, James and John. Suddenly, before their very eyes, His appearance was changed and they were given a glimpse, a sort of preview, of his glorified body, as He would be after his resurrection.  Standing together with Jesus, the disciples saw Moses and Elijah, those two great men from the history of their nation and their religion, representing the Law and the prophets. Moses had been God’s instrument in revealing the Law, and Elijah had been one of his greatest spokesmen, revealing his will to the people.

Moses and Elijah were held in very high honour by the Jews of our Lord’s time.  But, as we heard from Christ in the gospel reading a couple of weeks ago, “I have come to fulfil the law and the prophets” – the old revelation of God’s commandments, his ways, his will has now to give way to the new revelation in Christ, the very word of God made flesh, revealing God in a way never before possible.This is the key to understanding Christ’s passion – so that through hope, we keep our faith when times are dark, knowing by faith that it was through His suffering and death that Christ came into His glory. Compared with His, our fears and our trials are as nothing, but they are the way in which we share in Christ’s passion and will come to share his glory.

We cannot see that glory now; but we have hope.And so the Transfiguration is a very proper theme for Lent – it reminds us why we are preparing for Holy Week, why we are undergoing some voluntary self-denial, for it gives us hope by reminding us what is promised to those who persevere in their faith to the end. The Lord tells his disciples rise do not be afraid. Let us rise in faith and hope. Take up your cross and follow me.

Fr Joseph Osho