We Saw His Glory This gospel about the Transfiguration is a familiar one. My temptation is to all too quickly limit its meaning and power. There is more to this event than a glimpse of glory. It tells us of what we can expect along the journey toward glory! At the beginning of Lent, our goal is laid out for us. Jesus went up the mountain to pray and was transformed, that is, changed. Lent is not only the desert but also the mountain we go up to pray to be transformed. Jesus talks about his passing through suffering and death to the glory of risen life. Our salvation is to follow Jesus into his passion and death so that we too, might attain the glory of new life. Our following Jesus is spelled out in the ordinary dyings of our everyday living: reaching out to visit a lonely elderly person, listening to a troubled adolescent, biting our tongue instead of saying sharp words, still having patience when we are pushed too far or simply run out of energy. The utterly amazing thing about embracing these little, everyday dyings is that we ourselves experience some sort of transfiguration. As we learn to say yes to God and others, we grow deeper into our own identity as the chosen ones of God. We become more perfect members of Christ’s Body when we act like Jesus did- when we reach out to others who are in need, when we bring a comforting touch, when we forgive. All these are ways we are faithful on our journey to Jerusalem. Our whole life is a transfiguration, a passing over from our old sinful ways to the ways of light and race offered by God. Adapted from Renew International Musical Reflection
We Saw His Glory This gospel about the Transfiguration is a familiar one. My temptation is to all too quickly limit its meaning and power. There is more to this event than a glimpse of glory. It tells us of what we can expect along the journey toward glory! At the beginning of Lent, our goal is laid out for us. Jesus went up the mountain to pray and was transformed, that is, changed. Lent is not only the desert but also the mountain we go up to pray to be transformed. Jesus talks about his passing through suffering and death to the glory of risen life. Our salvation is to follow Jesus into his passion and death so that we too, might attain the glory of new life. Our following Jesus is spelled out in the ordinary dyings of our everyday living: reaching out to visit a lonely elderly person, listening to a troubled adolescent, biting our tongue instead of saying sharp words, still having patience when we are pushed too far or simply run out of energy. The utterly amazing thing about embracing these little, everyday dyings is that we ourselves experience some sort of transfiguration. As we learn to say yes to God and others, we grow deeper into our own identity as the chosen ones of God. We become more perfect members of Christ’s Body when we act like Jesus did- when we reach out to others who are in need, when we bring a comforting touch, when we forgive. All these are ways we are faithful on our journey to Jerusalem. Our whole life is a transfiguration, a passing over from our old sinful ways to the ways of light and race offered by God. Musical Reflection
Transfigured Before Them The story of the Transfiguration of Jesus in today’s gospel in one of the stranger stories in any of the Gospels. Jesus had a powerful “religious experience” at some point in his public life, an experience which had a profound effect on him and on the apostles who were with him. In the context of St. Matthew’s Gospel it becomes a turning point in Jesus’s life, an experience in which he saw that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer and die while he was there. Since Jesus was human he was fated to die just as all of us are fated to die. In his death, however, there would be something more. Since God was present in Jesus in a special way, God would also go down into the valley of death to show us how great was his love for us, to assure us that He would be with us at the time of our own deaths, and how all of us should face death. The manner of Jesus’s death was not fated. He could have declined to go to Jerusalem without sin. Yet he came to see that he had to go there and so he did. All lives, the great theologian Karl Rahner once said, are unfinished symphonies. Jesus surely had other dreams. Undoubtedly he wanted to persuade his people that God loved them even more than they imagined. Yet he came to see that his work would be during his life time an unfinished symphony and would be finished only long after his return to the Father in Heaven. There is an almost perfect parallel between that part of his story and the one in the film Mr. Holland’s Opus. It is also perhaps the story of all our unfinished symphonies: We don’t always do what we had wanted to do. But often what we do turns out to be even better. Lent calls us to recognize the glory God offers us now. Such glimpses of glory quicken our journey to Easter-a celebration of renewed life now and the promise of eternal glory.
Glory Through Self-Offering Most of us live too hectic lives – working, cleaning, preparing meals, answering emails and a hundred other things. I have often mused, “Oh to be bored just one day!” Life is hectic! When I might finally sit down in the evening I often doze off while reading or watching TV. I might wake up when those commercials come on only to find I have missed half the program I was watching! In our Gospel today, Peter, James and John must have really been tired climbing that mountain! For they fell asleep! Then they awakened they saw Jesus transfigured. How startling that must have been! Luke’s account of the Transfiguration includes the necessity of the passion on the journey to glory. The point of our Gospel – glory presupposes embracing self-offering. Glory comes only through embracing the passion – dying to self for the good of others. We have to come down from the mountain and walk our journey through death to glory. And let us remember God walks with us to glory.