FEAST DAY: Living Our Lives in the Transfiguration

As we reflect on the Transfiguration of Jesus we are invited to begin living our lives differently, right now.

CHESAPEAKE, Va. (Catholic Online) - "Jesus took Peter, James, and John and led them up a high mountain apart by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no fuller on earth could bleach them.Then Elijah appeared to them along with Moses, and they were conversing with Jesus.Then Peter said to Jesus in reply, "Rabbi, it is good that we are here! Let us make three tents: one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah."

He hardly knew what to say, they were so terrified. Then a cloud came, casting a shadow over them; from the cloud came a voice, "This is my beloved Son. Listen to him." Suddenly, looking around, they no longer saw anyone but Jesus alone with them. As they were coming down from the mountain, he charged them not to relate what they had seen to anyone, except when the Son of Man had risen from the dead. So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what rising from the dead meant." (St. Mark 9: 2 -10)

In accordance with a very ancient custom, the Catholic Church has included this account of the Transfiguration in the Liturgy of the Second Sunday of Lent. Today, we hear it proclaimed as well on its Proper Feast Day, the Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord, a day of great meaning in the fullness of the Mystery of the Ancient faith. Whether during Lent or on today's Feast, it is meant to focus all of her faithful on the "end", the goal or final purpose of the Christian life and vocation. We will all be transfigured, as the Lord Himself was transfigured, when our redemption is complete in the Resurrection of the Body. Then, we will live in the new heaven and new earth. This reality is meant to inform and transform the way we live our lives now.

From the earliest centuries, the entire Christian Church, both East and West, emphasized the centrality of the Transfiguration of the Lord in understanding the fullness of redemption. Our experience of our life in the Lord and in His Church, is only the beginning of what is to come in the kingdom, the life eternal, but it is already a participation in that new reality. The Church, in the words of the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council, is a "seed of the kingdom" to come. Our life within the Church is a real participation in the eternal, beginning in the now. The Transfiguration presents us with an opportunity to reflect on the implications of what that can mean.

This wonderful event on the Mountain was meant to strengthen the faith of these three disciples. They were about to witness the events that would lead their Messiah, their Lord and Master, along what would appear to be an ignominious path, up Golgotha's lonely hill, to be crucified, a fate reserved for common criminals. Their own faith would be shaken, tested and tried. He loved all who were His own in this world. He wanted encourage them- and to encourage us- to persevere.

However, this One who came from eternity and took upon Himself the limitations of time, was about to open the portal of eternity before them. He would reveal to Peter, James and John the eternal now of His own glory. He was doing so much more than simply encouraging them. He was showing them who He was - and who they would become in Him. He was revealing to them what had already begun; and giving them a vision that would forever change the way they viewed themselves, their daily lives and their mission, after He would return to the Father.

As they lived their lives no longer for themselves, but for Him - and within the Communion of Trinitarian love that would He would soon open up to their participation - they would also begin to undergo their own trials and thereby their own transfiguration. This is the still the inheritance of all those who bear His name. We, who have entered through the waters of the womb of Holy Baptism into the life of the Church which is His Body, are "in process". We are being re-created and transfigured in Him, by Him and through Him. He has opened up the Trinitarian Communion to us and allows us to participate in the fullness of its beauty and wonder even now. He has brought heaven to earth and earth to heaven, through the Paschal mystery.

On that Mountain, Jesus revealed before mortal eyes the truly Immortal and Transcendent Truth of who He is - and who Peter, James and John ...and each one of us - will become in Him. They were invited to exercise their freedom and embrace the path that He had prepared for each one of them. So are we. He was grounding them in the eternal Truth, and opening up for the countless millions who would hear this story from their faithful witness, a glimpse of the Glory that is to come as we also choose Him in our daily lives. When we do, we allow Him to transfigure each one of us.

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Peter would later write of this experience in his second letter to the early Christians. In order to encourage them to continue in their life of faith he referenced what occurred on the Holy Mountain: "His divine power has bestowed on us everything that makes for life and devotion, through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and power. Through these, he has bestowed on us the precious and very great promises, so that through them you may come to share in the divine nature, after escaping from the corruption that is in the world because of evil desire. For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, virtue with knowledge, knowledge with self-control, self-control with endurance, endurance with devotion, devotion with mutual affection, mutual affection with love....

We did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received honor and glory from God the Father when that unique declaration came to him from the majestic glory, "This is my Son, my beloved, with whom I am well pleased." We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven while we were with him on the holy mountain." (2 Peter 1)

This understanding of the Christian vocation and life as a "participation in the Divine Nature" - and all that that insight entails - forms the framework for the Eastern Christian vision of salvation, both Orthodox and Catholic. It also gives us an insight into the vocation of the human person. We are to be "saved" through being transfigured in Christ. This transfiguration is a process that will only be complete when the entire person, including the body, is fully redeemed and transformed. In fact, the effects of the transfiguration are to involve the entire created order; it too will finally be reconstituted in Jesus Christ and handed back to the Father. The followers of Jesus, the Transfigured One, now walk in His Way and are being transformed into His likeness.

The Beloved Disciple John also used this event of the Transfiguration as a "hermeneutic", a lens through which he gave the early Christians a deeper insight into their difficulties, struggles and mission. In his first Letter to the early Churches, he encouraged them to persevere and live differently by referring to the event that occurred on that Mountain. He encouraged them to not be surprised or discouraged that the "world" did not recognize them, but rather to persevere in love through holding the vision of a transfigured life before them: "See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. Yet so we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God's children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope based on him makes himself pure, as he is pure."

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The early Fathers drew a distinction between God's "Image" and "Likeness" within man and woman. They would preach, teach and write concerning this. Though we were all created in the Image of God; our "sin" (which is the wrong exercise of our freedom, the choosing of what is not of God; the choice against love) wounded us, impaired us, marred us, and injured our communion with Him, one another and the created order. We suffer from what Western Christian theology later referred to as "concupiscence", a proclivity to choose wrongly. In and through Jesus Christ - through the fullness of His Incarnation, Life, Death and Resurrection - we are now redeemed; capacitated to choose - and to live - differently. As we do, we actually come to participate in the Divine Nature now, and we are being transformed or "transfigured" into His likeness.

The Transfiguration of Jesus Christ is an integral part of the gift of the "mystery" that is the Christian faith. The word translated "mystery" in the original Greek means much more than we Western Christians often comprehend. We are used to trying to come to "know" something through breaking the object we seek to understand apart and subjecting it to some a kind of scientific examination. Thus, we too often view talk of the Christian life as "mystery" as some kind of "puzzle". However, to the Eastern Christian mind, which is much more like the Hebrew mind - and thus the mind of Biblical authors - the "mysteries" of the Christian Faith and Christian living are an invitation into a deeper encounter with the Lord. They are to be received as gift and bear fruit within us through encounter. We come to "know" through encounter and relationship. When these mysteries are received as a gift; when they become a part of our prayer, reflection and lifestyle, they will unfold in their implications and have a transforming-a transfiguring - effect upon us.

So it is with the Transfiguration.

The Lord Jesus has shown us the way up the mountain and invited us into a new way of living in Him, through living the "mystery" that we recall this event within the communion that is the Church. Living in that Church we are invited to go into the world and invite all men and women, through the waters of the womb of Baptism, into the new communion of love where they can begin the process of conversion and transfiguration. Born again, we are all invited to join with Peter, James and John and cry out in our day: "It is good for us to be here."

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As we reflect on the Transfiguration of Jesus, let us enter more deeply into the mystery of faith by living in the Transfiguration now, within the heart of the Church. It truly is good for us to be here. Let us draw encouragement from the account of the Transfiguration of Jesus Christ and respond to the invitations of grace in our daily lives in order to grow more fully into the Image and likeness of Jesus Christ our Savior and Lord revealing His Transfigured glory to a world waiting to be born anew.

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