TRANSFIGURATION OF THE LORD
August 6
TO CONTEMPLATE HIS TRANSFIGURED FACE:
AN EXPERIENCE THAT EVERY DISCIPLE MUST DO
Immediately after the story of the Transfiguration, the three Synoptic Gospels tell the story of the healing of an epileptic boy. Jesus comes down from the mountain with Peter, James, and John. They see a man break away from the crowd, running to him and asking him for help. My son, my only child—he says—"when the evil spirit seizes him, he suddenly screams. The spirit throws him into a fit, and he foams at the mouth, wearing him out. I begged your disciples to drive it out, but they could not” (Lk 9:38-40).
Jesus had given them “power and authority to drive out all evil spirits and heal diseases” (Lk 9:1). Why were they not able to carry out their mission?
The reason is soon found: because they have not been on the mountain with the Master. Those who have not seen his glorious face cannot effectively fight the forces of evil that afflict humanity.
Tradition places the transfiguration of Jesus on Mount Tabor, a mountain that rises, isolated, in the middle of the fertile plain of Esdraelon. Covered with holm oak, carobs, and pine trees since ancient times, it was called the holy mountain, and on top, cults to the pagan gods were offered. Today the place invites meditation and prayer. There it is natural to raise our gaze to the sky and our thought to God.
No matter how impressive this experience is, it should be noted that the Gospel does not speak of Tabor but a high mountain. In biblical language, the mountain does not indicate a material place but the inner experience of a manifestation of God when the intimacy with the Lord culminates. Resorting to the language of the mystics, we could call it the spiritual condition of the soul that feels dissolved in God, reaching almost to identify with his thoughts and feelings.
Jesus leaves the plain and leads some disciples to the heights; he moves them away from human reasoning and calculations to introduce them into the inscrutable designs of the Father. He makes them go up to bring them back then, transformed, to the land where they are called to work.
The ones who truly love humanity and want to engage in the construction of the kingdom of God in the world must first raise their eyes to heaven, tune their thoughts and projects with those of the Lord. They must above all have ‘seen’ the one who makes life a gift, not in the dark vestment of the loser, but wrapped in dazzling and glorious light.
On the ‘mountain,’ Jesus looks different from how people judged him. There he experiences a metamorphosis: his disfigured face is transfigured, the darkness of failure illuminates, the worn-out suit of the servant turns into a beautiful royal robe, the darkness of death dissolves in the dawn of Easter.
“Lord, grant us to contemplate the face of the transfigured Christ
in the disfigured face of people.”
First reading: Daniel 7:9-10,13-14
The chapter from which the reading is taken opens with a dramatic night vision. Daniel sees emerging from the ocean—it was the symbol of the hostile world and chaos in the ancient Middle East—four huge beasts: a lion, a bear, a leopard and a fourth terrible beast, fearful, by the exceptional strength, capable of crushing everything with its iron teeth (Dn 7:2-8).
The language and images are apocalyptic. References and allusions to the history of the peoples who are symbolized are not difficult to decode because it is the same prophet in the sequel of the story, which clarifies their meaning (Dn 7:17-27). The fierce animals are the four great empires that have taken place in the world and oppressed the people of God.
The lion indicates the bloody reign of Babylon, the damned one, the cruel city that destroyed Jerusalem and its temple; the bear is the people of Mede, greedy and always ready to attack; the leopard with four heads is the symbol of Persian peering in every direction on the prey; the fourth beast, the scariest, depicts the reign of Alexander the Great and his successors, the Diadochi or the six Macedonian generals.
Of these, one is particularly sinister, Antiochus IV, the persecutor of the saints faithful to the law of God. He holds power in the time in which the book of Daniel was redacted. In history, reigns, which were cruel and merciless with the weak, have always succeeded. They were empires that violated peoples' rights, imposed violence and abuse of power, and behaved like wild beasts.
Will the world always be a victim of arrogant rulers whose god is their force? Will the Lord be indifferent to the oppression of his people? These are the distressing questions that Daniel, in the name of God, wants to answer. The great scene from the first part of our reading is introduced (vv. 9-12).
Thrones are placed in heaven. An old man—representing the Lord himself—is seated for judgment and pronounces the sentence: the beasts are deprived of power, and the last one is killed, torn into pieces, and thrown into the fire (Dn 7:9-12). Then what happens? The seer continues to report his revelation: “I continued watching the nocturnal vision. One like a son of man came on the clouds of heaven. He faced the One of Great Age. Dominion, honor and kingship were given him.”
‘Son of Man’ is a Hebrew expression that simply means man. People driven by animal instincts have always managed the world; now no more, one is coming, one with a human heart. Who is this character? He does not come from the sea as the four monsters, but from heaven, that is from God.
The author of the Book of Daniel was not thinking of an individual; he was referring to Israel that, after the great tribulation endured under Antiochus IV, would have received from God an everlasting kingdom that would never set. All the people would be subjugated to him without being oppressed because their king would have had a man’s heart.
With this prophecy, written during the persecution of the wicked Antiochus IV (167-164 B.C.), the author wanted to infuse courage and hope in his people. Oppression—he assured—was coming to an end; still, a few years and God would hand Israel the domination of the world.
When is this prophecy fulfilled? After two or three years, Israel managed to gain political independence, and many felt that it was finally the reign of the ‘son of man’ promised by Daniel. The facts, unfortunately, belied these expectations. The Maccabees—heroic leaders of the Jewish resistance—conquered the throne, soon forgot the covenant with the Lord, and turned into oppressors. They continued to recite the script of the beasts: family feuds, intrigues for power, cruelty, refined court life, religious and moral corruption.
Now we know it, prophecy is not fulfilled with them, but with the advent of Jesus, the ‘son of man’ who began the reign of the saints of the Most High (Mk 14:62). He has staged new actors to recite the ancient script. He changed the script, has introduced a new policy, opposite to what, in every age, has given rise to realms of wild animals: no more climbing to dominate but going down to receive orders; not the enslavement of the weak, but the service rendered to the weak.
His reign did not start with a victory but in defeat. The political powers, economic and religious of his time have coalesced to eliminate him, and they killed him, sure that they had ended his proposal. Instead, his defeat marked the beginning of the new world. Having a divine power, this kingdom of the Son of man, despite the angry opposition that he will always have to deal with, is intended to expand itself and to take possession of all hearts. It will be “like the dawn that becomes brighter until the fullness of day” (Pro 4:18).
Second reading: 2 Peter 1:16-19
The early Christians—and Paul himself—were convinced that the Lord would soon manifest himself in his glory and introduce his faithful in his kingdom. However, towards the end of the first century A.D., a delusion began to spread among the disciples for the Lord’s failure to come. At the same time, the unbelievers mockingly asked: “What has become of the coming of this promise? Since our fathers in faith died, everything still goes on as it was from the beginning of the world” (2 P 3:4).
To undermine the disciples' faith, some skeptics spread even the suspicion that the prophecy of the coming of the Lord was nothing but a myth developed by clever people to control naive and gullible people.
A disciple of Peter answers to these malevolent insinuations. Writing in the name of the master, he contends, as irrefutable evidence of the truth of the message announced, the personal experience of Peter ‘on the holy mountain’ and the testimony given by the apostles who ‘saw’ the greatness of the Lord Jesus. Wrapped in the glory of a divine epiphany, they have ‘heard’ the voice of Heaven: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”
It was not an invented fairy tale. It was a revelation received by those who have lived with Jesus of Nazareth. They, illuminated from above, have contemplated his bright and glorious face.
He continues: we are like sentinels who keep watch at night and stare at the horizon, anxiously waiting for the bright “morning star” (Rev 2:28; 22:16), the bearer of a new day, to appear.
In anticipation of this joyous sunrise, the faces of believers are enlightened, and their steps guided by a lamp shining in a world still shrouded in dense darkness. The lamp is the word of God transmitted by the sacred Scriptures (v. 19).
Gospel: Mark 9:2-10
Every year, on the second Sunday of Lent, the Transfiguration of the Lord is proposed to us. The message of this passage is neither clear nor easy to grasp at first glance because it is conveyed to us in a language full of symbolic images that require explanation. The scene is set in a secluded place, on a high mountain, where Jesus has climbed with three of his disciples (v. 2), the same ones who will witness his agony in Gethsemane (cf. Mk 14:33). Mark underlines the fact that they are alone.
Jesus behaves like the rabbis who, when they wanted to reveal their secret or transmit a truly important teaching, withdrew with their disciples to a solitary place, far from prying ears, to avoid being overheard by those who were not capable of understanding or who might have misunderstood what they heard.
Nor on Mount Sinai had the Word of God been addressed directly to all the people. Moses had gone up to God, the first time, alone (cf. Ex 19:2ff); then he had taken three people with him: Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu (cf. Ex 24:1). The place of the Lord's manifestations was not accessible to all: to approach it, special dispositions and great holiness were necessary. The fact that Jesus reserved the revelation to some disciples and that, in the end, he recommended them not to divulge it indicates that he made them sharers in a very significant experience but still too elevated to be understood by all.
The revelation occurred on a high mountain (v. 2) that Christian tradition has identified as Tabor, the mountain covered with pines, oaks, and terebinths that rise, solitary, in the center of the vast plain of Esdraelon. Since ancient times, there was an altar on the summit where sacrifices were offered to pagan divinities. Today the place is an invitation to recollection, reflection, and prayer. Pilgrims who visit it feel almost naturally impelled to raise their eyes to heaven and their thoughts to God.
As suggestive as this experience may seem, it should be remembered that the Gospel text does not speak of Tabor but of "a high mountain" and this expression has clear biblical resonances. The mountain in the Bible is where the manifestations of the Lord and the great encounters of man with God take place. Moses (cf. Ex 24:15ff) and Elijah (1 Kgs 19:8), the same characters who appear during the Transfiguration, received their revelations on a mountain. More than a material place, the mountain indicates the moment when intimacy with God reaches its climax. It is about that sublime experience that the mystics call the union of the soul with God, in which the person, dissolving almost in his Lord, feels that he identifies himself with the divine thoughts, feelings, words, and actions.
Jesus moves away from the plain where men allow themselves to be led by principles that often go against those of God and leads some disciples on high; he wants them to be alien to the reasoning and convictions of men, to introduce them into the innermost thoughts of the Father, in his inscrutable designs about the Messiah. Luke is even more explicit when he refers to the theme of Jesus' dialogue with Moses and Elijah. He affirms that these, appearing in his glory, spoke with him about the gift of life; that Jesus was there to offer (cf. Lk 9:31). This is the disconcerting revelation that some disciples, not all, received from heaven that day.
The white garments (v. 3) outwardly manifest the identity of Jesus. White symbolizedGod's world, the sign of festivity and joy. It was said that in the kingdom of God, the elect would wear white garments emitting sparkles like sun rays. The image is taken up again in the Apocalypse: in the eyes of the seer, the elect appears in heaven wearing "white robes" (cf. Rev 7:13).
Moses and Elijah are two famous figures in the history of Israel. The former is the mediator God used to liberate his people and give them the Torah, the Law. He is introduced into the scene of the Transfiguration to testify that Jesus is the Prophet, announced by him when, before his death, he promised the Israelites: "The Lord your God will raise for you a prophet like me, he will raise him from among you, from among your brothers, and it is he whom you will listen to" (Deut 18:15).
The invitation to listen to him at the end of the story confirms this. Elijah, in turn, is the first of the prophets, who was caught up to heaven (cf. 2 Kings 2:11-12) and thought to return before the coming of the Messiah. In the scene of the Transfiguration, he also enters as a witness: he declares, in the name of all the prophets, that Jesus is the awaited Messiah.
Also, the tents (v. 5) that Peter wants to build have a symbolic meaning. At the end of the year, at the end of the harvest season, the Feast of Tents was celebrated in Israel, which lasted a whole week. They were built to remember the years spent in the wilderness, to recall the works of the Lord in the past. It was a feast, however, that invited us to look to the future. The prophet Zechariah had announced that, at the coming of the Messiah, all peoples would gather in Jerusalem to celebrate together the Feast of Tents (cf. Zech 14:16-19). Referring to this oracle, the rabbis described the time of the Messiah as a perennial Feast of Tents.
By asking to build three tents, Peter refers to this symbolic meaning. He is convinced that the kingdom of God has arrived, the time of rest and the perennial feast announced by the prophets; he has not understood the true meaning of the scene he is witnessing. He continues to cultivate the illusion that it is possible to enter the kingdom of heaven without having passed through the gift of one's own life. Mark notes, "They did not know what they were saying because they were filled with fear" (v. 6).
Fear does not indicate fear in the face of danger; it is difficult to imagine the disciplesecstatic with joy (v. 5) and, at the same time, paralyzed with terror (v. 6). When the Bible speaks of terror before a manifestation of the Lord, it refers to the wonder, to the stupor that envelops those who come into contact with the world of God.
The cloud and the shadow are images that appear frequently in the Old Testament and indicate God's presence. The Lord manifests himself to Moses in "a thick cloud" (cf. Ex 19:9). A cloud accompanies the Israelites through the desert (cf. Ex 40:34-39) and covers the tent where Moses meets the Lord (cf. Ex 33:9-11). It is a sign of God's presence. At the end of the scene of the Transfiguration, a voice emerges from the cloud: this is the interpretation God gives to the whole episode (v. 7).
After explaining the various symbols, let us synthesize the message that the extraordinary experience of the apostles wants to communicate to us. The story of the Transfiguration occupies precisely the center of Mark's Gospel. From the beginning, the disciples had been wondering about the identity of Jesus (cf. Mk 1:27; 4:41; 6:2-3), and, at a certain point, they began to sense that he was the Messiah. Still, however, they did not have clear ideas. They shared the widespread opinion that the Messiah would be a king capable of establishing the kingdom of God on earth prodigiously and immediately.
This conviction is clear from the words of Peter, who wants to build three tents: he thinks that the kingdom of God has arrived and that, to participate in it, it is not necessary to pass through death. At a particularly significant moment in their lives, the three privileged disciples were introduced by Jesus into the thoughts of God; they enjoyed an illumination that made them understand the true identity of the Master and the goal of their journey: he would not be the glorious king they were expecting, but an outraged, persecuted and crucified Messiah. Nevertheless, his ultimate destiny would not be the tomb but the fullness of life.
The Transfiguration was an extraordinary spiritual experience in which Jesus tried to convince them that only he who gives his life out of love realizes it fully. It is impossible to enter the kingdom of God through shortcuts as Peter would have wanted. Every disciple must accept with courage the Master's willingness to give his life. Was the experience on the mountain sufficient for the three disciples to assimilate this truth?
The concluding remark of the evangelist: "They fulfilled that commission but wondered what it meant to rise from the dead," lets us understand that they came out of the revelation received only disturbed, not convinced. They could not understand that, in Jesus, who was about to give his life, God was revealing all his glory, all his Love for humanity. Only the light of Easter and their experiences with the Risen One would open their eyes wide.
