Today we celebrate the feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord. This feast recalls Jesus’ glorification before his crucifixion. We not only remember this event in the life of Jesus and his followers, but the deeper meaning of this event is that Christ rules all creation. The first reading from Daniel presents this image of the Son of man claiming his rightful dominion and power over all things. And yet, Christ is the one who has put aside his dominion to show us how God loves us and wants to bring us home through Jesus’ dying and rising again.
The reason for his transfiguration shares something with the reason for his resurrection. If Christ had not been resurrected, we might have supposed that suffering (or at least, suffering for the Lord) was all there for His glory. Then we might have gotten confused and thought that there is something special about suffering taken all by itself. Christ allows himself to be transfigured so that his followers will understand even before the grieving events of the crucifixion that suffering is not the end of the story – not for Christ and not for his followers.
Why do only Peter, James, and John witness Christ in glory in this way? These three apostles went on to suffer greatly for Christ. James and Peter were among the first martyrs, and John shepherded the church through severe persecutions. Christ helped them get ready for those trials by strengthening them with the vision of his transfiguration.
In the reading from St. Peter’s second letter, we hear the author reminisce of the Transfiguration scene from the gospels. The words spoken by the Father are recorded, “This is my beloved son on whom my favor rests.” However, the passage is much more than remembering. It is a very powerful theological reflection. It seems that some early Christians are wavering in their faith about the Parousia, the Lord’s final presence before his Ascension.
As explained by St. Leo the Great: “In order to strengthen his sisters and brothers, Peter recalls not only his experience on the mountain of transfiguration, but provides us with a three-fold theological reflection on that experience:
 First, the experience was a vision “of his sovereign majesty,” an epiphany of Christ’s divinity.
 Second, “the prophetic message,” that is to say the entire Old Testament witnesses to this Christ.
 Finally, attention has to remain on this word-proclaiming-Christ until the “morning-star rises in your hearts.” “Morning-star” is literally, “the one who bears light.”
Peter’s advice to those who waver, and to us, is to keep our lives fixed on the divine Word of God, until the dawn of our resurrection, when his glory as Light of the world transfigures us. (From Origen)
A couple of other interesting details from the gospel that can help us to understand the feast more clearly concern Moses and Elijah. Moses and Elijah share the distinction of having no known grave. Elijah was taken up to God at the end of his life, a sign of the special place this prophet had in the whole tradition of God’s prophets. Moses dies, but God himself takes care of his burial, no one in Israel knew where he was buried. These figures from the past, whose ends are mysterious, come back now and represent the law and the prophets, while Jesus represents the New Covenant and brings it all together into the Kingdom of God.
As disciples of Jesus, how are we to understand the Transfiguration? It gives us a way of looking at both the past and the future. With respect to the past, the Transfiguration reminds us that we are
descendants of those Jewish followers of Jesus Messiah who found in him everything that the Law and the Prophets taught them to yearn for and seek out in their lives.
With respect to the present and the future, the Transfiguration reminds us that we acknowledge Jesus to be truly risen. And we, who share with the three disciples an imperfect knowledge of what “rising from the dead” really means, can look forward to sharing this glory of Jesus as complete human beings. Though we do not build three tents or three chapels, we memorialize the meaning of the Transfiguration by letting that vision guide our lives.
Now let’s look at the other half of God’s message to the three disciples in the gospel. The voice from the clouds on the mount of Transfiguration says, “Listen to him.” “God had called us”, says St. Paul in his Second Letter to Timothy. And Jesus is the call.
What are we called to? What happens if we listen to Jesus? Most of us have been listening for years. Supposedly that is one of the reasons we still show up in church. It’s his call we are heeding. He is our new Moses, our lawgiver. He is our greatest prophet, more glorious for us than Elijah of the Old Testament. We’ve been listening to him. And yet, we remain set upon the things of this world, burdened with the original darkness that shadows our vision of what could be.
We recognize that our citizenship will be in heaven, but in the meantime, we exercise our citizenship on earth for the coming of the kingdom of God. We want to get on with it, to have things finished once and for all. Let there be a conversion, complete and dramatic. At least there would be some progress. We get tired of waiting. We have heard the call over and over, but not much seems to get done. And we ask – now what?
To open our hearts… to experience: No matter how insightful or imaginative, all human vision is limited by the boundaries of human experience. The vision of Jesus’ transfiguration explodes the boundaries of human experience yet is very real and attainable. Jesus shows us the glory that is ours to come, a glory attainable because it is God’s gift to those who are faithful. (Fr. Ron Rohlheiser). Today’s liturgy is about restoring our sight so that we can see the bounty of the Lord in the land of the living.
We can understand why Peter, James, and John wanted to build a tent. They have had a mountain experience. They saw Jesus in his glory standing with the mightiest prophet and the greatest lawgiver. They wanted to stop things right there. It was better than anything they had seen Christ do in the time they had been with Him. Surely it would be all downhill after the mountaintop. Surely there was not much more glory to see and savor. Those of us who don’t have a mountain experience tend to settle down, too. If you’re fifty-five, you might well expect that there are not many more journeys to take or conversions to make. What was going to happen has pretty much happened. Even some of us who are only thirty or forty might be inclined to believe that we have finally “arrived” at the person we were becoming.
Abraham was seventy-five. At seventy-five you’ve pretty well seen the landscape. Not much more is to be expected. But for Abraham it was the beginning. There was yet another call: “Go forth from the land of your kinsfolk, go away from your parents’ house. I will show you. You’ll know the place when you get there. I’ll make a great nation of you out of nothing.” Fat chance. A great nation? Blessings and high achievement unexpected? Get real. When we are younger, we foolishly imagined that we have seen it all. You can never say you’ve had enough. As you grow older, you could not have dreamed of the pains that humans could suffer, the joys
we might endure, the sheer exultation in life that is available to us. There is always more. There is always a further call as long as we tread this earthly road.