(Genesis 22:1-2, 9-13, 15-18; St. Paul to the Romans 8:31-34; St. Mark’s Gospel 9:2-10)
In our Gospel passage today we find Our Blessed Lord
wanting to prepare His disciples for what He foresaw would soon happen: His
Passion that would culminate in His sacrificial Death was looming large on the
horizon. Jesus had recently forewarned
His disciples of it, but, as in so many other matters, they were not yet able
to truly appreciate and fully understand His words. When the time would come for Him to be taken
away from them, they would find it a traumatic and potentially faith-shattering
experience because of the original trust they had placed in Him when leaving so
much behind in order to follow Him; and yet more now, because of the admiration
and love they had conceived for Him as a result of their short but close
association together. Jesus’ immediate
purpose, therefore, was to prepare them so that they might be able to draw
serious profit from the suffering that would soon come His and their way: He
could not spare them the trial, but He would not have them agonize and lose
faith because of it. How then did Jesus
go about preparing His disciples for their forthcoming trial of suffering,
questioning, and soul-searching?
Notice, first of all, that Jesus was well aware that His
disciples were, as yet, weak in faith and by no means steadfast in their love
for Him. At present they were rejoicing
in the presence of the Lord: He was the Bridegroom and they were the
Bridegroom’s most privileged friends.
However, such present, earthly,
joy, though holy, would not be enough to sustain them through the
trials that lay ahead. And that, People
of God, is something we should notice. Joy
in the Lord based largely on emotional experiences would not be enough for Jesus‘
disciples, nor can it suffice for us now; their joy, their love, had to be much
more firmly founded on faith: on a faith shot through and through with
transcendent hope, and becoming ever more incandescent with a divinely-gifted
love for the Person of Jesus. Therefore:
Jesus took Peter, James, and
John, and led them up on a high mountain apart by themselves; and He was
transfigured before them.
Why did Jesus take these three particular disciples with
Him on that momentous occasion?
The case for Peter is clear enough since he had just, in
the presence and in the name of all the disciples, confessed Jesus as the
Christ (Mark 8:29):
‘Who
do you say that I am?’ ‘You are the
Christ’.
Moreover, Jesus recognized that Peter had been personally
chosen and blessed by His Father in order to make that confession; therefore,
as we learn from St. Matthew (16:17), following His Father’s lead, He named
Peter as the rock upon which He would subsequently build His Church. And so, Peter -- spokesman of the disciples,
individually blessed by the Father, and chosen as the rock on which Jesus would
build His Church -- was, indeed, pre-eminently suited to accompany Jesus up the
mountain.
James the Elder, son of Zebedee, would become leader of the
original group of Jewish believers in Jesus making up the original Church in
Jerusalem; and being in so prominent a position he would become the first of
the Apostles to suffer martyrdom for Jesus’ sake about the year 44 AD. He had to be well prepared for such a calling
and so pressing a destiny and therefore he became Jesus’ second choice to
follow Himself along with Simon Peter.
Perhaps the reason for John’s being taken by Jesus up the
Mount of Transfiguration is to be sought in the mysterious nature of his authorship
of the Gospel now bearing his name. For
strangely enough, all three Synoptic Gospels tell of Jesus’ Transfiguration
though none of the named authors was present on the Mount; whereas John, on the
other hand, though actually present on that unique and momentous occasion, does
not give us any explicit details of it!
He was quite a young man at the time; a very committed and
observant, sensitive and impressionable, disciple of the Lord. He was so deeply affected by what he saw and
experienced on the Mount of Transfiguration -- an event second only to the unseen
moment of Jesus’ Resurrection as testimony to His divinity -- that whereas
Peter, a mature man of the world, would give clear and factual reminiscences of
the event (Peter being a source for Mark’s Gospel), John would, just as Jesus
envisaged, remain (cf. John
21:22): recalling, considering and reconsidering, lovingly praying and calmly contemplating,
what had taken place and what had been said on those heights above, as he unremittingly
sought to appreciate and assimilate their purest truth and deepest significance
for his understanding of Jesus. When,
ultimately, he felt a compulsion to write down or hand on what by then had been
filling his mind, heart, and soul for years, His resultant Gospel would be
replete, not with factual details of that wondrous occasion, but rather with
the all-enveloping atmosphere of divine truth and ultimate reality engendered
by Jesus’ presence to, and communion with, His Self-revealing Father in the
unity of the overshadowing Spirit … which, John had come to know full well, was
not a passing, occasional occurrence for Jesus, but rather a passing
manifestation of what was the enduring
character of His whole life on earth: for He always lived before and in the
presence of His Father; doing His will, proclaiming His truth, and promoting
His glory to the utmost of His being.
Therefore, as I have said, the faith of these three very
distinct and -- taken together -- most comprehensively talented individuals, needed
to be made unyielding and sure on the basis of the divine authority of the
words and teaching of Jesus, shot through and through with eschatological hope
in the abiding presence and power of His Spirit, and becoming ever more radiant
with incandescent love for the Person of Jesus in His Church. To that end, these three -- Peter, James, and
John -- were afforded an experience that would allow them to glimpse, briefly,
something of the teaching authority, the hidden majesty, and indeed the heavenly
glory of the Lord.
First of all:
Elijah appeared to them along with Moses,
and they were conversing with Jesus.
This united witness of the Scriptures – Moses and Elijah, the
Law and the Prophets -- solemnly confirmed Jesus as Lord of heaven, the
long-proclaimed, lovingly-prepared, and eagerly-awaited, Seed of God’s promise
to Abraham, of which we heard in the first reading and as Jesus Himself said
(John 5:39, 46):
You search the Scriptures, for in
them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of
Me.
If you believed Moses you would believe
Me; for he wrote about Me.
Dear People of God, we must most sincerely try to love and
appreciate the Scriptures aright if we would know and love Jesus in spirit and
in truth, if we would remain firm and, indeed, grow even stronger in our faith
through times of trial and temptation.
Then, to the yet greater awe and fear of the disciples:
A cloud came, casting a shadow
over them, and from the cloud came a voice:
"This is My beloved Son. Listen to Him!"
The heavenly Father Himself (they had no doubt of that!)
was impressing upon them again the authority of Jesus’ words and teaching. But surely, there is something more,
something far more intimate and personal than ‘listening’ being advised, even
commanded, here; for why did the Father speak, as it were publically, of what
was most intimately Personal between Himself and His Son … that is, His love
for His Son: This is My Beloved? Surely, the Father is there, certainly not
commanding, not even so much as advising but, most delicately drawing those who
are initially committing themselves to His Son, to learn, from Him, the Father
Himself, how rightly and fully to love
His beloved One.
This
is My beloved Son!
This approach is far more compelling and inviting than any
command could be; it is a divine inspiration and heartfelt Personal invitation
and call from the Father; it is the sublime source of those subsequent words of
Jesus (John 6:44, 65):
No one can come to Me
unless the Father Who sent Me draw him.
No one can come to Me
unless it is granted him by My Father.
Now we too, should turn to and prayerfully learn something
from the Father drawing us to Jesus, His beloved Son, when, at Holy Mass, we
prepare to welcome Him into our midst as the Father’s sacramental pledge of love
for mankind; and most especially, as we receive Him into our individual hearts
as the Father’s Personal Gift of Love to each one of us. For we should recall, first of all, that Jesus
is being given to us by the Father that we might love Him in the power
of His accompanying Spirit, and secondly, that the Beloved Son we are receiving
is Himself a living Personal Gift of Love Who wills to love in us, as our
love for the Father, seeking to draw us back to the Father with Himself.
Holy Communion is that doubly divine and momentous occasion
when we are able and called to learn from the gifting Father how to love,
better and ever more personally, His beloved Son; and also how best to allow
His Son to lovingly respond to and live for the Father in and through us by the
Holy Spirit abiding in and with us as Jesus’ gift.
The disciples descended with Jesus from those heights so
close and open to heaven with a faith itself transfigured into an anticipation
of Christian faith. Now, despite Jesus’
recent warning of His approaching suffering, rejection by the religious
authorities, and resultant death lurking in their minds, they had received a
faith-vision of Jesus’ heavenly glory, hidden as yet from earthly scrutiny, but
something, nevertheless, both beautiful and sure that would help them relate to
the resurrection Jesus promised would follow His death in three days. Nevertheless, because they would be most sorely
wounded by their Lord’s suffering and death, this ‘dry-dock’ work of
preparation and confirmation undertaken on the Mount of Transfiguration would
be sedulously pursued by the Lord as, again and yet again, for a second and
then a then a third time, He clearly warned and loving prepared them for their
time of trial and temptation.
People of God, we Catholics and Christians of today are,
like the original fathers of our faith, subject to trial and temptation throughout
the world; we must, therefore, learn how to protect our faith, our Christian
and Catholic civilisation, and our own selves; we must ‘listen to Him’, Our
Blessed Lord and Saviour, if we would be strong in faith and love for
eternal life, for our adversaries subject us to great stress and savage attacks
all over the world. Our governments are
forgetful of their Christian heritage and solicitous only for their own
permanence in power and popularity. As
Catholics and Christians, we are not – like those militant, pseudo-religious
groups – allowed and encouraged to hate and lust, be it for pleasure or for
power! How such connivance with native passions
and their unrestrained expression stirs up ‘religious zeal’ in all sorts of
people but especially in the young, short of understanding and emotional stability, and most eager to make
their mark by doing what comes so easily and naturally if encouraged and praised
by evil masters! Our Christian strength
– for we are not allowed to become ‘wimps’ ever shivering between humanism and
emotionalism! – our strength has to come, as Jesus taught, from our
faith in Himself, and has to express itself through the power of His Spirit:
faith must not be explained away by rationalising expediency, nor spiritual
power subverted by trite and emotional platitudes meant above all to avoid
trouble or emolliate opposition.
Moreover, as Jesus was so solicitous for His disciples and
future Church we too must look to our children who need help as they try to
understand their humanity and adapt to the society around them. To those ends they should be taught
morals and guided towards love of what is truly beautiful. They are not,
of themselves, positively innocent; in infancy their relative helplessness
demands that they instinctively wail and grab to satisfy their most basic needs,
and they need to be loved and guided lest, as they grow stronger in body, they
continue to seek and grab, no longer for what they need, but for what they fancy. Of course, their greatest need as they are
growing up is for faith and spiritual strength to withstand peer-pressure which
would force them into compliance with group excitement and amusement without
reference to any personal thinking or religious morals. Of one thing we can be certain, children left
to ‘find out for themselves’ will rarely find out what is good and true for
themselves; they will be led, drawn along, by the examples and
solicitations of others in their group, responding to nothing better than the shared
exuberance of youth under the domination of passions and pride… feelings which all
share or at least can easily understand.
Because of that sharing in emotional awareness and excitement very few members
of a group of friends or ‘mates’ dare to ‘go it alone’ and, following their
personal conscience, resist, or seek to control, that of which they cannot actually
approve, but dare not openly disapprove.
Good Catholic and Christian parenthood is indeed demanding,
but it is a most beautiful art with lifelong and indeed eternal rewards.
People of God, delight in the Lord Jesus, try ever to
follow confidently His example; trust humbly in the teaching of His Church and
her Scriptures; and never give up hoping that the goodness of God Who gives His own Son for and to us all,
will lead you to share in the eternal glory of Jesus before the Father if you
persevere faithfully thus walking with Him along life’s way to heaven’s reward.
