Second Sunday of Lent

The episode we know as the Lord’s Transfiguration, described for us by Mark in today’s gospel, is both mysterious yet fascinating. Every word and deed of Christ recorded in the gospels have as their purpose our instruction and ultimately our salvation. The Transfiguration therefore provides us with ample material for prayer and reflection. To those familiar with Scripture, the mountain is a place of encounter with God, where he reveals himself and communicates his will to chosen individuals. Mount Sinai, overshadowed by clouds, was where God spoke to Moses and gave him the Ten Commandments for his people Israel.

The Lord God speaks again on the mount of Transfiguration, only this time to affirm that Jesus Christ is none other than his own beloved Son, someone greater than Moses and the prophets. Christ is now the One who speaks the words of God to us, and teaches us the path we must follow if we are to do God’s will and know his peace. “This is my Son the Beloved. Listen to him.” The presence of Moses and Elijah, representatives of the Law and the Prophets, show how Jesus brings to fulfilment and surpasses the revelation contained in the Old Testament. Christ is the final and supreme Word of God who took flesh and lived among us, as the Evangelist John would tell us in the prologue to his gospel.

The marvel of this truly wonderful scene on Mount Tabor is the truth about the identity of Jesus Christ. The faith of the three apostles will surely have been strengthened as a result. He is truly the Father’s Son with all that divine sonship implies. The Church in its Creeds would later declare about Jesus Christ that “He is God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God.” The Church would have us see in the story of Abraham and Isaac’s sacrifice, our first reading, a hint or foreshadowing of another Father and Son, that of God himself, and a sacrifice which would express God’s love for the world.

The experience on the mountain proved all too much for Peter, James and John. Such was the beauty and bliss of the moment that Peter wanted it to continue indefinitely. When they came to their senses it was Jesus alone that they found. He instructed them to keep the vision to themselves until he had risen from the dead, words which puzzled them even more. But the sober truth was that the true and complete identity of Jesus would only become clear to them and to the world on Easter morning when he triumphed over the grave. They first had to learn the lessons of Calvary.

+Michael Campbell OSA
Coadjutor Bishop of Lancaster