Happy Sunday!
DOCTRINE AND FAITH
(Gen 15, 5-12.17-18; Philippians 3,17-4,1; Luke 9, 28b-36: 2nd Sunday of Lent, Year C, March 12, 2022)
On this Sunday, the liturgy offers us in the first reading the account of God's covenant with Abraham; the second reading deals on Jesus Christ’s attitude as our savior; the Gospel is the transfiguration episode.
God's covenant with Abraham is a fundamental step in God's project. It is God who binds himself to a person, and a family and makes wonderful promises. He says to Abraham: Look at the sky and count the stars, if you can count them […), such will be your descendants. Abraham accepts this promise with faith: He believed in the Lord, who accredits/reckons it to him as righteousness. Then God adds another promise that of apportioning some land: To your descendants I give this land from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates. This covenant is only the first step in God's plan. The new covenant will be much more generous, because then, God will give his own Son. It was not possible for God to establish a deeper, stronger, more perfect bond with us than this. Jesus is Son of God - as we see in the Transfiguration - and at the same time a descendant of Abraham. Therefore, in him the promise made to Abraham is fulfilled. The Transfiguration is an important episode of the Gospel: an episode which comes after the first prediction of the Passion and which reveals Jesus’ profound being; an episode that prepares the apostles to overcome the scandal of the cross and understand the glory of the resurrection. We read in the Gospel of Luke: Jesus took with him Peter, John and James to the mountain and stayed to pray. And while he was praying, his face changed appearance and his robe became white and dazzling. In prayer Jesus joins the Father, and this one union is manifested with the transfiguration, in which Jesus becomes glorious, and shining. But this glorification has a relationship with God’s whole plan, the evangelist states: And here were two men talking with him: they were Moses and Elijah, who appeared in their glory, and they spoke of his exodus which he would bring to completion in Jerusalem. This is how the relationship between the Transfiguration and Jesus’ passion is expressed. Moses and Elijah speak Jesus’ passion; the Transfiguration has a very close link with it. In the Transfiguration God manifests himself in a similar way to other episodes in which Moses and Elijah are the protagonists. In the Old Testament it is said that Moses had gone up the mountain (as here Jesus goes up the mountain of the Transfiguration) and had asked God to reveal himself to him: Show me your Glory! (Exodus 13, 18). God had replied that he could not do it, because he would not have survived an experience as strong as that of seeing the holiness of God. A poor mortal cannot contemplate God’s holiness. The Lord would then pass by, proclaiming his name, and Moses could only see him from behind. Thus, Moses had only an imperfect revelation of God. In addition to this revelation, Moses received the mission of communicating the law to the Jewish people from God. It was on Mount Sinai that God made his law known. Elijah had a similar experience. Fleeing from the persecution of Queen Jezebel because he had conquered and killed the prophets of Baal, he was invited by God to mount Sinai. Here he had a revelation, which, however, was different from that of Moses. A forceful wind comes, but God was not in the wind. Then came an earthquake, but God was not in the earthquake. There was a fire, but God was not in the fire. At the end God revealed himself to the prophet in the murmur of a light wind, as in an intimate revelation. Also Elijah received a mission from God: that of anointing the king of Aram as the king of Israel and of consecrating Elisha as a prophet. In the episode of the Transfiguration, we too receive a revelation from God and a mission from him. This time the revelation does not take place from behind, as in the case of Moses, but on the face, that of Jesus. The human face of Jesus manifests divine glory, changes appearance. It is an extraordinary vision, which impresses Peter and the other two apostles. We rejoice, because now we have the revelation of God on a face that can be contemplated. We can also think of many artists who have tried to contemplate Christ’s face, express its beauty, extraordinary dignity, majesty, and even its goodness. God reveals himself in Christ’s face. Whoever has seen me has seen the Father, says Jesus in the Gospel of John (14, 9). We are invited to contemplate the beauty and grandeur of God from Jesus’ face, the mission we receive from God is summed up in a single word: Listen to him. Now, it is no longer a question of a series of commands to be observed, but of a relationship with a person. Christians have Christ himself as their law, they must listen to him, and if they listen to Christ in prayer, and the search for his will, then they listen to God. The law of the Christian is a law of freedom, because it is a law of love, and love exists only where freedom is. Thus, the apostles are prepared to overcome the scandal of the cross, receiving the revelation of the filial glory of Jesus in advance. And they were prepared to interpret the resurrection well, not as something that happened to a simple man, but as the manifestation of the glory that Jesus already had before the creation of the world. He states in the Gospel: Father, glorify me with the glory I had with you before the world was (John 17, 5). Even before the foundation of the world, the person of Jesus was the person of the Son of God, (or of the Word of God as John's Prologue calls it), who came down from heaven, took over our misery, to transform it and bring it back to the splendor of God. The resurrection manifests the divine glory that the Son of God had since eternity.
In the second reading, Paul speaks of our transfiguration. He states that our homeland is in heaven and we are waiting for our Saviour the Lord Jesus, who will transfigure our miserable bodies to conform it to his glorious body. We are destined to be transfigured. Therefore, Jesus’ Transfiguration is also the revelation and anticipation of our destiny. Our transfiguration begins here on earth. It is not an event that is manifest only at the parousia of the Lord, but one that already operates in our earthly existence. Those who are faithful to Christ, pray, and seek God's will, are gradually transfigured. We can see this, above all, in the face of the saints. The Cure d'Ars, for example, had a common aspect, without particular beauty; but his spiritual and apostolic life meant that his face was transfigured, became luminous, capable of attracting people. His was not a human beauty, but a divine beauty, which penetrated the whole of his human existence. And the same could be said of many other saints. We too are transfigured when we pray, and open our whole being to the love that comes from God, to become generous, merciful, full of understanding and indulgence as he is. Then our face is transfigured.
The Gospel shows us what our destiny is: that of being, completely, transfigured. We can therefore, begin to be so, right now in our existence, if we remain faithful to Christ and open to his grace, which has the power to transfigure our whole being.
Let us rejoice then on account of this episode of the Transfiguration, which for us is so bright and comforting. +John I. Okoye.
(graphics by Chukwubike )
