Some Thoughts For Lent

Details: 26 February 2010

Transfiguration

In the year 1457, a large Christian army, led and inspired by Saint John of Capistrano, achieved a great victory at Belgrade in the Balkans over an even larger Muslim horde, which was determined, as had many previous Islamic armies, to conquer Europe for the religion of Islam and to kill and enslave all Christians. The Muslim Religion, of course, considers Christians, Jews, and other non-Muslims to be “wicked infidels”. To commemorate the Christian victory, Pope Callistus III instituted for the liturgical calendar of the Universal Church on August 6th, each year (the victory date), a feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord, a feast that already was being celebrated locally since the fifth centuries in various places. Pope Callistus made it clear, however, that he did not intend by this undertaking to supersede or override the ancient commemoration of Christ’s transfiguration which had been and continues to be traditionally remembered on the Second Sunday of Lent in the Latin Rite.

A liturgical remembrance of the transfiguration during the first part of Lent was probably made in the Church from the earliest times for two principal reasons. All three synoptic accounts of the event (Matthew 17:1-8; Mark 9:1-7; Luke 9:26-36) relate how, immediately after the transfiguration, Jesus, coming down from the mountain, encountered His disciples who found themselves incapable of exorcising an epileptic boy ( Luke 9:37-44; Mark 9:13-26; Matthew 17:9:14-15). After our Lord Himself did so, he explained to the Apostles that certain devils could only be cast out “by prayer and fasting” and by persons of profound faith (Matthew 17:18-20; Mark 9:27-28). This exhortation was always seen as a beautiful synopsis of an appropriate Christian Lenten program.

The second reason is that the transfiguration is easily seen as Christ’s preparing the Apostles for the coming scandal of the cross. Both before and after the transfiguration event our Savior spoke to his Apostles predicting His coming passion, death, and resurrection, to their great consternation and perplexity (Matthew 16:21-28; Luke 9:44-45; Mark 9:29-31). Thus, recounting the transfiguration helps prepare Christ’s present day disciples for their crosses of penance to be carried in the Lenten season.

Mountain Meaning

In the New Testament Gospel narratives we can notice seven significant mountains which are mentioned by the Evangelists in connection with the life of Jesus. It always has been maintained by Catholic biblical commentators that the mention of these mountains and their association with various special events ( the mountain of temptation, the mountain of the sermon, the mountain of prayer, the mountain of the transfiguration, the mountain of anxiety, the mountain of the crucifixion, and the mountain of the ascension) was not simply some realistic geographic information being provided to the Bible reader, but has an important and deeply spiritual significance as well.

In the first volume of his great work, “Jesus of Nazareth”, our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, in his treatment of the transfiguration, comments on this matter, noting that “in the background” of the “high mountain” (Mark 9:2) of the transfiguration, “we also catch sight of Sinai, Horeb, and Moriah, the mountains of Old Testament revelation. They are all at one and the same time mountains of passion and of revelation..” The Pope also remarks that our Lord’s taking Peter, James, and John with Him for the transfiguration foreshadowed His later taking the same three with Him into the Garden of Olives (Mark 14:33), inextricably linking these events, and all of this in turn was foreshadowed much earlier in the Old Covenant by Moses climbing a mountain in company with Aaron, Nadob, and Abihu (Exodus 24).

The Holy Father writes, “When we inquire into the meaning of the mountain, the first point, of course, is the general background of mountain symbolism. The mountain is the place of ascent not only outward, but also inward ascent. It is a liberation from the burden of everyday life, a breathing in of the pure air of creation. It offers a view of the broad expanse of creation and its beauty. It gives one an inner peak to stand on and an intuitive sense of the Creator. History then adds to all this the experience of the God Who speaks, and the experience of the passion, culminating in the sacrifice of Isaac, in the sacrifice of the lamb that points ahead to the definitive Lamb sacrificed on Mount Calvary. Moses and Elijah were privileged (in the Old Testament) to receive God’s revelation on a mountain. Now (at the Transfiguration of Jesus) they are conversing with the One Who is God’s Revelation in Person.”

Prayer Event

Pope Benedict XVI writes, “Luke is the only one of the Evangelists who begins his account (of the transfiguration) by indicating the purpose of Jesus’ ascent. He went up the mountain to pray (Luke 9:28). It is in the context of prayer that Luke now explains the event that the three disciples are to witness. “And as He was praying, the appearance of His face altered, and His clothing became dazzling white” (Luke 9:29). The transfiguration is a prayer event. It displays what happens when Jesus talks with His Father, the profound interpenetration of His Being with God, which then becomes pure Light. In His oneness with His Father, Jesus is Himself “Light from Light”. The reality that He is in the deepest core of His Being, which Peter tried to express in his confession, that reality becomes perceptible to the senses at this moment. Jesus’ Being in the Light of God shows His own divine Being in Light as the Son.”

The Holy Father, writing about the appearance of Moses and Elijah with Jesus at the transfiguration event, mentions that what the risen Lord will later explain to the disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:27) is seen here in visible form.

The Law and the Prophets speak with Jesus and speak about Jesus. “Only Luke tells us, at least in a brief allusion, what God’s two great witnesses were talking about with Jesus. They appeared in glory and spoke of His exodus (departure) which He was about to accomplish at Jerusalem (Luke 9:31). Their topic of conversation was the cross, but understood in an inclusive sense as Jesus’ exodus, which had to take place in Jerusalem. Jesus’ cross is an exodus, a departure from this life, a passage through the Red Sea of the passion, and a transition into glory, glory, however, that forever bears the marks of Jesus wounds” (John 20:27).

The Cloud

The climax, so to speak, of the event of the miraculous transfiguration of the Lord was the enveloping cloud (Mark 9:11) from which God’s voice was heard instructing the Apostles to “listen to Him”, which follows “the solemn proclamation by the Father of Christ’s divine Sonship.” As the Pope observes, “This one command brings the theophany to its conclusion and sums up its deepest meaning. The disciples must accompany Jesus back down the mountain and learn ever anew to listen to Him.” This is our lesson too, renewed annually each Lent.