18 February 2023 – Mark 9:2-13
The extraordinary event that we know as the Transfiguration follows immediately after Peter’s confession of Jesus’ identity as the Messiah and the prediction that he would be rejected by the leaders, that he would have to suffer and die at the hands of his own people, a prediction that shocked his disciples terribly.
Today’s experience is to strengthen their faith and to prepare them when the Passion takes place. Only the three closest companions of Jesus – Peter, James and John – are chosen for this experience.
The transfiguration is the second of the three great revelations that
mark Jesus’ suffered but victorious struggle to proclaim the kingdom of God is for the salvation of humanity. Baptism had been the divine foretelling. The
passion and resurrection will be the fulfilment. Now the revelation to the disciples takes place: in Jesus, the suffering and victorious Messiah, God manifests his glory and power of salvation. The transfiguration is a living exhortation to listen to Jesus when he speaks of his suffering and death, without ceasing to recognise him as the Messiah, as the faithful Servant of God. Recognition that for the disciples will happen after the resurrection because before it their incomprehension remains profound.
The Church and the disciples are all called to “incarnate” themselves in the world, to be present in its structures, but only to transform them, accepting to die to every earthly success, to every self-security. Their victory will only appear when, broken by death, they will rise again in a world they have helped to transfigure.
The most important point of our whole life is therefore to lean on the Lord Jesus, not to lean on ourselves, on the nothingness that belongs to us, but to deny ourselves and base ourselves on him in order to be in communion with God, in true love. Any other attitude is fallacious. If we try to love alone, that is, without leaning on faith in Jesus, our love is vain, it is not authentic; if we strive for Christian perfection without leaning on the Lord Jesus, our perfection does not exist. “If you want to be perfect says Jesus go, sell what you have…”. We must renounce any idea of perfection of our own, because perfection is not our property, we only have it to the extent that we are in communion with Jesus, founded on him in faith. He alone is our treasure, our righteousness, says St Paul, our holiness. He is holy, not us, and only in union with him can we be holy and please God. Faith is the secret of every good achievement.
For good workers…
– “And suddenly, looking around, they saw no one but Jesus alone with them”. The verse brings out Jesus’ loneliness in having to face the passion, death and resurrection, of which the Transfiguration was only a foretaste. We too alone will have to face pain and death, but we will always have Jesus with us.
– Jesus is the new Moses, the new Elijah: Listen to him! And the invitation is decisive for every disciple of Jesus in every age: we must listen to him, the Son, who is the Kýrios, the Lord! Listen to him, not to one’s own fears, not to one’s own desires, not to one’s own images and projections of God.
P JOBY KAVUNGAL RCJ