Our Lenten journey takes us from the desert of temptation last Sunday to the mountain of Transfiguration today. Our leader in this journey is no other than the Son of God who wants to be sure that before He leaves us to return to the Father, we would have experienced with Him the two opposing spiritual worlds: that of darkness where the devil dictates, and the spiritual world of light where we hear the voice of the Father. He entered the desert alone because He has the ultimate power to defeat the cunning of the devil. He goes to the mountain with three of his disciples, who, at the time, were incompetent to face the devil, but received the privilege to behold the glorious face of Christ with whom alone they can confront evil. That desert can be likened to this world ruled by the spirit of the devil, always charming and alluring but utterly destructive. The mountain is the spiritual terrain where God manifests Himself in glory and speaks in a clear voice, urging us to listen to Christ, His beloved Son. We are to choose the voice to which we will listen: Is it the voice that promises to fill outer bellies while leaving inner nakedness, the voice urging us to bow to evil as we run in pursuit of earthly glory, reject reality to pursue illusion, or the voice of the Son of God, conqueror of sin and death, giver of true freedom and peace? Your choice, my choice!
The transfiguration, one of the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary invites us to another phase of Lent, where we turn our gaze on Christ rather than ourselves and the attractions which becloud the Spirit, bury us in the subjectivity of the self, and impede the blossoming of grace in us. So unique is this event in the life of the early Church that it became one of the pervading themes in the spiritual practices of the oriental Christian Churches. We need a vision more than what our western eyes and senses with their pervasive materialistic leanings can provide in order to glimpse the deeper truths of transcendent reality.
When they saw Moses and Elijah, the privileged apostles, Peter, James and John were connected to the totality of salvation history. Jesus’ conversation with them reveals the centrality of the three and why Jesus is the fulfillment of all laws and prophesies. It implies that we have been given assurance about Christ’s redeeming work and are to repose total confidence in Him. In this sense, the virtue of hope is rekindled as we now know that heaven isn’t the “fairytale” that the so-called wise and learned would often scoff.
We see the apostles Peter, James and John caught up in the luminosity of heavenly glory. Immediately, they want to stay and even propose to build houses for Jesus, Moses and Elijah. It doesn’t bother them with what equipment they would build houses on the mountain. Heaven is the land of possibilities; that is why without hammer, wood and digger, they thought they could erect a tent on the mountain. No fourth or fifth tent is necessary for themselves because they are already covered by the glory God. God’s glory is a tent, not built with human hands, but as the apostle said, an everlasting homeland prepared for us in heaven (2 Corinthians 5:1). They also echo the sentiments of the Psalmist who said: “One day within your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere” (Psalm 84:10).
But it wasn’t heaven they saw, rather a vision of the likeness of the glory of heaven. What heaven is in reality, St. Paul tells us, “Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has it entered the heart of anyone, what things God has prepared for those who love him” (I Cor 2:9). Having been prepared to face the scandal of the cross, the apostles learn that death is not an annihilation, rather the portal through which believers must pass to glory. Even now our flesh must be transformed this Lent through penance until its innermost recesses are suffused with the life of the Spirit (G. Motte). Then shall God’s glory be revealed for us who have believed and are awaiting the new life of the resurrection.
Fr. Chukwudi Jo Okonkwo