3/5/2023 - 2nd Sunday of Lent

God invites Us to climb the Mountain
Many of us have our “special place” where we encounter our God and experience our intimate time. The blue therapy of spending time near rivers or the ocean is gaining popularity. In the Bible, God seems to have a preference for the mountain to give his special followers an experience of His divinity. So we read about Moses and Elijah in the Old Testament and today in the Gospels we hear the story of Peter, James and John having a mountain top experience.

The story of the Transfiguration of Christ has puzzled the minds of Christians for centuries.  It is the clearest New Testament understanding of mystical experience, the experience of spiritual things within the ordinary and the belief that the spiritual reality is greater and more beautiful than any ordinary experience.  This is the central mystery of Christ’s life. Let us reflect on this event both from the point of Biblical revelation and our human spiritual quest for the divine.

The purpose of the Transfiguration was to encourage and strengthen the apostles who were depressed by their Master’s prediction of His own Passion and Death. The disciples followed Jesus for three years and now they expected Him to declare the Messianic kingdom of triumph over the Romans. But Christ made it clear to them that He would be killed and there will not be a political establishment. His kingdom will be one that lives in the hearts and minds of people who will accept His message and enter into a covenantal relationship with the Father in heaven. It was a belief among the people of Israel that God would speak again from the cloud when the Messiah would come. This longing of Israel is being fulfilled at the Transfiguration. Peter, James and John representing Israel is given the sign that Jesus is the fulfilment of the Old Testament prophesies as Moses and Elijah are conversing with him.

From the perspective of our spiritual quest, Lent is a beautiful season to experience God. The invitation to go up the mountain is also an invitation to lay down the baggage that weighs us down in life. Everyone who physically climbs a mountain will know that this experience brings about an awareness of openness to God as there are no distractions like in the ‘market place of life’. On the top of the mountain, the disciples are given two ways to build up their faltering hopes: vision and direction. The transfiguration of Jesus gives them a glimpse of the uncreated light. The spectacle is too much for their mortal senses and they fall down in fear. The veiled appearance of God to us especially in the Eucharist is, in a way, God miraculously adjusting to our limited human condition so that we can be intimate with Him without fear.

The voice of Father tells the disciples to ‘listen’ to the beloved Son. So many voices speak to us every day. The only voice that really cares our total wellbeing is that of Jesus. We need to create time to reflect on God’s Word about loving our enemies and being peacemakers, about proclaiming liberty to captives and letting the oppressed go free, about being the salt of the earth and the light of the world, about being perfect just as our heavenly Father is perfect. Listening always transforms the listener. This engaged listening is what is asked of us.

Soon after this ‘God-encounter’ Peter and James would fail to live up to their calling as disciples. Peter denied Jesus in the courtyard of the high priest and James, like the rest of the disciples, abandoned Jesus. Only John was steadfast in his following of Jesus and was not scandalized by the passion and death of Jesus. Later all three of them, Peter, James and John became great witnesses to Jesus. Peter became the first Pope and bishop of Rome. James was executed in Jerusalem by King Herod for witnessing to Jesus (Acts 12:2) and John authored the Fourth Gospel, the Gospel of John. So, the three disciples witnessed to Jesus although two of them were temporarily unfaithful during the Passion of Jesus. Our daily life of Christian witness requires seeing and listening to Christ in a faith filled experience of God. We need to invest more time in listening to the Beloved Son of the Father and experience Him more intimately at every ‘Eucharistic Transfiguration’. Fr Tom Kunnel, C.O