Jesus took Peter, James, and John
and led them up a high mountain apart by themselves.
And he was transfigured before them,
and his clothes became dazzling white,
such as no fuller on earth could bleach them.
Then Elijah appeared to them along with Moses,
and they were conversing with Jesus.
Then Peter said to Jesus in reply,
“Rabbi, it is good that we are here!
Let us make three tents:
one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”
He hardly knew what to say, they were so terrified.
Then a cloud came, casting a shadow over them;
from the cloud came a voice,
“This is my beloved Son. Listen to him.”
Suddenly, looking around, they no longer saw anyone
but Jesus alone with them.
As they were coming down from the mountain,
he charged them not to relate what they had seen to anyone,
except when the Son of Man had risen from the dead.
So they kept the matter to themselves,
questioning what rising from the dead meant.
Mark 9: 2-10
A striking feature of the Gospels in how faithfully the inspired authors set down what Christ said and did, whether they understood it or not. The bewilderment of the Apostles to the Transfiguration I fully share in. For a moment Christ dropped the flesh he was veiled in and stood revealed as the great I Am, the Second Person of the Trinity, and Peter, James and John reacted with sheer terror. Our intellects, made dark here below by sin, cannot grasp such a thing, so Christ was perceived as a blinding white light. No passage in the Gospels better illustrates the infinite gulf between Man and the God who made us.
Yet we are to become like Him if we win our battle against our sins, and grasp tight the lifeline of His grace. One day, in the Beatific Vision, we will see God face to face, not as blinding light but as love incarnate. However, to accomplish this we must be transfigured, shedding ourselves of our sins, our cowardice, our arrogance, our folly and the hardness of our hearts, making our souls as he made them, pure and undefiled. In Purgatory the transfiguration is accomplished for those of us who die in a state of grace and are not ready for Heaven.
Dante described Purgatory as a place of joyous suffering where the penances match the sins, and where sinful Man is prepared for the Eternal Joy of Heaven. May God grant to all of us the determination to begin our path of transfiguration today and not tomorrow, and to follow that path until we reach the mansion that God has prepared for us in the Kingdom of Love Eternal.
Thank you, Don! Great commentary on an awesome feast. Wishing you a blessed day!
Cathy plus 1.
“No passage in the Gospels better illustrates the infinite gulf between Man and the God who made us.”
So true.
It’s pure amazement that we have a God so good, so loving and so tender as our God. Love.
Love incarnate.
How Great thou Art.
To me Mt. Sinai and the Mount of the Transfiguration are like bookends. When Moses came down from Mt. Sinai his face shone, in a fashion similar to the way Christ shone in the Transfiguration. Moses had no control over his shining, but Christ, as Son of God, was able to control His shining.
‘It almost seems as if we have two kinds of churches. One the church of evangelization. The other the church of development. One the church of individual sanctification, and the other that of social action. One the emphasis on contemplation, and the other on political directives. And there is a division throughout the entire Western world as regard to these two churches. Is the division justified?
Well, let us go to the Mount of Transfiguration for the answer. … He takes with Him Peter, James, and John to this mount. When they arrived, Our Blessed Lord now becomes transfigured. … He receives the renewal of His commission to redeem the world from His heavenly Father. Peter, James, and John are awed by this. Peter, in fact, is so struck by it that he says, “Lord, it is wonderful to be here. Let us build three tabernacles. One for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” … And scripture says, “He knew not what he said.”
Now remember, here is the Church. Here are three members of the apostolic body. … This represents one Church. This represents those who would like everything to be rather calm, to enjoy the pieties and niceties of religion, to stand in the glare of the divine beauty, and to be a sharer in the vision and understanding of the Old Testament. And also to be a part of the divine commission to redeem the world, even though it meant the death of the Savior. This is one aspect of the Church. It is apt to be the older aspect of the Church. It is content with the vision. But our Blessed Lord said, “Let us go down the hill.” He was reminding them that there’s no such thing as capturing that transient glory. “You’ll have to go down this hill and you will find something else. Then you’ll climb another hill which will be Cavalry, and then you will come to the perfect glory. But not now.”
So, he takes them down the Mount of The Transfiguration. Remember that great artistic work of Raphael, where the two scenes are both viewed together? The mountain scene with Christ in His glory and the three disciples, and then at the bottom when the Lord comes down. There is part of the Church. Nine apostles – nine bishops. They’re dealing with a social problem. Here is a distraught father with a boy who has mental (problems), but he is the symbol of any social problem. And the symbol of any father’s worry. And the father goes to the Church and says to the Church: “Will you help this boy? This is not a religious problem that I have. It belongs in the social order. Heal him.”
And when Our Lord comes down and finds the other part of His Church, the father comes to our Lord and says: “They could not drive the devil out of my son. Will you drive him out?” And our Blessed Lord said to them, “How long must I suffer you?” This is the church of development. This is the church of social action. This is the church of economic and political order. This is the church of secularity. This is the church of involvement. As the other church was the church of ecstasy, apartness, individual sanctification, joy, happiness, peace. When they said, “Why can we not drive him out?” the Lord almost became intolerant of them. He said, “O ye of little faith! You have not faith! You are trying to build up a new world. That kind is driven out only by prayer and fasting.”
Which church was right? Neither. And that’s the modern world. Divide it as you please. Say the church on the mountain represents the old. Say the church in the valley represents the young. It does not matter which. Both of them are ineffective. One sleeping, misinterpreting the Passion of Christ, trying to translate an emotion into a religion. … The others were dealing with the hard facts of life. And this is our divorce. Neither one was right. So if we are to build up a Church for this new age, we will have to begin by putting the two together, by returning to the very fundamental doctrine that the World became flesh: first the spiritual, then the action.’
– From a talk by Fulton Sheen (starting at around 2:50):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4O3pQB6_lMY
Raphael’s The Transfiguration
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfiguration_(Raphael)
QUOTERMEISTER Your comment is talking about Mary and Martha. Mary representing the contemplative, and Martha the active. You do need both. Christ was very active, but He often withdrew to engage in prayer. You need a full spiritual gas tank to power an active ministry. You can’t give what you don’t have. The Missionaries of Charity founded by Saint Teresa of Calcutta has both contemplative and active branches. Saint Teresa of Calcutta emphasized the importance of prayer in her order’s mission. IIRC she also emphasized that her order was primarily religious. I’ve heard the contemplative orders described as the spiritual power source for the Church.
@GregB: Sheen mentions all that in the 28-minute talk in that YouTube link.