Transfiguration – the end of the journey

Why is our Lenten trek through the Desert interrupted at this point, just twelve days after we set out? Last week Jesus was in the wilderness, now he is seen transfigured on a mountain top. What’s going on?

On any journey, especially one that is long and arduous, it helps to keep in mind the joys of the destination. Think of travelling across the world to see loved ones and how the thought of seeing them again, perhaps after a long time apart, helps us put up with delays, tiredness, diversions and other unforeseen obstacles.

In this scene where Jesus’s physical human body becomes luminous, radiant with glory, we see our end, our destiny.
God has made us to share the glory of the Godhead. This is what our journey through the whole of life, of which Lent is a symbol, is leading to, if, like Jesus, we listen to the Father’s voice and continue to walk in faith wherever he leads us, one step at a time, through every difficulty and apparently hopeless set-back.

For Jesus, every step he took down that mountain was leading to the Cross and its horrors, and, beyond, to the Resurrection where his body would again, and forever, show forth the divine light which we glimpse in today’s Gospel.
Of course, there would be many ‘ordinary’ steps on the way too: visits to make, people to heal, kind and challenging words to speak, disappointments to get over.

Today is also the Feast of St David (c.500-589), monk, bishop and patron of Wales, whose famous last words to his disciples can help us do the next thing as we travel to journey’s end:

Be joyful, keep the faith, and do the little things you saw me do.

But it was St Leo the Great (c.391-461) who, through his preaching, brought out the links between Lent and the Transfiguration which prompted the inclusion of today’s gospel as that for the Second Sunday in Lent.

You can read his landmark Sermon 51 here:

https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/360351.htm

St Leo and St David, pray for us!

Sr Laurentia