One author has comment on our modern outlook noting, we have too much to live with, too little to live for. For many people the dream we live for is to gather as many toys as possible so that we can entertain ourselves and live in comfort. In the pursuit of this dream, many people give themselves permission to take any road they choose, and nothing has value unless it leads to our comfort in this life.
The very idea of suffering is an affront to this dream. We cry out “Why me? God if you really love me, you would not permit me to suffer like this.”
Yet, we are dreaming in color. The cold hard truth is that eventually we all suffer. Suffering in this life is unavoidable. The most foundational lesson in Jesus’ discipleship is not to avoid suffering but to find meaning in our suffering and to join our sufferings to Christ.
It is important to realize that Jesus’ central mission on earth was to suffer, and we are his disciples. Disciples imitate their masters. Notice St. Paul’s words about discipleship in our second reading. “Join with others in being imitators of me, brothers and sisters, and observe those who thus conduct themselves according to the model you have in us” (Philippians 3:17). As the Apostle Paul says elsewhere, “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1).
Disciples seek to become, in every little way, like the master. We must seek to imitate Jesus. In the previous chapter Jesus tells his disciples, “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23).
In this Sunday’s Gospel, we accompany Jesus and his inner circle of apostles on a final lesson of discipleship leading up to Jesus ultimate act of sacrifice. Immediately after the transfiguration, St. Luke tells us Jesus “set his face to go to Jerusalem” where he would suffer and die on the cross.
The transfiguration marks the end of Jesus earthly ministry in Galilee, and the transition to the road to his passion. At this all-important and difficult moment, the first thing Jesus models is prayer.
I do not know about you, but I often give in to grumbling about my sufferings. Even in little things. I might complain I have a sore throat; that my knees hurt, that I had a bad sleep last night, or that a person treated me unjustly. My first thought is not to follow my master and “go up on a mountain to pray” (9:28).
Luke tells us that as Jesus was praying, he became transfigured, “his face changed in appearance and his clothing became dazzling white” (9:29). Luke uses some unusual words, which mean that Jesus’ clothing became bright gleaming white and began to flash or gleam like lightning, or to become radiant.
Even as modern reader, this is amazing, but we may not catch the significance of all the details for a Jewish reader in Jesus’ day. There is a significant parallel between Jesus experiences here at the transfiguration, and Moses, for someone familiar with the Book of Exodus.
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| The 'horns' of Moses depict this radiance. |
Moses and Elijah appear to Jesus and “spoke of his exodus or departure from this life.”
Light and cloud, lightning and smoke are motifs from Exodus signifying the presence of God. When the people of Israel journeyed in the desert they were accompanied by a column of fire during the night, and by a column of cloud during the day (Exodus 13:21–22). Peter, John, and James saw Jesus’ glory, and a cloud came and overshadowed them. These are the same signs of God’s presence we see in Exodus where the “the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle” (Exodus 40:34).
Near the end of his life in Deuteronomy, Moses promises a prophet like him would arise, “A prophet like me will the LORD, your God, raise up for you from among your own kindred; that is the one to whom you shall listen.” (Deuteronomy 18:15).
Yet, Jesus is more than a second Moses. In the words of the Archangel Gabriel at the beginning of the Gospel, Jesus is “the Son of the Most High” (Luke 1:32), and a few verses later the “the Son of God” (Luke 1:34). The “voice from heaven” at Jesus Baptism declares, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased” (Lk 3:22). In our Gospel today, the voice from the cloud declares, “This is my chosen Son; listen to him.”
Luke emphasizes the uniqueness of Jesus as the chosen Son and the words “listen to him” likely echo Moses’ promise of a prophet like him, “the one to whom you shall listen.” (Deuteronomy 18:15).
If we keep in mind both the uniqueness of Jesus as God’s Son, and his role as a rabbi or master leading disciples, then we might ask; “What is Jesus modelling for us through this event?” Surely, we are not to believe that each one of use will experience a mountain top transfiguration in imitation of Jesus.
Here is it interesting to see what later disciples of Jesus understood by this event. In Second Corinthians, St. Paul compares the brightness of Moses face with Jesus. The brightness of Moses face was fading and temporary. In the new dispensation of righteousness or the age of the Spirit, Christ has taken the veil away and given us a permanent and greater splendor (2 Corinthians 3). In Christ Jesus, the Spirit enters each one of us and transforms us from within.
St. Paul notes,
“All of us, gazing with unveiled face on the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as from the Lord who is the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18).For each one of us the goal of our prayer should be intimacy with God, and by experiencing his love within us to be progressively (from glory to glory) transformed into his, image by the Spirit.
As St. Paul notes, “He will change our lowly body to conform with his glorified body by the power that enables him also to bring all things into subjection to himself” (Philippians 3:21). In speaking of our resurrected heavenly bodies, St. Paul observes the differences between us, “The brightness of the sun is one kind, the brightness of the moon another, and the brightness of the stars another. For star differs from star in brightness” (1 Corinthians 15:41). As Jesus notes, “Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father” (Matthew 13:43).
While the church teaches that the faithful will all share in this quality of glory, it will not be in the same degree. We will not be equal or identical in heaven, but some will shine brighter than others because of differing degree of holiness. We are equal in attaining eternal life, but not with the same reward. (St. Augustine, Sermon 37.6, St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 12.6, DS 1305, Council of Trent: Decree on the Sacraments, Can. 31, DS 1581).
Jesus gives us this example of prayer in the face of profound suffering to remind us that our vision must look beyond the horizon of this life. We must draw close to him and be filled with the Spirit. Like him, the Spirit cries out in our hearts, “Abba Father” and reminds us that we are his children, his chosen ones. We must not confuse this human experience of glory with the uniqueness of Jesus as the very Son of God, but we share in this inheritance, we are adopted heirs to this same family. So then, in the quietness of our prayers, let us gaze with unveiled faces on the glory of his Son and so be transformed from within by his love from glory to glory.
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