Sharing in the Experience of the Transfiguration

Homily for the Second Sunday of Lent, March 16, 2025. The Gospel of St. Luke 9:28-36. Theme: Sharing in the Experience of the Transfiguration  

The Transfiguration of Jesus was a manifestation of who Christ really was and what his mission as the Messiah was meant to be.  Not only did Peter, James and his brother John catch a glimpse of divinity brilliantly radiating from the Lord, but they also heard the voice of God the Father confirming this divinity, declaring that Jesus was his Chosen Son to Whom they must listen, Whose words they must embrace. The Transfiguration sheds light upon two of the most important doctrines of Christianity: that Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God Who lived among us as a man (which we call the “Incarnation”) and that He is the Messiah-Savior who set us free from sin and death (which we call the “Redemption”).

Standing next to Jesus in this mystical vision were two great figures of the Old Testament: Moses and Elijah. They were not there as silent witnesses or simply ornamental adornments.  They appeared as living spirits who spoke with Jesus about the things they themselves had foretold concerning Him long before He came to earth. Moses stood with Christ on that mountain as the spiritual leader of the Covenant People of the Promise. Elijah was there as the representative of all the prophets of ancient Israel whose messages kept the hope of a Messiah alive in the hearts of an oppressed people. The three of them were discussing the upcoming “exodus” of Christ which means His approaching Passion and Resurrection. 

St. Luke uses the word “exodus” to intentionally connect the miraculous liberation of the Hebrews out of Egypt with the Redemption Jesus would “accomplish in Jerusalem” by His Cross and Resurrection. This is a very important detail of today’s Gospel because the disciples, like most of the Jews of their time, had some very erroneous ideas about the Messiah and His mission of liberation. You see, the prophets of Israel had foretold that the Messiah would be a Great Hero who would bring the Chosen People to glory and happiness.  Most Jews interpreted this to mean that He would be a great political Warrior-King. They expected the Messiah to overcome their Roman oppressors and re-establish in their place the righteous Kingdom of Israel.  They clung to this idea because it was what they wanted. It was what they thought that God ought to do. But in hindsight we see that they had misinterpreted the Word of God as spoken through the prophets. They had developed mistaken ideas about God, liberation and glory.

And like them, I think we all run the risk of developing false ideas about who God is and how he should act in our lives. And I’m sure that we all have our own expectations of what God intervening into our lives should look like.  Our default expectation is that God will grant us all our wishes and make our lives happy and perfect, according to how we ourselves  define “happy and perfect”.  And in doing this we become like those Israelites.  We create an unrealistic god for ourselves, a god fashioned according to our own making, a god of our own imagining and hoping. In other words, we are constructing a “magic genie-in-a-bottle” kind of God, so to speak, and we expect Him to make what we want to happen come about  in our lives.  And when this doesn’t happen according to our preconceived plans, we can easily turn on Him. 

This is very much the same as the Jewish people forming a false idea of the Messiah and then rejecting Him because He was not what they expected Him to be.  Peter, James and John had their erroneous notions shaken up on that mount of the Transfiguration and it’s important that we, too, leave our preconceived ideas and unrealistic expectations behind.  And the best way for us to do this is by heeding the words that God the Father spoke at the Transfiguration when He said about Jesus: “This is my chosen Son, listen to him.” 

The dynamics of the disciples at the Transfiguration can teach us how to “listen to Jesus” through the practice of prayer.  First, like them going away to the mountain, we need to go to a place where we can be alone and undisturbed. We need to get away from our daily routine and from the many distractions that life throws at us, so that we can devote quality time to our relationship with God.   Then, just as they contemplated Christ, we can turn to Him in a story from the Gospels and take our time with it.  We ponder it, we reflect on what Chriost is doing and saying in the story we have chosen to read.  We reflect on it thoughtfully, ruminating over it, thinking about how it can relate to us.  We permit the words and images of the story to penetrate our minds and we ask ourselves what it means for my life.  

In this practice of prayer, we can be like those three apostles looking at the transfigured Jesus and taking it all in.  Like Peter speaking to his transfigured Lord, we can ask Jesus to show us what He wants us to learn from this experience. And then we remain interiorly still and  listen for the voice of the Beloved Son speaking to the ears of our heart.  His words might come to us as an idea or an image that enters into our minds. We can respond back to Jesus sharing with Him our thoughts, feelings and insights into what we have encountered in our prayer. Finally, after our meditation time, we return to our daily duties, treasuring this prayerful experience of Jesus in our hearts, just as Peter, James and John did when they came down off that mountain.  If we practice this type of prayer regularly, we will become more and more aware of the presence of God living within us by grace. We will become more sensitive to the voice of the Lord speaking to us.  We will find that we ourselves are becoming more and more spiritually and interiorly transfigured into the image of Christ, the Chosen Son.