Reflection - Second Sunday of Lent

Titian, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

This incident is one of the most dramatic episodes in the New Testament, a favourite passage of scripture for many believers. The voice of the Father proclaiming, ‘This is my Son, listen to him'.

In Lent, we leap over eight chapters of Mark’s gospel to arrive at the Transfiguration. It is worth reminding ourselves that prior to the Transfiguration, Jesus and Peter had a serious falling out when Jesus predicted his suffering and death, followed by his resurrection. Peter took him aside and rebuked him. Jesus turned on Peter and said he was ‘a Satan’, a tempter. The mood is strong, the atmosphere is tense because we know about the rejection of Jesus by his own people in Nazareth as well as the killing of John the Baptist by King Herod. Everything is crumbling to dust, it would seem. To what have Peter and the other disciples signed up? As an audience of believers, we know what is going to happen in the future but Peter does not.

Jesus takes Peter and the brothers, James and John up the mountain where he is transfigured, his clothes become dazzlingly white. He is talking with two of the greatest figures in the Hebrew Bible, Moses and Elijah.

Peter, James and John are overwhelmed with fear, what they are witnessing is outside their experience and they know it. A cloud, a mist comes down on the mountain and a voice comes out of the mist. This is a common phenomenon which the people associated with God: the mountain, the mist hiding God’s divinity, the disorientation for people on a mountain when mist suddenly comes down disorientation with God.

But the voice says, "This is my Son the Beloved, listen to him”. Unlike at the baptism of Jesus, the voice does not address Jesus but those others listening - Peter James and John. Jesus warns them to say nothing about this incident until he has risen from the dead. They have no idea what he is talking about. We are often confused about what God is doing in our lives.

The disciples have been initiated into the mission; they have already had the experience of imitating what Jesus has done and is doing: preaching repentance, healing the sick, casting out demons. They have witnessed and been involved in five thousand people being feed by Jesus. These three have been drawn further into the mystery of who Jesus is and the extraordinary events that happen around him.

Our life in Christ, that is, through baptism, is often misunderstood. Mark is informing his battling community that following Jesus has consequences, what happened to him will happen to us. Are we ready for it?

But another way to look at our lives is this: every person has troubles and battles, some a lot more than others, like poor people who really struggle to survive at a basic level of life. The late Cardinal Suenens said that Jesus did not come to explain suffering, nor to take it away, but to fill it with his presence.

Columban Fr Gary Walker is currently living at the Columban house in Sandgate, Brisbane.