Today we celebrate the Feast of the Transfiguration, which has become one of my favorite feasts of the year, but it is one that most Catholics don’t often experience at Mass unless it falls on a Sunday, as it does this year. Every mystery of Christ’s life means something for us. Everything that happened to Him, everything His Father did for Him and in Him once He took on our flesh has ramifications for all of humanity, for each one of us. At His Nativity, He sanctified Humanity, at His Passion, Death, and Resurrection, He redeemed and restored Humanity, and at the Transfiguration, He assures Humanity of the promise of future glory, but it is a glory that must be preceded by the Cross. It was this way for Him, it must be this way for us. It is a beautiful feast with marvelous implications for us. Here is what the Catechism teaches about this feast:
“From the day Peter confessed that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, the Master ‘began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things. . . and be killed, and on the third day be raised." Peter scorns this prediction, nor do the others understand it any better than he…For a moment Jesus discloses his divine glory, confirming Peter's confession [‘You are the Christ!’]. He also reveals that he will have to go by the way of the cross at Jerusalem in order to ‘enter into his glory’…Christ's Passion is the will of the Father: The Son acts as God's servant:
You were transfigured on the mountain, and your disciples, as much as they were capable of it, beheld your glory, O Christ our God, so that when they should see you crucified, they would understand that your Passion was voluntary, and proclaim to the world that you truly are the splendor of the Father.
On the threshold of the public life: the baptism; on the threshold of the Passover: The Transfiguration. Jesus' baptism proclaimed ‘the mystery of the first regeneration’, namely, our Baptism; the Transfiguration ‘is the sacrament of the second regeneration’: our own Resurrection. From now on we share in the Lord's Resurrection through the Spirit who acts in the sacraments of the Body of Christ. The Transfiguration gives us a foretaste of Christ's glorious coming, when he ‘will change our lowly body to be like his glorious body.’ But it also recalls that it is through many persecutions that we must enter the kingdom of God’:
Peter did not yet understand this when he wanted to remain with Christ on the mountain. It has been reserved for you, Peter, but for after death. For now, Jesus says: ‘Go down to toil on earth, to serve on earth, to be scorned and crucified on earth. Life goes down to be killed; Bread goes down to suffer hunger; the Way goes down to be exhausted on his journey; the Spring goes down to suffer thirst; and you refuse to suffer?’” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 554-556).
This feast reminds us that we are called to glory, but we arrive at that destiny by way of suffering; Christ’s cross proceeded His glory, and our own crosses are milestones along the path that leads to our glory as well. This feast stands before us always as a sign of hope and the assurance of our reward, provided that we journey this life with Christ, both in moments of “mountaintop glory” and “valley sorrow”, and for those who hold fast to Christ, the victory is theirs. In everything, we should beg the grace to remain faithful, to rise above the fray of this world’s concerns and anxieties, and surrender to God’s will for us. May Our Lord’s manifestation in radiant glory embolden our hearts for the task and mission of discipleship, so that as He gave His life for our salvation, we might give our lives entirely to Him in return, so He may transfigure us in that same radiant glory. May God bless you in the week ahead and may Mother Mary lead you more deeply into the Sacred and Merciful Heart of Jesus. I remain,
Affectionately Yours in Christ,
Fr. Hess
