This Is My Beloved Son, With Whom I am Well Pleased; Listen to Him

08-06-2023Weekly ReflectionFr. Manasseh Iorchir, VC

The Transfiguration of Jesus on the mountain is one of the few events where Jesus revealed His Divine glory for the benefit of those who were privileged to behold it. Recall that at His birth, Jesus revealed His glorious Divinity to the whole world through the visit of the Magi who brought Him prophetic gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Again, the Divine Redeemer manifested Himself to His Disciples at the event of His Baptism at the hands of John the Baptist at the River Jordan, where Trinitarian collaboration was visibly manifested to the amazed spectators. The transfiguration of Jesus Christ, the feast we celebrate this weekend, is also a self-manifesting event of our Lord Jesus Christ.

At this point, Jesus was heading towards Jerusalem where He knew His passion and death were waiting. He fully appreciated the scandal that His passion and death would constitute in the hearts of His struggling Apostles. He therefore elected to take with Him His trio of witnesses to catch a glimpse of His Divine reality and to witness the testimony of the law and the prophets to His Messianic Ministry. On the mountain, the Apostles witnessed the Transfiguration of Jesus’ body with His face shining like the sun. They also witnessed Moses (the law giver) and Elijah (the greatest of the Prophets) conversing with Jesus. Finally, the trio witnessed a bright cloud which descended on Jesus and from where a voice was heard proclaiming, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to Him.” The Apostles reacted by falling prostrate in fear, but Jesus asked them to rise and charged them to not tell anyone about what they had seen until the Son of Man had been raised from the dead.

Through the Transfiguration, Jesus not only revealed His glorious Divinity to His Apostles (the Divinity they would fully understand only after the Resurrection, which will necessarily be preceded by the debasement of His human body through His passion and death), but also demonstrated through the testimony of the law and the prophets, as well as through the unmistakable and confirmatory voice of the Father, the Messianic Mission of Christ. Following this experience, Jesus expected the three witnesses to remember when they witnessed His passion that this was happening according to the prearranged plan of God. The initial reaction of Simon Peter to the Transfiguration of Jesus, and the appearance of Moses and Elijah at the scene, was to call for a perpetuation of the event at the mountain. The awed Apostle forgot that the Messiah’s Ministry was not to be limited to the mountain of the Transfiguration, but to extend “to the ends of the earth.” Like Simon Peter, we are often tempted to become “Transfiguration disciples” who love the experience of Christ’s peace so much that we limit it to places and events of Divine encounter. The peace of Christ is not to be confined to our places and moments of worship. The Christian, having experienced Jesus in the Eucharist, in the breaking open of the Word, in prayer, in Communion, in meditation, etc., must take Christ to the valleys, to the workplace, to the neighborhood, to the community, to politics and to everywhere Christ is needed. Christ is not a commodity that should be felt and hoarded; He is life that is received and shared.

May we come to full knowledge of Christ, not only through the testimony of the Law and Prophets but also through our personal experience of Him, and may we share joyfully this experience with others.

Please be kind and may God bless you.

Fr. Manasseh