In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Today’s readings speak to us of the glory of the Lord, and of the encounter of the Lord’s disciples with his glory. The Gospel reading from St. Luke is the story of the Transfiguration of Jesus. What I am going to say is a little challenging, so put on your thinking caps. To get us thinking in the right direction, I am going to ask (and suggest and answer to) the question: why does the Lord hide his glory, revealing it only to a few, and in brief glimpses?
St. Luke says that Jesus goes up on a mountain to pray. This is something we see Jesus doing from time to time in the Gospels. Pope Benedict, in his book “Jesus of Nazareth” says that in these discreet Gospel episodes where we see Jesus up on a mountain, usually alone, in prayer – we catch a very brief, dim glimpse of the eternal communion of mutual delight that Jesus shares with the Father, which constitutes the very essence of God himself, the inner life of God, the love that St. John says God IS.
But in the story of the Transfiguration, Jesus does not go up onto a mountain “by himself” (cf. Matt. 14.23), but takes with him Peter, James, and John – the most inner circle of his disciples. And Luke says that “as he was praying, the appearance of his countenance was altered, and his raiment became dazzling white. And behold, two men talked with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was to accomplish at Jerusalem.” (Luke 9.29ff)
Here we have the crux of the Transfiguration story, from which it takes its name: “the appearance of [Jesus’] countenance was altered, and his raiment became dazzling white.” And Moses, the giver of the Law, and Elijah, representative of the prophetic witness of the Old Covenant, appear “in glory” and speak about Jesus’ death on the cross.
What is happening here? Each year, on the last Sunday before the beginning of Lent, the Church sets this text before us. This year we hear the version from St. Luke’s Gospel; last year we heard St. Mark’s version; and next year we will hear St. Matthew’s. What does the Church wish us to see in the Transfiguration on this last Sunday before the season of Lent?
St. Maximus the Confessor – a great teacher of the faith who lived in the 600’s – wrote about the message and meaning of the Transfiguration. He said (in Chapters on Knowledge):
To those who apply themselves with the utmost zeal to the divine Scriptures the Word as Lord appears under two forms: first, a general and public sight not reserved to a small number of which it is said, “He had no form or comeliness that we should look at him”; the second [form under which the Lord appears to those who apply themselves to the divine Scriptures] is more hidden, and accessible to a small number, to those who have already become as Peter, James, and John, the holy apostles before whom the Lord was transfigured in a glory overpowering the senses, in which "he is beautiful in appearance before the sons of men." Of these two forms, the first is fitting for beginners, the second is proportioned to those who have become perfect in knowledge, insofar as this is attainable. The former is the image of the first coming of the Lord to which the letter of the Gospel refers and which purifies by sufferings those who are in the stage of striving. The latter is a prefiguring of the second and glorious coming in which is understood the Spirit. It transfigures the [disciples] by wisdom with a view toward their deification. By this transfiguration of the Word in them, they behold with unveiled faces the Lord's glory.
This is what we are after. And this is the singular purpose of Lent. Our goal, the goal of all our spiritual striving, is the vision of the Lord with unveiled face, in his glory. We must desire this, because this is the experience of eternal blessedness. This is what will be “going on” in heaven: the unclouded perception of “the king in his beauty”. (Isaiah 33.17) And to discover a DESIRE for this in ourselves is to discover the cornerstone of salvation. And so we have to foster this desire in ourselves, and when we find it, even fleetingly, we have to run after it, nourish it, and coax it to grow. And this is the life of Christian devotion, and it is broadly speaking the point of Lent.
The perception of the “king in his beauty” is what the story of the Transfiguration is all about. Yet what is its “content”? What can we say about this vision? We may certainly say that it is the perception of the hidden glory of God – a glory that often – usually – remains hidden from many of Jesus’ own disciples, a glory that seems prone to be caught only in glimpses and for brief moments in this life, even for the greatest saints. But even if it is a glory that remains hidden, we can yet come to know it. For, as St. Paul says, “it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” (2 Cor. 4.6)
So why does God hide his glory? I think it is because of his great mercy toward us, because our nature could not bear the sudden disclosure of the Lord’s glory. We would be undone. We read in the Old Testament today of Moses coming down from Mt. Sinai, where he had encountered the Lord. Exodus says “when Aaron and all the people of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone, and they were afraid to come near him.” (Ex. 34.30) But when Moses was on the mountain, when he asked to see the Lord’s glory, the Lord told him “No,” – “I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you my name `The LORD'; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. But,” he said, “you cannot see my face; for man shall not see me and live.” (Ex. 33.19f) And the Lord hid Moses in the cleft of the rock and made his glory to pass by, and allowed Moses to see him from behind.
So it remains for us. The Lord is with us even now, particularly in the tabernacle, veiled under the species of bread, yet we are separated even from his presence there by veils – literally: there is a veil over the ciborium that holds the consecrated hosts, and a veil that covers the tabernacle itself. The Lord “sits among us silently and secretly. When we approach Him, we know it only by faith; and when He manifests Himself to us, it is without our being able to realize to ourselves that manifestation.” (JH Newman in Sermon 1: Worship, A Preparation for Christ’s Coming)
Yet why? What is it about the Lord’s glory, and its sudden disclosure that means the undoing of worldly nature? Why can even the very pure only bear it, at best, in brief glimpses? Our Archbishop of Canterubry, Rowan Williams, has said “The hidden glory is not simply an arbitrary paradox or simply a consequence of the impossibility of God appearing as God in the created order: it is the outworking in finite form of the eternal self-yielding, self-hiding… of the Son before the Father, the Son who does not will to be 'visible' except as the living act of the Father.” (from Theology in the Face of Jesus) In other words, the disclosure of the Lord’s glory is the disclosure of the mystery of divine love. We can’t bear it because we are wrapped up in the world’s “system” of carefully managed egoism. To be ready to encounter the Lord’s glory we must first be absolutely willing to be “decentered” and dispossessed of self. And that prospect, if we are honest, is a terrifying one. It requires perfect trust.
As the believer begins to be free of self-absorption, s/he begins to see a little of what might be thinkable about a God wholly free of self-interest. Such a God is, on the one hand, free to be present without self-protection or reserve in any place, including the places most remote from 'heaven': he can be in the hell of suffering and abandonment without loss of self, since the divine self is utterly invested in the other; and on the other hand, such a God cannot be conceived as an eternal individual self, but as a life lived eternally in that 'investment' in the other. Thus the believer perceives what I have called the interiority and integrity of God, the resource and solidity of divine life: what is indestructibly solid in God is this life-in-the-other. To see the freedom of God to be in the cross is to see glory, because it is to see how God's utterly non-negotiable presence and action can be real in the physical body of the tortured and dying Jesus.
That is why the Lord’s transfiguration is perennially held before us on the last Sunday before Lent: because we are entering into the preparation that leads to the cross, and through it to Easter morning. If we are to reach Easter morning and its glory, we must understand that it is hidden behind “the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations” (Isaiah 25.7), death itself – that God’s glory is to be found by, with, and in the tortured, dying, and dead Jesus.
As this realization is lived-out in the lives of the faithful, it is inevitably a painful and fearful process, but one nevertheless undergirded by a deep peace that transcends circumstance. At the end of today’s Gospel reading, we have an intimation of that: “a cloud came and overshadowed [the disciples]; and they were afraid as they entered the cloud. And a voice came out of the cloud, saying, ‘This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!’ And when the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone.”
Having come to some knowledge of the glory of the Lord, let us stir up within ourselves a willingness to enter the cloud, trusting in the Lord’s mercy and loving-kindness, and let us attend to the voice of God in the darkness of the cloud bearing witness to his Son. And knowing that the cloud will dissipate and the darkness be turned to light, let us press on with boldness to find Jesus alone.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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