Sunday, 2nd Sunday of Lent (A)
Mt 17,1-9
Last Sunday, glory was presented as a temptation. Today, it is presented as the most divine thing in the world. From reason, it is a contradiction, but in the transcendent order, a formulation can be true and the contrary also.
Once they discovered in the Paschal experience what Jesus was, they tried to communicate that experience that had given them Life, adorning it with images taken from the OT. Thus, they disguised the blindness that had prevented them from discovering who Jesus was.
We cannot think of a staging by Jesus; we must understand that it is not a chronicle of an event. It is a theophany, constructed with the elements and structure of the many manifestations of God related in the OT. I believe it is a paschal narrative, traced back to his life, after having been elaborated, to give it greater force.
The narrative is woven with elements of the theophanies of the OT. Nothing in it is original; not even the voice adds something new, as it repeats exactly what it said at the baptism. It wants to express the divine presence in Jesus, with a language that everyone could understand. What is important is what it wants to communicate, not the elements it uses to communicate it.
Until the Paschal experience, no one discovered what Jesus was. Everything that was seen after his death was already present in him when they walked the roads of Palestine. If one goes back to his earthly life, it is to show that Jesus was always a divine being.
Jesus constantly lived transfigured, but did not manifest externally with spectacular symptoms. His humanity and his divinity were expressed whenever he approached a man to help him to be himself. The only light that transforms Jesus is that of love, and only when he manifests that love does he illuminate. God is transparent in the human.
**He taken three with him:** Inner experience is always personal, not collective, hence he presents them with their proper names. Moses also ascended Mount Sinai accompanied by Aaron. **The mountain:** It is the realm of the divine. If God is in ‘heaven’, the mountain will be the best place for him to manifest. In the Bible, the high mountain is the place where God always is.
Radiant Face: the glory of God is communicated to those who are near Him. To Moses, as he came down from the mountain, they had to cover his face because it hurt their eyes. Light: has always been a symbol of the presence of God. The cloud: Symbol of God’s protection. It accompanied the Israelites through the desert, protecting them by day and illuminating them at night.
Moses and Elijah: The Law and the Prophets in dialogue with Jesus. The Gospel is a continuation of the OT, but surpassing it. The voice: the word has always been the expression of God’s will. Listen to it! It is the key to the story. Only to him, not even to Moses and Elijah. Fear. In the presence of the divine, man felt panic, even fear of dying.
Jesus did not have to transfigure because he was never disfigured. He was always what he was. We, who are disfigured, must be configured according to Jesus and, therefore, be transformed. The figure will change when the essential appears in me.
We all have that same overflowing energy, but, normally, we are disfigured because we are on the surface, focused and attached to what we are not. It would suffice to configure ourselves according to our true being for that harmony to appear. It’s not about achieving anything but simply being what we are.
Transfiguration tells us who Jesus really was and what we are. Get out of your ego and enter the paths of the Spirit! Go inside yourself and you will find your center. You don’t have to look for anything different from yourself. Ask God to free you from every god.
Brother Marcos
English version translated with AI