The Second Sunday of Lent presents the pivotal experience of the Transfiguration for our prayerful reflection. Serving as a midpoint in the Gospels, this sacred moment on Mount Tabor is an extraordinary revelation of the identity and glory of Jesus Christ as the Beloved Son of the Father.
Peter, James, and John view the Lord in His resurrected, luminous mystery, as a foreshadowing of the Heavenly glory to come.
The Church points us towards the Transfiguration in the early part of Lent to keep our hearts and attention focused on the victory of Easter as a spiritual motivation, both for our present penance during these 40 days and the good things of eternity to come.
In three pivotal Scriptural moments, the Father audibly speaks from Heaven, proclaiming Jesus as His Beloved Son at Christ’s Baptism in the Jordan (Mark 1:11), and on Mount Tabor at His Transfiguration (Mark 9:7), and then, immediately before His Passion and death, Jesus calls out in front of a crowd, “Father, glorify your name,” and the Father responds, “I have glorified it and will glorify it again” (John 12:28).
These citations contextualize God the Father’s ongoing affirmation of Jesus as His Son, illustrating the Transfiguration experience as a heavenly affirmation of Christ’s identity, divinity, power, and victory over sin and death.
Children of the Father
A significant aspect of our Christian faith is the conviction that, in Jesus’ death and resurrection, we receive adoption as beloved sons and daughters of the Father, that who Jesus is by nature, i.e., the Son, through the grace of Baptism.
This divine filiation finds mention all over the Scriptures, the writings of the early Church, the Catechism, and the Missal. Ephesians 1:5, Galatians 3:26 and 4:5-7, 1 John 3:2, and Romans 8:14-19 come to mind as worthy of reflection.
God shows His love for us most profoundly by making us His children in Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit, brothers and sisters to Jesus, initiated into a living relationship with the Blessed Trinity.
This divine and familial communion of love both defines the nature of the Church and our eternal salvation.
Our deepest identity is that we are beloved children of the Father. Our mission is to live out the Gospel of our salvation through union and imitation of Jesus. Our destiny is eternal life, joined with the Communion of Saints in perpetual adoration and praise of the Most Blessed Trinity.
Simply put, what the Father says of Christ at the Transfiguration, He now says of us. The glory of Jesus on Mount Tabor is now our glory, already present in grace and faith, hidden in many ways, but a glory to be fully revealed in Heaven.
The spiritual efficacy of the saints flows from their self-knowledge as children of the Father and most powerfully expresses itself in their love of God and neighbor.
Knowing the love of the Father
In reading the lives of my favorite saints, I have always felt this palpable explosion of joy in their hearts, as they came to know in an absolute way the personal love of the Father for them as His beloved. This overwhelming experience demanded an outlet of charity — the service of others.
Think of Francis of Assisi kissing the lepers, Mother Teresa picking up the outcast from the gutter, Maximilian Kolbe giving away his food ration and his life at Auschwitz, or John Vianney hearing confessions for sixteen hours a day.
Almsgiving is one of the traditional Lenten practices Catholics embrace in this holy season. When we make a gift of ourselves to others, when we pour out our hearts and energy, offering our time and treasure to truly love and help our brothers and sisters, especially the poor and suffering, God shines His radiance on us.
The glory of the Transfiguration flashes out to light up the heart and to instill hope in someone who feels lost and alone.
No wonder the saints’ depictions in iconography and art always contain a halo encircling their heads!
The luminous love of God transfigured them and so they shone with the very light of God.
Before Mother Teresa was famous, Malcolm Muggeridge, a British journalist, had heard of this Nun in Calcutta who was doing wondrous work with the poor. He traveled to India in the 1960s with a film crew, seeking to make a movie about her work.
When he set up the cameras in Mother’s Home for the Dying, he realized that it was way too dark to capture anything on film, but he went ahead regardless, rolling the cameras as Mother Teresa and her Sisters went about their daily work, bathing, feeding, and comforting the dying.
Assuming this particular footage would never turn out, Muggeridge developed it anyway, and was absolutely astonished by what he saw.
The images taken in the Home for the Dying were filled with a radiant, supernatural light which was certainly not present at the time!
Through such experiences, Muggeridge eventually converted to Catholicism, and helped Mother Teresa in her work.