Transfiguration is anticipated Easter glory and shows that we have to suffer if we want to rise, and, vice versa, that there is no Good Friday without Easter Sunday (gospel). Christ will transfigure our bodies into copies of his glorious body (second reading). For this we have God’s word, as God made a covenant with Abraham as guarantee for his promise to make him the father of many nations (first reading).
First Reading: Genesis 15:5-12.17-18
God had called Abraham out of Ur to go to Canaan to make of him the father of many nations as we learn in the Yahwistic Source (J) in Gen 12:1-9. Abraham followed God's call and ever since has become the father of all believers. Abraham believed and this was credited to him as justice (Rom 4:22). But God's promise was slow in coming, and Abraham was tempted several times to give up and to doubt God's promise. It took many years till Abraham got a child. But the patriarch held on to God's word when he had to go to Egypt during the time of famine in Canaan (Gen 12:10-20) and when four Eastern kings took along Abraham's nephew Lot and his possessions and the patriarch had to fight them (Gen 14:1-24).
God usually sealed solemn promises with a covenant. That he also did with Abraham. This we learn in today's first reading. According to the Elohistic Source (E) God took Abraham outside one good evening when the stars were out and told him: "Look up to the sky and count the stars, if you can; just so shall your descendants be.” An impressive picture: Nobody can count the stars in a clear night. There are just too many. Abraham would get innumerable grandchildren. And so God's promise in Ur (Gen 12) had been confirmed. “Abraham put his faith in the Lord, who credited it to him as an act of righteousness" (Gen 15:6).
The Yahwistic Source (J) pictures that same covenant differently (Gen 15:7-12. 17-18) as we go on reading in today’s first reading. The patriarch is ordered to bring a three-year old heifer, a three-year old she goat, a three-year old-ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon. The bigger animals Abraham splits in half and places the one on the right and the other on the other side. Of the two small animals he places the one on the right the other on the left side. Then God in the form of a blazing fire passes between the halves of the animals. Everybody who doubts God's promise will be consumed as if by fire. With this solemn theophany the covenant is fully established.
Second Reading: Philippians3:17-4:1
The connection of the second reading with the gospel is more obvious than the one of the first reading: As Christ was transfigured so we will be transfigured, not here on earth though, but in heaven.
And thus we shall not strive for the things of earth but for the things of heaven. Who of us would dare say: "Be imitators of me (Phil 3:17)! But Paul could dare doing so since he really imitated Christ. He lived as if he did not possess the things of this earth. He could live in abundance (4:12), but also know how to go around hungry (4:12). In short, he was not attached to material things. Thus, he could say: “We have our real citizenship in heaven. It is from there that we expect the coming of our savior Jesus Christ" (3:20). At the resurrection Christ will "give a new form to this body of ours and remake it according to his own glorified body" (3:21). Paul can only admonish his beloved Philippians to continue (4:1).
But there is of course always the possibility that we live as if the earth would be the goal and the end of our life. And this apparently was true with some Judaizers in the community of the apostle. They lived as enemies of Christ, making their bellies their God, eating and drinking and enjoying themselves as if there were no life hereafter. Paul can only notice such behavior with tears.
Reading of the Good News: Luke 9:28-36
In all three years the gospel of the second Sunday in Lent speaks about the transfiguration of Christ. Each year the version of a different Synoptic gospel is taken. This year (C) from St. Luke. All three Synoptic gospels agree on the basic elements: Jesus going up the mountain with the inner three; his luminous transfiguration; the appearance of Moses (first in Luke) and Elijah; the words of the confused Peter; the theophany in the cloud; the words addressed to the disciples to listen to Jesus, “Jesus only"; the silence imposed on the disciples.
Proper to Luke are the following features:
- The transfiguration takes place on the eighth day, i.e. on the first day and thus on Sunday, which prefigures Easter (in Mk and Mt it is on the sixth day).
- The sequence of the three apostles is Peter, John and James (in Mt and Mk, John comes third).
- Christ prays, and the transfiguration seems to be the result of it.
- Luke says: “Christ's face was altered (changed in appearance)”. Lk avoids the term metemorphethe of Mk 9:2 which might be misunderstood by his Gentile readers in the sense of the metamorphosis of a pagan deity.
- Moses and Elijah speak to Christ about his exodus (departure), which means his death, in Jerusalem.
- The three disciples have fear when they enter the cloud. They sense something of God’s presence.
- The three disciples fall asleep during the conversation. They will later fall asleep during Christ's prayer in the garden of Gethsemani.
HOMILY
NO EASTER WITHOUT SUFFERING-
NO SUFFERING WITHOUT EASTER
1. An old saying has it: "we all want to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.” Most people, including the apostles, had the idea of a glorious Messiah. The idea of suffering was far from their mind. Jesus, however, clearly foretold them, at least three times (Mk 8:31-33; 9:30-32; 10:32-34) that he would have to suffer. But Peter could only violently object to such an idea (Mk 8:32). Even after Easter the disciples did not understand why Christ had to suffer and Jesus could only tell the two disciples of Emmaus: "Did not the Messiah have to undergo all this (suffering) so as to enter his glory" (Lk 24:26)? This "have to" (In Greek: del = must) is a divine must: the Father willed it so and wills it for us.
2. That Christ had to suffer and thus redeem us and for himself enter into Easter glory, he himself had to learn to accept, suffering in obedience and love. "Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered" (Heb 5:8), the Letter to the Hebrews tells us. It would seem that already at the baptism in the Jordan Christ was meditating on the fourth Servant of Yahweh Song of Isaiah (Is 52:13-53:12) and the other Servant of Yahweh Songs as well. Jesus is pais theou, servant of God, (ebed Yahweh) who goes the way of a slave, all way till he dies as a slave on the cross and atones for our sins. But because of this he will also become the Son of God, the Son of God in power as St. Paul puts it in .Rom 1:4. Thus the Greek pais comprises the two extremes: slave and son. Although the voice from heaven at the Jordan says: "You are my beloved son (hyjos); on you my favor rests" (Mk 1:11 par), it is clear that this refers to the first Servant of Yahweh song in Is 42:1: “Here is my servant (ebed in Hebrew; pais in Greek), my chosen one in whom my soul delights."
3. This Servant (pais) is full of the Holy Spirit (Is 42:1), he will preach the good news to the poor (Is 61:3), will be a light to the Gentiles (Is 42:6; 50:10; 53:11). But most of all, he will suffer for the many (Is 53:12.3.4.7.8), suffer vicariously (Is 53:10).
Ever since his baptism at the Jordan Christ saw himself as this Servant and ever since the confession of Peter at Caesarea (Mk 8:27-30) did Christ preach to his apostles about this divine must of his suffering. The apostles were only shocked and did not understand this word (Lk 18:34). To remove this scandal and to make them understand Christ took his three favorite apostles Peter, John, and James and was transfigured before their eyes, to show them: "Do not be scandalized if I say that I must suffer. Suffering and resurrection are two sides of the same coin and belong inseparably together. But the first step, in which I and you are still now, is suffering."
4. Luke tells us that Christ prayed (Lk 9:29). May we assume that he, accepting God the Father’s will as he later on did in garden of Gethsemani, tried to get the strength to say "yes" by praying? We may assume that his prayer centered all around the need of his suffering because Moses and Elijah appeared to him and talked about his exodus = departure (Lk 9:31) in Jerusalem, i.e. about his death on the cross. That death would not be a destruction (thanatos), a real death, but only departure from the earthly existence to the heavenly existence, as we pray in the preface of the dead: "Life is changed, not ended."
5. Moses and Elijah appeared to Christ because they were the representatives of the Old Testament, of the Law and the Prophets, but also because both were prophets. And as suffering was the lot of practically all the prophets, so it was in particular the lot of Moses and Elijah. Moses had to flee before Pharaoh (Ex 2:15) when he had killed an Egyptian and was a fugitive in the desert of Midian for a long time (Ex 2:15.22). He had to bear all the complaints of the Jews (Ex 5:20; 14:11) and the oppression by Pharaoh (Ex 5:4) and the changing of Pharaoh’s mind after each of the nine plagues (Ex 8:15.19.32; 9:7.12.35; 10:20.27). - Elijah had to flee (1 Kgs 19:3) before the wrath of Queen Jezebel after he had won the contest between him and the priests of Baal (1 Kgs 18:20-40).
6. The result of Christ's prayer was: he was transfigured, on a mountain. Moses was transfigured as it were, on a mountain too after all the hardships of the exodus. On Mt Sinai God appeared to him after the people had said they would do all God told them (Ex 24:3) and Moses had offered the sacrifice (Ex 24:4-8).
7. God told Moses to come up to the mountain for the covenant meal (Ex 24:9-11). And there it is mentioned: "Then Moses and the seventy elders of Israel went up and they saw the Lord of Israel (Ex 24:10). They “saw” God in the covenant meal. But Moses was privileged even more: The glory of God settled on the mountain in a cloud (Ex 24:13-16) and Moses received the Ten Commandments. — After Elijah had fled before the wrath of queen Jezebel he came to the Mt. Horeb (which most identify with Sinai) and there Yahweh appeared to him, not in a mighty wind, nor in an earthquake, but in a gentle breeze so that Elijah covered his face (1 Kgs 19:13).
8. Abraham had to go through many trials as well, before God's promise that he would become the father of many nations and that in him all people should be blessed was fulfilled. (Gen 12:2). He had to leave his home country and hometown Ur and go to a place he had never seen before. But he went (Gen 12:4). Soon there was a famine in his new home country Canaan, so he had to look for greener pastures in Egypt (Gen 12:10-11). Pharaoh took his wife away (Gen 12:15). Four Eastern kings took along Abraham's nephew Lot and his possessions and the Patriarch had to fight them (Gen 14:1-24). It looked as if Sarah, Abraham’s wife never would get a son to the great distress of both. And when Isaac was finally born, Abraham was called to sacrifice him on the mountain (Gen 22). Mount Moriah was for the patriarch Calvary and Easter at the same time. After he had gone through the greatest darkness of his life, being puzzled that he should sacrifice his own son, God gave Isaac back to Abraham. It was, as it were life from the dead. It was like a resurrection.
9. The covenant God made with Abraham was a transfiguration for Abraham, an anticipated Easter, a guarantee that God’s promise of a great posterity and of the land would come through. That covenant is reported in three different ways according to the three different sources of the Pentateuch. Today's first reading gives us the version of the Elohistic (E) and Yahwistic (J) Source. Abraham shall try to count the stars of heaven in a clear night. Obviously, there are too many to count. Abraham's grandchildren will be even more than there are stars. So the Elohistic Source. And the Yahwist lets Abraham divide animals for a sacrifice, placing the halves on both sides. God passes through the halves like a consuming fire to make clear that his promise will stand, and any doubt and unfaithfulness would be punished as by fire. The Priestly author (P) lets the covenant be sealed by the circumcision of Abraham and his household (Gen 17:1-27).
10. The life of Jesus, of Moses and Elijah and of Abraham proves to us that there is no Easter without suffering. Christ knew about this "must", which the Father has designed in his eternal will. And so he told his apostles about his coming suffering for the rest of his public life. The whole second half of the gospel of Mark is taken up by this "must" of suffering. Thus when the voice from heaven on Mt. Tabor said to the apostles: "This is my Son, my Chosen One. Listen to him” (Lk 9:35)! This meant: If this Son tells you that you have to suffer, believe him!
11. No Easter without suffering. But it is equally true: After every Good Friday follows an Easter Sunday. God has promised it, as he promised it to Abraham in his covenant, as Christ promised it in his predictions of his suffering: "On the third day I will rise again” (Mk 8:31).
12. Where do we get the strength to accept this divine “must” of suffering also for our life? Christ prayed and embraced the Father’s will in prayer. He was praying when Moses and Elijah talked with him about his exodus, his death. This prayer enabled him to say yes to his exodus and he even was transfigured. He prayed in the garden of Gethsemani and embraced the Father's will, although it cost him sweat of blood (Lk 22:45). But an angel encouraged him (Lk 22:44) as Moses and Elijah confirmed him in his will to suffer.