Who do you see when you look in the mirror? Most of us at some point during the day look in the mirror to check our hair etc. Mirrors show us what we look like, the image we present to the world. But mirrors only show external appearances. How we look is not who we are and that is what the Feast of the Transfiguration is all about.  The Transfiguration of Jesus shows us who we are, who we really are. It shows us where we came from, our purpose and where we are going ultimately.  

The Transfiguration is not just a one-time event that happened to Jesus on a mountaintop but an ongoing revealing of our true identity as a beloved child of God. This can be difficult to believe. At times our lives and the world seem more disfigured than transfigured.  But nothing that is happening in us, nothing that is happening in the world can reverse the glory of God that fills the world.  What too often happens is that we are not awake to the action of God, we are sleepy and fail to understand and see what God is doing in the world and in us.  As St. Irenaeus of Lyons, said “The Glory of God is a human being fully alive”. This might also be paraphrased as “The glory of God is a human being fully awake”. 

Jesus took Peter, John, and James with him when he climbed the mountain because he wanted them to witness something amazing. They were struggling between sleep and wakefulness but because they managed to stay awake, they witnessed Jesus’ glory, they saw him transfigured:  today’s Gospel tells us that the appearance of his face changed and his clothes became dazzling white. Just to clarify, this was much more than a change in appearance: Webster’s dictionary defines the word “transformation” as a thorough or dramatic change in form or appearance. It defines “transfiguration” as a complete change of form or appearance into a more beautiful or spiritual state”.  

The spiritual journey is always a struggle between staying awake and falling asleep. Between darkness and light. I’m not talking about physical sleepiness, but spiritual sleepiness that causes us to coast along, to stay where we feel comfortable, to forget that our spiritual journey is a pilgrimage and we don’t get to stay in one place for very long.  Spiritual sleepiness blinds us to the beauty of the world, blinds us to the beauty of others, and prevents us from seeing what God is doing before our very eyes. 

Peter, James, and John experienced the transfiguration of Christ because they were able to stay awake. They saw the light of divinity fully present in a human being, something a mirror cannot reveal. And Jesus is not alone, he is talking with Moses and Elijah, showing us that we too are called to transformation in Christ and that in our transformed state we will still know, recognize and be in relationship with one another. We will be reunited with those we love who have gone before us. 

But Peter, like us, is struggling to understand what all this means. In a state of wonder and awe, he wants to nail the experience down and somehow make it permanent. He wants to build three tents, for Jesus and Moses and Elijah. But Jesus can’t be contained in a human dwelling, no matter how beautiful or beloved our human dwellings may be. Humanity can never build a permanent dwelling place for God. The astonishing reality is that God makes their home in humanity:  we are God’s dwelling place, the sacred home of the Divine presence of Jesus. 

All of humanity is called to the Mount of Transfiguration and it is there that Christ reveals who we are and who we are to become. 

The Feast of the Transfiguration invites us to wipe the sleep from our eyes and in the words of St. Augustine “behold what we are and become what we receive”. Every time we receive the Eucharist, we are transformed a little more fully into the Body of Christ, so that the divine love that made us and then flows through us can become more fully expressed in the world. This transformation isn’t just about the bread and wine but about ourselves.  Behold what you are  - body and blood, created, fragile, precious human being. Become what you receive – nothing less than Christ. 

 

 

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