Transfiguration as an icon of hope

UNKNOWN ICON PAINTER, Cretan

Transfiguration of Christ

c. 1550

The scriptures retelling of the transfiguration of our Lord is a familiar image for many of us. We see our Lord on the heights of Mount Tabor effusing vibrant light with Moses and Elijah on his right and left giving him praise and honor while his chosen disciples of this earth, with their bodies clinging to the ground, look up upon it all with awe and wonder. A grand and wonderful scene indeed. But how does this image, this icon, speak to each of us personally? Where is it intended to lead me?

Recall that just six days previously Jesus gathered his disciples to him in Caesarea Philippi and ultimately asked them (and each of us) this question: "Who do you say that I am?" It is Peter who confesses that he believes that Jesus is the anointed one, the Son of God. Whereupon our Lord tells Peter that he is the rock upon which his Church would be built, but that first he, Jesus, must return to Jerusalem and there to suffer death. Peter stops listening at that point and recoils at the thought, telling Jesus that this must not, cannot, be.

Peter was thinking as one thinks whose feet and body are bound to the earth. Jesus recognizes this and so gives Peter and the Church a gift to hold and treasure; to be pondered and contemplated upon whenever our vision of our future with Christ becomes blurred or obscured.

Peter was scandalized by the thought of our Lord, the Son of God, enduring an ignoble death. He could not fathom where this would lead and his faith was shaken at the mere thought of it. And so, he and James and John were given a sign; a vision of the true divinity of Christ that is eternal. Although they would not be able to grasp this triumph over death until after the resurrection, it would rest in their hearts until the time they were told it must be released to the world.

The Church is now the guardian of this gift to be tendered regularly to its faithful. This image is intended to lead each of us through the dangerous shoals of trials and scandals that we navigate through each and every day. Beyond the sinful behavior and institutional blindness that we may witness in the Church there lies the tender loving relationship between our Lord and his Church. His bride is the distributor of his Sacraments and a sign of his presence here and now at this time and place on earth. Just as he deliberately met with sin and the sinner in his life on earth so too does he now greet and embrace the sinner in the pews of our Church. Because of this there is no scandal so great that it cannot be triumphed over by our Lord who gave us this sign two thousand years ago that he is our God in whom we shall trust.

From whence temptation?

TINTORETTO
The Temptation of Christ
1579-81

On this weekend of the First Sunday of Lent as we feast on the Liturgy of the Word that is set before us a meditation comes to mind regarding our nature to fix our stare upon temptation. We have Adam and Eve manipulated by Satan in the garden in juxtaposition with Jesus tempted by Satan in the desert and Saint Paul teaching on these points of fallen grace and redemption; each brought to humankind by an individual, the first through Adam and salvation through Christ.

In the splendid teaching that is found within the first pages of scripture we learn some vital information about our nature as human beings. Our Creator, the Word, made us in his love to have free will and this is good. We were not, however, given the judgment to distinguish good from evil. Like small children we, that is Adam and Eve, did not have the requisite reason to be capable of sin. We were simple and simply bonded to God through His love. To remain in that love relationship we simply needed to follow the simple instruction of God. Satan, the first evil to enter into the garden, was of course not recognized by Adam and Eve and he could therefore use their free will against them to encourage them to break with God. So they, who first turned their gaze inward and away from their Lord, ate of the fruit and invited sin and shame into the world.

This was the world that the Christ child was born into. He entered into time and matter of his creation to act upon it as a human being by confronting and triumphing over the evil that was given a right of entry into the world by the first man. He was baptized in the Jordan and imbued with the Holy Spirit who then brought him into the desert to be drawn against the temptations of Satan. Our Lord, fully human, endured these temptations, not by wile and wit, or by any divine moral compass, but rather though his simple and devoted love of his Father in heaven; the same effortless love shared by Adam and Eve with their Creator in the garden prior to their fall.

Paul teaches, "For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so, through the obedience of the one, the many will be made righteous." The term obedience, here, should be carefully considered and rightly understood. It is not a submission ceded at the tip of a whip, but rather an assent offered with affection for the Beloved. To truly understand this is to understand our Lord's triumph over temptation and the sin of this world.

Time and again Jesus taught his disciples to become like little children; simple in love, humility and trust. This would seem to be the gate leading back into a time and place when we walked and talked with God in the cool of the evening.