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.