TRANSFIGURATION: "CHRISTIC FORM"

2^ND SUNDAY OF LENT – B

Mark 9:2-10

       Man is created unto the image and likeness of God!  Yet sin tarnished that image and destroyed that likeness through the first Adam.  Jesus Christ, the second Adam, is transforming our image back to its “christic form.”

Six days after Jesus made the prediction of His passion, He was transfigured on Mt. Thabor in the sight of Peter, James and John.  The Transfiguration marks the second “Trinitarian theophany” wherein the three persons of the Trinity  were made manifest at the same time, the first being at the baptism of Jesus.  Here the Holy Spirit was in the form of a cloud which represented the indwelling presence of God in the Old Testament.  The Father’s voice was heard for the second and last time confirming that Jesus is his beloved Son and addressing himself to the apostles “Listen to him.”   Jesus standing on a mountain, is between the past [represented by Moses (the law) and Elijah (the prophets)] and the future represented by the three apostles.  The Father’s voice ushered in a new way of “listening”, this time not anymore from the Decalogue (The Torah) of old but to the present Living Word.

       

        The event should have been a preparation for the three apostles who will also witness the agony of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane.  It was a foretaste of the glory of Jesus which could only be understood in the light of the Resurrection. 

       

        If we look around, everything is always on the move because science teaches us that molecules are in constant motion.  This is because creation is a continuous process of becoming.  From the first moment of our conception, we never stop growing and transforming.  But our spiritual transfiguration has already begun at the moment of our baptism.  When we were baptized, we were con-figured to the image of Christ and are constantly being transfigured moment after moment until we reach the fullness of our being.  St. Paul reminds us of this beautiful movement: “We all grow brighter and brighter as we are transfigured into the image that we reflect; this is the work of God who is Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:18).

      

        But our transfiguration, although God’s gift to us, has a price.  Abraham in the first reading was willing to give up and sacrifice Isaac!  We, too have our own share of sacrifice if we want to be transfigured the way Abraham was transfigured as the Father of all nations.    

God is like a sculptor who sees us like a marble with a hidden masterpiece in becoming.  If we let Him chisel away the unnecessary in us, the masterpiece will come alive!  God can transform us into the image of his Son because each one of us is his unique masterpiece!