This Sunday, We Will Be Transfigured, Too: 5 Takeaways for the Second Sunday of Lent

By bringing us the story of the Transfiguration near the beginning of Lent, the Church shows us what we are aiming for at the end of Lent: a sacramental transformation.

One day, we will be transfigured like what we see in the Gospel. We will be citizens of heaven, according to St. Paul, and we will be “like the stars” as the Old Testament reading puts it. But we will only arrive at this remarkable place if we act now to make it possible.

Here are five takeaways for the Second Sunday of Lent, Year C, taken from This Sunday columns at this site and the Extraordinary Story podcast.

First: The apostles in the Gospel story do what we do symbolically each Lent.

Jesus takes Peter, James and John up Mount Tabor to pray. Luke describes the scene in much the way the other Synoptic Gospels do, but then he alone tells us what Jesus was talking about with the two heavenly visitors who appeared.

“While he was praying his face changed in appearance and his clothes became dazzling white,” Luke reports. “And behold, two men were conversing with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his exodus that he was going to accomplish in Jerusalem.”

Many have speculated over the years as to why Jesus chose these three to witness the Transfiguration. I like the explanation St. Ambrose gives:

“Peter, who received the keys of the kingdom, John, to whom his mother was entrusted, and James, who was the first to mount a bishop’s throne, ascended.”

In other words, these are three figures critical to the foundation of the Church, the Way you and I follow to heaven. And the Church they founded gives us each Lent exactly what they got in this story: We are led to a place apart to ascend in prayer to God, and there, he invites us on our own 40-day exodus.

The original Exodus took the Israelites away from slavery to Egypt and the curse of death through the desert of suffering and the Ten Commandments. Our Lenten exodus takes us away from our slavery to self-assertion, pleasure, and greed through prayer, fasting and almsgiving, to God’s new commandment of love.

Second: As St. Paul makes clear, we are destined to be citizens of heaven, just like the figures who appear in the Transfiguration with Jesus.

If Jesus chose Peter, James and John to be on Mount Tabor because they are representatives of the Church, why did he choose to appear with Moses and Elijah?

Moses is the law-bringer and leader of the first Exodus, and Elijah is the prophet par excellence, who was expected to return to prepare the world for the Messiah. But there is something else the two have in common: Moses’s grave was never found, and Elijah ascended into heaven in a chariot. That means they are both citizens of heaven — alive in that place outside of time where God lives with hosts of angels.

Moses and Elijah have arrived at the goal where we are all headed, the goal St. Paul spells out in the Second Reading: “Our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we also await a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.” Paul even says that our bodies will be like those we meet in Sunday’s Gospel, writing:

“He will change our lowly body to conform with his glorified body by the power that enables him also to bring all things into subjection to himself.”

The Catechism of the Catholic Church quotes him on that, assuring us that this really will happen: the bodies of those who share in Christ’s victory will be glorified. We will look like the citizens of heaven who visited Mount Tabor at the Transfiguration.

Third: The Old Covenant is what set Moses and Elijah aglow with God. The sacraments are what will do that for us.

In the First Reading, we see God making his covenant with Abram, who would become Abraham. In those primitive times, a covenant was made in the way described: An animal was split in two, and the two parties passed between the two halves. It was understood what they were promising: “If I fail in this agreement, may the fate of these animals fall on me.”

It is important that in the reading, it is God who symbolically passes between the animals, not Moses. This shows God’s initiative in the covenant. God is reaching out to us, not the other way around. The covenant is not a quid-pro-quo arrangement where man gives allegiance to God and God repays it. It is sheer gratuity on God’s part. Man doesn’t have to earn it; he merely has to live such that he doesn’t reject it.

The Transfiguration, told in all three Synoptic Gospels, takes place right after Peter has confessed that Jesus is the Messiah and Jesus announces for the first time that he “must suffer greatly, and be rejected … and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”

In other words, what happened to those animals will happen to Jesus Christ, who as God and man represents both sides of that covenant, for our salvation. Testament means Covenant, and as the Old Testament figures in Sunday’s readings made their covenants with animal blood, the waters of the Red Sea, and the Law, the New Testament, the New Covenant, will be made with the blood of Christ, the waters of Baptism and the forgiveness of sins.

Fourth: The readings give us practical advice on how to live Lent with the New Covenant in mind.

Lent is here to help us focus our lives on the cross of Christ, in order to pass through it to his Resurrection.

The long version of the Second Reading warns that:

“Many … conduct themselves as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction. Their God is their stomach; their glory is in their ‘shame.’ Their minds are occupied with earthly things.”

That’s a timely reminder for Lent. Human beings tend to live for comfort, but together, these readings paint a picture of how we should live in the New Covenant: no longer attached to earthly goods, but attached to our heavenly goal; no longer focused on taking what we can get for ourselves out of life, but focused on making Jesus Christ’s family as plentiful as the stars, inviting, welcoming, and retaining more and more citizens in heaven.

If you are not exactly headed in that direction, but feel like you have been sleepwalking through Lent, don’t worry. Peter, James and John were the same way. But they woke up. The Gospel says, “Peter and his companions had been overcome by sleep, but becoming fully awake, they saw his glory and the two men standing with him.”

Peter tells Jesus, “Master, it is good that we are here; let us make three tents, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”

Peter’s tent plan showed admirable enthusiasm, but was fundamentally mistaken. Peter wanted to make this mountaintop experience his home. We can undrestand why. He wants to stay forever in this heavenly light. The world is a difficult place, a place where every joy is followed by pain, and where we never feel quite at home. We feel we want more because we were made for more. We want unconditional love, unconditional beauty, unconditional goodness; we want to be really and truly home.

But our home is not in heaven, yet. We are meant to encounter Jesus, hear our instructions, and go. We are on Exodus. We are on the move.

Fifth: And that leads us to this Sunday’s Mass.

In fact, an interesting thing happens in the Gospel reading:

While Peter was still speaking, “a cloud came and cast a shadow over them, and they became frightened when they entered the cloud. Then from the cloud came a voice that said, ‘This is my chosen Son; listen to him.’”

At each Mass, we experience the same thing. We see Jesus Christ himself appear, in the form of bread, and we hear the Word of God proclaimed in the readings.

Pray that, like the Father asked, we will listen to him.

Pray we will be “fully awake” to the presence of God on the altar at Mass and in the souls he loves all around us.

Then stay close beside Jesus and his Church on our exodus to our true home in heaven.

Image: Willem van Herp I, The Transfiguration of Christ, wiki

By Tom Hoopes