LAST SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY, YEAR C
February 27, 2022
St. Uriel’s, Sea Girt, N. J.
Luke 9:28-36
In the contemporary Church calendar, the Gospel for the Last Sunday after the Epiphany is always that of Our Lord’s Transfiguration. So, even though the Feast of the Transfiguration is traditionally kept on August 6th, nonetheless, today is widely known as “Transfiguration Sunday.”
A standard line of interpretation has grown up around the Transfiguration’s placement at this point in the liturgical year. The vision of our Lord radiating the light of heavenly splendor brings to a climax the season after the Epiphany – the wintertime of the year when we consider such manifestations of the Lord’s glory as his baptism in the River Jordan and his changing of water into wine at the wedding at Cana in Galilee.
But then, just as Jesus and the three apostles must come down off the mountain to begin the journey to Jerusalem—despite Peter’s expressed desire to “hold on to the experience” by building three booths—so we also must come down off the mountain of Epiphany to traverse the dark valley of Lent, which leads us inexorably towards Our Lord’s passion and death on Good Friday. And so, countless sermons warn us against trying to hold on to the “mountaintop experiences” and admonish us instead to take up our crosses and follow Jesus in the hard way of discipleship.
Now, that’s a perfectly valid line of interpretation. I’ve preached that sermon any number of times myself and will almost certainly do so again. But this morning I’d like to suggest an alternative interpretation in which the Transfiguration doesn’t as much stand in contrast to Lent as it anticipates and points to the Lenten season itself.
Today’s Gospel opens with Our Lord taking the apostles Peter, James, and John up on a mountain to pray. This detail epitomizes a distinct pattern in our Lord’s earthly ministry. As we read the Gospels, we notice that Jesus typically alternates periods of intense activity with periods of withdrawal and solitude.
Most of the time, the Gospels depict our Lord traveling from town to town, preaching, teaching, healing, casting out demons, performing miracles, and engaging in controversies with his religious critics. It’s an active ministry that no doubt requires enormous stamina.
But every now and then, Jesus goes off by himself to a lonely place apart. The pattern begins after his baptism in the River Jordan when he goes into the wilderness forty days and forty nights—as we shall hear in next week in the Gospel for the First Sunday of Lent. But it continues throughout his ministry. For example, after feeding the five thousand, Jesus goes up on a mountain to pray while his disciples set out in a boat to cross the Sea of Galilee, setting the scene for his nighttime miracle of his walking to them across the water’s surface.
So, we see in our Lord’s ministry a pattern of alternation between what the Christian spiritual tradition has called the active life and the contemplative life. His taking Peter, James, and John with him up the mountain to pray at the beginning of today’s Gospel continues precisely this pattern.
Many spiritual writers observe that such alternation marks the typical Christian life as well. As baptized members of Christ’s Body the Church, we’re most of us called to engage in active good works in the world, but without neglecting either worship or times of solitude and quiet for prayer. Moreover, the Christian life is marked by rhythms of alternation between among different types different types of prayer over time. At certain times in our lives, we may find ourselves drawn to more spontaneous and emotional expressions of praise, while at other times we find ourselves drawn more to formal liturgical prayer or to silent contemplation.
The cycle of the Christian year likewise takes us through an alternating rhythm of seasons, feasts, and fasts – some joyful, some penitential, some ordinary. As finite human beings, we can’t do everything at once, so we set aside distinct times and seasons, feasts and fasts, to concentrate sequentially on the manifold dimensions of our faith. And so, as we go through the cycle year by year, we build up a cumulative appreciation of the whole faith in all its multifaceted splendor and beauty.
Against this background, one way of looking at the Season of Lent, which begins this week on Ash Wednesday, is as an invitation not so much to come down off the mountain as to go up on it. Jesus and the three disciples need a place to get away after the exhausting grind of their ministry. In the Bible, moreover, the mountaintop is the archetypal place of encounter with the divine—as exemplified in today’s Old Testament reading about Moses and Mount Sinai. In the same way, the Season of Lent bids us find a space set apart from the busyness of our lives, a place where we may encounter God.
For example, we might make a point of coming to one (or more) of our weekday services, such as the Wednesday Mass or Stations and Benediction on Friday. Or come to the Lenten series on the English Mystics that we’ve scheduled later on Wednesday mornings and again on Wednesday evenings. There are many other possibilities for disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving that we might take on. But we need to remember that the true point of all our Lenten practices is to create a space in our lives where we can be available to God; and we need to devise our Lenten rules with that objective in mind.
And it’s just possible that even amidst the season’s austerities—indeed precisely in and through the season’s austerities—we shall catch a glimpse of the glory of the Lord, just as the three disciples did after completing the climb up the mountain. Notice that when Moses and Elijah appear with Jesus, they speak with him of his departure or exodus, which he is to accomplish at Jerusalem; and this refers of course to his coming death on the cross.
It’s thus a mistake to draw too sharp a contrast between our Lord’s glory and his suffering, as if the Transfiguration’s light were somehow opposed to Calvary’s darkness. They’re two sides of the same coin, the wonderful mystery of our redemption. And so, by ascending the mountain with Jesus this upcoming season of Lent, we open ourselves up to the vision of this dual reality: darkness and light; suffering and glory.
