I suspect. Most of us look in a mirror at some point each day. We check our hair, makeup, teeth, and clothes. Mirrors show us what we look like. While it might be important to know what we look like, it’s more important to know who we are.
That’s what this holy Feast of the Transfiguration is about. The Transfiguration of Christ shows us who we are. It reveals our origin, our purpose, and the end to which we must aim.
Mirrors show external appearances. The Transfiguration, however, shows the archetypal beauty within creation and humanity. This means that the Transfiguration is not just an event in history, a happening that begins and ends. It is, instead, a condition or a way of being. The Transfiguration reveals a present reality. The transfiguration is already within us and the world. The glorified and transfigured Christ is the prototype of our creation.
At times, our lives and the world seem more disfigured than transfigured. As the saying goes, what is news without bad news?" I wonder why Jesus said to us, "When you shall hear of wars and tumults, be not terrified: for these things must come to pass first; but the end is not immediately" (Luke 21:9). They are to happen first as part of the reality of this world, which urgently invite us to see what is important at the end which is not immediate. At the same time, these events, and others like them, do not undo or negate the glory of God that fills this world and human life. Instead, they reveal that far too often, we are a people “weighed down with sleep.”
Peter, John, and James were also weighed down by sleep. Jesus took them with him and went up to the mountain to pray. While Jesus was praying, “the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white.” Moses and Elijah were also there talking with Jesus.
The three disciples struggled between sleep and wakefulness. “Since they had stayed awake,” they saw Jesus’ glory. He revealed himself to Peter, John, and James and, in so doing, showed them the deepest reality of who they were.
The spiritual journey is always a battle between falling asleep and staying awake, between absence and presence, between darkness and light. Sleepiness is not simply a physical matter, it is a spiritual issue and condition.
Spiritual sleep is a form of blindness. It blinds us to the beauty and holiness of the world, other people, and ourselves. Blindness to God’s presence and the goodness of creation is what allows us to do violence to one another and ourselves.
Peter, John, and James experienced Christ's transfiguration because they stayed awake despite the weight of sleep. They saw for the first time what had always been—the light of divinity fully manifest in a human being, something a mirror can never reveal.
Peter misunderstood, however. “Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” Human beings can never build a dwelling place for God. It is, rather, God who makes human beings the dwelling place of divinity (made in the image of God). This truth is most profoundly revealed in Jesus's Transfiguration.
The whole of creation participates in the glory of God. Humanity alone, however, is called to the Mount of Transfiguration. There, Christ reveals who we are and who, by God's grace, we are to become.
The Feast of the Transfiguration invites us to wipe the sleep from our eyes, behold what we are, and become what we see in Jesus.
