Transfiguration: 'The Soul Needs Amazement.'

Reflection for Second Sunday of Lent: Matthew 17: 1-9

Transfiguration of Christ 14th Century stained glass panel from Germany

We are not even halfway through our Lenten journey when presented with the Gospel reading from Matthew of the Transfiguration of our Lord.  This extraordinary revelation of Jesus as God’s son is told in remarkably similar detail in all three synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke). Jesus takes three of his closest disciples to a remote place up a mountain and there, much to the disciples’ astonishment, Jesus ‘is transfigured before them’ (Matt: 17.2).  The description of Jesus here is one of light and shining; his connection to the great past prophets of Elijah and Moses made clear, and even more than this, his identity as the Son of God revealed. Finally, this vision fills the disciples with such tremendous awe and fear that they fall down upon the ground ‘overcome with fear’ (Matt: 17.6).

Dorothy Söelle (1929-2003), German theologian and spiritual writer tells us that there are three steps on any spiritual journey: amazement, letting go and resisting. And it’s this ‘amazement’ that seems so special to me about the revelation of Jesus’ divinity to the disciples at the Transfiguration.  For the disciples this experience, akin to the profoundly divine encounters of Elijah and Moses in the Old Testament, is radical and overwhelming. How can anyone comprehend it?  One can only be changed by it. Söelle says that ‘to be amazed means to behold the world and, like God after the sixth day of creation to be able to say again or for the first time, “Look! How very good it all is”.’ Such a response is found in the impulsive words of Peter: ‘Lord, it is good for us to be here…’ (Matt: 17.4) until he, like the others, falls upon the ground.

According to Söelle, ‘the soul needs amazement,’ because it brings with it ‘the repeated liberation from customs, viewpoints, and convictions, which, like layers of fat that make us untouchable and insensitive, accumulate around us.’ To be amazed in this true sense breaks us out of our habitual thoughts and actions. It insists that we let go of what baggage we have been holding onto and open ourselves a to new understanding of the world. Without amazement ‘nothing new can begin.’ It fills us with compassion and desire to work for social justice.

Söelle writes that ‘amazement also has its bleak side of terror and hopelessness that renders one mute.’ Jesus knew this; by touching the disciples and telling them not to be afraid he offers them human reassurance. This story in each of the Gospels is contextualised with Jesus warning his friends not to tell anyone about this experience until after his suffering and resurrection. His words leave the disciples to conjecture about what this might mean.  They do not yet have a full comprehension of the pain and suffering Jesus will undergo before his resurrection.

To place this reading of the Transfiguration of Jesus in the second Sunday of Lent works as a reminder that while we may venture on our Lenten journey as a people who are growing and moving toward, so too paradoxically we have already been found. The love of God, the divinity of Christ has been there long before us, in the witness of the Old Testament prophets and the life of Jesus 2 000 years ago. God’s love is here and now in the celebration of the Mass and mystery of the Eucharist, here in the amazement that for all our faults and limitations we are loved by God completely and unreservedly, and in the love that we extend to one another, the visitor and unfamiliar. And it will be until the end of time.