Gospel: Luke 9:28-36
At that time, Jesus took Peter, James, and John, and went up to the mountain to pray. As He was praying, His face changed in appearance, and His clothes became a dazzling white. Suddenly, two men appeared talking with Him. They were Moses and Elijah, who, shining with glory, spoke of the exodus that Jesus was about to fulfill in Jerusalem. Peter and his companions, although exhausted with sleep, kept their eyes open and saw Jesus’ glory and the two men standing with Him. When these men were about to leave, Peter said to Jesus: “Master, it is good for us to be here! Let us make three tents: one for You, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” He did not know what he was saying. While he was speaking, a cloud appeared and covered them; and they were afraid as they entered the cloud. A voice came out of the cloud saying, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to Him.” When the voice had spoken, Jesus was alone. They kept silent and told no one at that time what they had seen.

Fruit: To lift our gaze beyond daily suffering and see the hand of God touching my life, even if in a mysterious and incomprehensible way.

Guidelines for reflection:
The Gospel recounts three explicit announcements of Christ’s Passion. The Master clearly told His apostles that He must suffer, be crucified, die, and rise again; and He did not tell them just once, but three times. However, the Twelve only remembered the last one when the time of the Passion arrived. The Gospel passage of the Transfiguration reminds us again that, although Christ will suffer and die on the cross, He remains God, and therefore He will break the chains of death and rise on the third day.

1. The Passion of Christ is approaching
We are approaching Holy Week, the commemoration of Christ’s Passion, death, and resurrection. Also, the apostles, in this Gospel passage, are approaching this moment. Two years have passed living with the Lord. They are going to Jerusalem, probably to celebrate Christ’s penultimate Passover during His earthly life, and they have begun to hear words like cross, passion, pain, contempt… Due to their Jewish culture, they instinctively reject the cross. Didn’t the Old Testament say, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree“, meaning, on a cross? But the Master is a peculiar Jew. From the very beginning, His attitude towards the Law of Moses caught their attention: He knows it perfectly, He does not despise it, but He has come to teach us a new way of living. “I have not come to abolish the Law but to fulfill it.” “You have heard that it was said… But I tell you…“. It seems that His attitude towards the cross also has something mysterious about it, shrouded in a halo of mystery, like many of His teachings. And it is something that approaches inevitably.

2. But He is God and Lord
Faced with the proximity of the cross, with the imminent death as a cursed man, hanging on a tree, the Lord wants to strengthen the faith of His followers. He chooses the three key apostles and takes them to a high mountain to transfigure before them. What must that moment have been like? The descriptive details are minimal, but it must have been deeply engraved in the memory of these three privileged ones. Peter, one of them, will remember it at the end of his life as one of the foundations of his existence. We can imagine the scene a little: Jesus begins to pray, and suddenly His face changes. It becomes radiant, with an unparalleled glow. From Him emerges a great light, the light of His divine nature, hinting at His greatness. At the same time, Moses and Elijah appear beside Him, the two greatest figures of the Old Testament. The three apostles recognize them immediately. Peter, the only one able to say a word before this spectacle of light and majesty, summarizes his experience with “How good it is to be here!“; John and James could not articulate a word. Certainly, this Messiah is something more, He is truly God, Son of God. The vision ends with the voice of God the Father. Peter, John, and James are left in awe, and the Lord has to come to wake them up.

3. Lift up your eyes
What lesson can we learn from this episode? I believe one of the main teachings is the following: lift up your eyes, look at the mountain, at Tabor, and remember that vision in difficult moments. Our life, like Christ’s and the apostles’, will have moments of passion and death, suffering, pain. These can be personal situations, illnesses of ourselves or loved ones, work problems, or a very long etcetera. Jesus teaches us that in those moments, when the dark river of doubt threatens to break our dam of hope, we must lift our gaze and look at the light that flows from Jesus Christ: that crucified man, despised, humiliated, is God, the same who was transfigured on Mount Tabor. That “failed” in human eyes has conquered death, and He will do everything possible so that we too may live forever, in happiness and eternal union with God.

Purpose: I will remember the moments when God has given me some comfort, to strengthen my unconditional trust in Him.