Lent 2 Transfiguration of Jesus

The transfiguration is an Icon of contemplation. We need to climb the mountain to become part of this body of elite souls who are contemplatives. Not many people are ready to climb up through the path of sacrifice and docility to God’s will. You need to leave many things behind and travel light. Most of us carry too much baggage, and we are constantly bogged down, pushed backwards by the heavy weight. Our struggle is to let things go, to shed whatever is not helping us to become closer to God. Once you reach the summit, you see things differently. It is an amazing panorama. You can contemplate Jesus in his glory. Contemplation is a gift from God. If we don’t pray, Jesus cannot show us his divinity.

The three beloved apostles fell sleep. They were tired after the climb. They too are going to fall asleep at the agony of Gethsemane. Waking up they found Jesus transfigured in front of them. Jesus lifted the veil that hid his divinity and showed himself as he is. He is always like this. When we talk about a sunset, we talk in a figurative way: the sun never sets. We are the ones rotating. If the sun were always up, we would die of heat exposure. It is the same with Jesus’ divinity. Jesus doesn’t want to dazzle us. Otherwise we will have to veil our faces like Moses after talking to God. The Israelites couldn’t stand looking at him.

The three apostles never forgot this experience. It was an amazing mystical experience. Talking to people, I come across many spiritual experiences, ways of God showing his face, even though normally He is silent. Some people are always looking for miracles. We don’t need them. We have enough proofs of the existence of God to keep us going. If God showed us his face, we could lose our freedom.

The experience is full of light, whiteness and purity. White expels all the colours; black keeps them in. We need to expel all our impurities. This is how our soul should look, pure and clean, white and transparent, for us to be able to see God. A painter was looking for a beautiful girl as a model to paint Our Lady. When he found one she said she would come back tomorrow: she wanted to go to confession first. We need to keep going for reconciliation, to wash our soul many times. I had a friend who had a machine to polish stones. It took a long time for the sand to grind them and make them shine. It was a beautiful change, from the boring, grey, dull image of the river stones, to the bright, polished, smooth surface of many different colours.

Peter couldn’t contain himself and declared: “It is well that we are here.” He wanted to stop time and stay there forever. We too would like to be there, but we need to wait for eternity. We climb up to meet God and bring him to others. We need to go up and down all the time. We cannot stay up there. We climb up through prayer. Once we get the power of God, we can come down to bring it to others. Peter, you cannot stay up here. We cannot stop time. We need to keep going up and down. Begin and begin again every day. Our love of God has to be lived every day. Once you stop climbing, you begin to fall down.

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