As the Church begins to set her sights on Easter the Sunday liturgy before Lent starts centres in the Gospel on an anticipation of the Easter festival that we are shortly to prepare for in the coming holy season.
We just read in the Gospel a very beautiful incident from the account of the life of Our Lord.
Jesus ascends a high mountain with Peter, James and John. While praying up there the Lord’s face glows with the brightness of the sun and his garments became dazzling white.
The splendour of Christ’s divinity penetrates through his human body as the Son of God appears in his splendour and glory.
The glory that was to shine at Easter shone in this isolated incident through the person of the earthly Jesus.
The disciples were shown as much glory as they could bear.
Just as when there is an astronomical event like a transit of Venus across the sun people are warned to view the event indirectly so it was when God shone in Jesus on the earth. The disciples fell to the ground and hid their faces.
‘No one can see God and live’ we read in Exodus 33 verse 20. Yet moving from Old to New Testament texts we catch something of the revolution that Our Lord brings, as in St John’s Gospel Chapter 1 verse 18: ‘No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known’.
At the heart of Christianity is a yearning to see God as he is. This has sprung up from the days Jesus walked and shone on earth with the promise we could see God.
Not with mortal eyes but in the resurrection.
The Transfiguration of Our Lord anticipates both his Resurrection and our own. As children of God we are heading for the full, glorious sight of God.
‘Beloved we are God’s children now; what we will be has not been revealed’ Saint John writes. ‘What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is’. (1 John 3:2)
As Lent approaches we should be in the valley of decision about some action that can help us better head for the beatific vision, the vision of God.
It is a time to refocus upon Our Lord, to turn our eyes upon Jesus. Lent challenges us to look to the main things in Christian life and to keeping them the main things.
This season is a call to study God’s word and I do commend again Tom Wright’s Lent for Everyone which helps you read through sections of Matthew’s Gospel day by day. The book includes the scripture text.
Through contemplating today’s Gospel we see an image of devotion as the yearning to see God as he is. This yearning that sprang up from the coming of Jesus remains at the heart of Christianity.
May the Lord excite our yearning for him by the devotion we seek in the coming weeks through things given up and taken up to mark the season of Christ’s Passion.
Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in his beautiful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace.
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