The Light Given for the Hour of Darkness
MASS Salve sancta
LESSON 2 Peter 1: 16-19
GOSPEL St Matthew 17: 1-9
HOMILIST Mt Revd Jerome Lloyd OSJV
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
The mystery of the Transfiguration cannot be separated from the mystery of the Cross. Our Lord has told the Apostles that He must go to Jerusalem, suffer many things, be put to death, and rise again. Peter has recoiled from these words. The disciples cannot yet understand how humiliation, suffering, and death can belong to the mission of the Messias. Therefore Christ takes Peter, James, and John “into a high mountain apart,” and shows them, for a few moments, the glory hidden beneath the lowliness of His earthly life.
“He was transfigured before them. And His face did shine as the sun: and His garments became white as snow.” Christ did not acquire glory upon Mount Tabor. He did not become something that He had not previously been. The eternal Son always possessed the fulness of divine glory, and His sacred humanity was united personally to the divine nature from the first instant of the Incarnation. On Tabor, the splendour ordinarily concealed beneath His passible humanity was permitted to shine outward. The Apostles were allowed to see something of the majesty belonging to the One whom they would soon behold betrayed, scourged, crowned with thorns, and nailed to a Cross.
This is why the feast begins with the tremendous words of the Introit: “Thy lightnings enlightened the world: the earth shook and trembled.” Divine light is not merely agreeable or consoling. It reveals reality and destroys illusion. When Christ shines forth, pride can no longer disguise itself as dignity, self-will as freedom, cowardice as prudence, or moral surrender as compassion. The earth trembles because fallen man has built much of his life upon appearances, and the light of Christ exposes things as they truly are.
Moses and Elias appear beside Him. Moses represents the Law, Elias the Prophets. Both bear witness that Christ is not one teacher among many, nor the founder of a new religious school, but the fulfilment of the whole divine economy. The Law prepared for Him; the Prophets foretold Him; the sacrifices, figures, promises, and expectations of Israel converge upon Him. Saint Luke tells us that Moses and Elias spoke with Christ concerning the decease He would accomplish at Jerusalem—His exodus. The first exodus delivered Israel from Pharaoh through the blood of the lamb. The true Exodus will deliver mankind from the tyranny of sin through the Blood of the Lamb of God.
Even upon the mountain of glory, therefore, the subject is the Passion. Tabor is not an escape from Calvary. It explains Calvary. The face that will be struck is the face that now shines like the sun. The garments for which the soldiers will cast lots are those that now appear white as snow. The Man who will seem utterly defeated upon Good Friday is the eternal Son in whom the Father is well pleased.
Saint Peter, overcome by the vision, cries out: “Lord, it is good for us to be here.” He wishes to build three tabernacles and remain upon the mountain. His desire is understandable, for every human soul was created for the vision and possession of God. Yet Peter must learn that the glory cannot be possessed before the sacrifice is accomplished. He wants to remain upon Tabor, but Christ must descend towards Jerusalem; and whoever would follow Christ must descend with Him.
Here we encounter one of the characteristic temptations of modern religion. Men are willing to accept a Christianity that comforts them, celebrates them, and confirms their existing desires. They are less willing to receive a Christianity that commands repentance, mortification, obedience, and sacrifice. We desire peace without conversion, resurrection without death to self, and heavenly consolation without the discipline of the Cross. We would build a tabernacle upon the mountain and remain there, while Christ commands us to descend into the duties, trials, humiliations, and fidelity of ordinary life.
While Peter is still speaking, the bright cloud overshadows them, and the voice of the Father is heard: “This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased: hear ye Him.” Peter must cease proposing his own arrangement and listen. The Father does not merely command us to admire Christ, to be inspired by Him, or to regard Him as one spiritual voice among others. He commands: “Hear ye Him.”
Hear Him when He says, “Do penance.” Hear Him when He declares that the way to life is narrow. Hear Him when He commands purity of heart, forgiveness of enemies, fidelity in marriage, detachment from riches, and the carrying of the Cross. Hear Him when His words contradict the fashions of the age, the passions of the flesh, and the comfortable judgements of the world. The chief crisis of modern man is not that God has ceased to speak, but that man refuses to listen.
The disciples fall upon their faces and are greatly afraid. Then Jesus approaches, touches them, and says: “Arise, and fear not.” Divine majesty casts them down; divine mercy raises them. This is the pattern of genuine conversion. The soul first sees something of the holiness of God and recognises its own unworthiness. Yet Christ does not reveal our misery in order to abandon us in despair. He draws near, touches us by grace, and commands us to rise.
The Secret of today’s Mass expresses this same movement: “By the splendours of that very illumination cleanse us from the stains of our sins.” Light does not only reveal beauty; it also reveals dirt. A garment may appear clean in a dim room, but its stains become evident in the brightness of day. So too the soul may seem satisfactory when judged by the standards of the world or by its own indulgent conscience. In the light of Christ, hidden resentment, vanity, impurity, dishonesty, and tepidity are exposed. Yet the light reveals the stain precisely because Christ wills to cleanse it.
The Collect tells us that the Transfiguration foreshadows “the perfect adoption” of God’s children. The mystery therefore reveals not only who Christ is, but what those united to Him are destined to become. By grace we are made adopted sons of God and co-heirs with Christ. The glorified humanity of Our Lord is the pattern and pledge of the resurrection of the just. What the Apostles saw in the Head will be accomplished, according to the creaturely measure, in His faithful members.
Christian holiness is therefore a true transfiguration. Grace enlightens the intellect with truth, strengthens the will in charity, brings the passions into order, and gradually restores the likeness of God obscured by sin. The world commands man to invent himself; Christ commands him to be converted. The world tells him to express every appetite; grace teaches him to become what God intended him to be.
Saint Peter declares in the Epistle: “We have not followed cunningly devised fables.” He speaks as an eyewitness of Christ’s majesty. He heard the voice upon the holy mountain, and he later sealed that testimony with his blood. The Christian faith is not a legend devised to console men who fear death. It rests upon the acts of God in history and upon the witness of those who preferred martyrdom to the denial of what they had seen and heard.
Today’s commemoration presents such witnesses. In the year 258, during the persecution of the Emperor Valerian, Pope Saint Sixtus II was seized and put to death with his deacons. Felicissimus and Agapitus suffered with him, and Saint Lawrence would follow four days later. They carried the light of Tabor into the darkness of the catacombs. They knew that the glory of the Church does not consist in worldly security, official approval, or outward success. The Church is glorious because Christ dwells within her, even when her children are driven underground and her shepherds are led to execution.
At the end of the vision, the disciples lift their eyes and see “no one, but only Jesus.” Moses and Elias have disappeared; their testimony has led to its fulfilment. The cloud has withdrawn and the heavenly voice has ceased, but Christ remains. This is the goal of the spiritual life: that every grace, doctrine, devotion, and sacrifice should lead us to Christ, until the soul desires no compromise between Christ and the world, Christ and sin, Christ and self-will, but only Jesus.
The Holy Mass is our veiled Tabor. The same Christ stands upon the altar, although His glory is hidden beneath sacramental appearances. We do not see His face shining like the sun, yet faith recognises the King of glory beneath the form of the Sacred Host. The Preface declares that through the mystery of the Word made flesh “the new light of Thy glory hath shone upon the eyes of our mind,” so that, knowing God in visible form, we may be drawn to the love of things invisible.
We too must shortly descend from the mountain. The Mass will end, consolations may pass, and the trials of life will return. But we descend knowing who Christ is. The Cross is not the victory of darkness. Every temptation resisted, every duty faithfully accomplished, every humiliation patiently accepted, and every sin honestly confessed allows the light of Christ to reclaim and transfigure something within us.
Let us therefore hear the beloved Son. Let us permit His light to expose and cleanse us. Let us follow Him down the mountain and along the road of the Cross, confident that the day-star will arise, the adoption begun in baptism will be perfected, and those who suffer faithfully with Christ shall be made co-heirs of His eternal glory.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
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