Wholly Fire and Light: Clean Week, Lent and Living the Transfiguration

And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white

The Christian vocation is "participation in the Divine Nature." (2 Peter 1:4). We are transfigured in Christ as we cooperate with God's grace. This transfiguration will be complete when our entire person is fully redeemed and transformed. The effects of the transfiguration involve the entire created order as well. It will finally be reconstituted in Jesus Christ and handed back to the Father. The followers of Jesus, the Transfigured One, now walk in His Way and are being transformed into His likeness, to shine as lights in a world steeped in darkness.

P>CHESAPEAKE, VA. (Catholic Online) - In the Eastern Christian Churches, Orthodox and Catholic, the First Week of the "Great Lent" is called "Clean Week". The focus of the week is to enter the Lenten practices of prayer, fasting and almsgiving with fervor - to set the pace. Strict fasting is encouraged, along with frequent prayer and almsgiving. The intensity of the week is intended to assist the believer in cultivating the proper disposition needed to achieve the desired end of the forty days of Lent, ongoing conversion.

The call goes out to "clean house", to be rid of all sin and entanglements which hold us back from embracing the freedom the Lord desires for each of us. In fact, in many Orthodox and Eastern Catholic communities the actual houses of believers are cleaned and stripped of excess, a symbol of the interior dynamic of the week.  During the forty days of Lent we are all called to enter into the holy struggle against our disordered passions and weaknesses so that we become more fitting vessels for the very life and light of God.  

This Sunday, the Second Sunday of Lent, I will have the privilege of reading the words of the Holy Gospel at Mass. It is Cycle B so I proclaim the account of the Transfiguration from the Gospel of St. Mark (Mk. 9:2-10): "Jesus took Peter, James, and John and led them up a high mountain apart by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no fuller on earth could bleach them."

"Then Elijah appeared to them along with Moses, and they were conversing with Jesus. Then Peter said to Jesus in reply, "Rabbi, it is good that we are here! Let us make three tents: one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah." He hardly knew what to say, they were so terrified. Then a cloud came, casting a shadow over them; from the cloud came a voice," This is my beloved Son. Listen to him." Suddenly, looking around, they no longer saw anyone but Jesus alone with them."

Every year I am asked the question: Why, on the second Sunday of Lent does the Church offer us an account of the Transfiguration?  The inclusion of this account is an ancient liturgical practice. We also hear the account proclaimed on the Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord. Whether during Lent or on its own Feast, the Gospel account is meant to focus us on the "end" of the Christian life and our own vocation."End" in the philosophical and theological sense means purpose or goal.

We will all be transfigured, as the Lord Himself was transfigured, when our redemption is complete in the Resurrection of the Body. Then, we will live, in the new heaven and new earth, in the fullness of the Communion of Love. This reality is meant to affect the way we live our lives - beginning right now. It also helps us understand one of the purposes of our ascetical practices during these forty days.

Eastern Christians have retained some of the practices and customs which reveal these insights. . The disordered passions and the division within us - which we are called to struggle against during Lent - are the result of sin. Our freedom has been fractured and the only way it can be healed is through the Splint of the Cross.

An ancient homily reminds us "Just as the body of the Lord was glorified on the mountain when it was transfigured in the glory of God and in infinite light, so the bodies of the saints will be glorified and shine like lightning. "The glory which you have given me I have given to them" (John 17:22). As countless candles are lighted from a single flame, so the bodies of all Christ's members will be what Christ is. Our human nature is transformed into the fullness of God; it becomes wholly fire and light" (Pseudo-Macarius, 15th homily)  

From the earliest centuries, the Church emphasized the centrality of the Transfiguration of the Lord in the Christian life and the plan of God for the whole human race. Our experience of our life in the Lord now is only the beginning of what is to come in the kingdom. However, our life is already a participation in that new reality, right now. The Church, in the words of the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council, is a "seed of the kingdom" to come. Our life within the Church is actually a participation in the eternal realities of the life to come in a new heaven and a new earth.

The Transfiguration account read on the Second Sunday of Lent invites us to reflect on what this all can mean for us - beginning right now. This event on the Mountain was meant to strengthen the faith of these three disciples. They were about to witness the events that would lead their Lord and Master along what would appear to be an ignominious path, up Golgotha´s lonely hill, to be crucified, a fate reserved for common criminals. Their own faith would be shaken, tested and tried.

He loved all who were His own in this world (John 13:1). Yes, as so many beautiful writings in the Tradition remind us, the Lord wanted to encourage them - and to encourage us. However, this One who came from eternity and took upon Himself the limitations of time, was about to open the portal of eternity which would never again be closed to those with eyes to see.

He would reveal to Peter, James and John the eternal now of His own glory. He was doing much more than simply encouraging them. He was showing them who He was - and who they would become in Him. He was revealing to them what had already begun; and giving them a vision that would forever change the way they viewed themselves, their daily lives and their mission, after He would return to the Father.

As they lived their lives no longer for themselves but for Him they began to undergo their own trials and walked the way to their own transfiguration. This is the path of all who bear His name and carry forward His mission. We entered through the waters of the womb of Holy Baptism into the life of the Church which is His Body. We are now "in process", works "in progress". We are being re-created and transfigured in Him. He has brought heaven to earth and earth to heaven, through the Paschal mystery.

On that Mountain, Jesus revealed before mortal eyes the Transcendent Truth of who He is - and who Peter, James and John ...and each one of us - will become in Him. They were invited to exercise their freedom and embrace the path that He had prepared. So are we, right now. He was grounding them in the eternal Truth, and opening up for the countless millions who would hear this story from their faithful witness a glimpse of the Glory that is to come as we also choose Him in our daily lives.

Peter would later write of this experience: "His divine power has bestowed on us everything that makes for life and devotion, through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and power. Through these, he has bestowed on us the precious and very great promises, so that through them you may come to share in the divine nature, after escaping from the corruption that is in the world because of evil desire. For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, virtue with knowledge, knowledge with self-control, self-control with endurance, endurance with devotion, devotion with mutual affection, mutual affection with love...."

"We did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received honor and glory from God the Father when that unique declaration came to him from the majestic glory, "This is my Son, my beloved, with whom I am well pleased." We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven while we were with him on the holy mountain." (2 Peter 1)

The Christian vocation is an actual "participation in the Divine Nature." (2 Peter 1:4) beginning now. We are being transfigured in Christ as we cooperate with God's grace. This transfiguration will only be complete when our entire person, including our body, is fully redeemed and transformed. The effects of the transfiguration involve the entire created order as well. It will finally be reconstituted in Jesus Christ and handed back to the Father. The followers of Jesus, the Transfigured One, now walk in His Way and are being transformed into His likeness, to shine as lights in a world steeped in darkness.

The Beloved Disciple John used this event of the Transfiguration as a "hermeneutic", a lens through which he gave the early Christians a deeper insight into their difficulties, struggles and mission in the context of our progressive transformation. In his first Letter to the early Churches, he encouraged them to persevere and live differently by referring to the event that occurred on that Mountain. He encouraged them to not be surprised or discouraged that the "world" did not recognize them, but rather to persevere in love through holding the vision of a transfigured life before them:

"See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. Yet so we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God's children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope based on him makes himself pure, as he is pure." (1 John 3)

The Lord Jesus has also shown us the way up the mountain. He has invited us into a new way of living in Him through living within the communion of the Church. Living in that Church we are invited to go into the world and invite all men and women, through the waters of the womb of Baptism, into the new communion of love where they can begin the process of conversion and transfiguration. Born again, we are all invited to join with Peter, James and John and cry out in our day: "It is good for us to be here."

As we reflect on the Transfiguration of Jesus on this Second Sunday of Lent, let us enter more deeply into the mystery by living in the Transfiguration now. It truly is good for us to be here. Let us draw encouragement from the account of the Transfiguration of Jesus Christ and respond to the invitations of grace in our daily lives in order to grow more fully into the Image and likeness of Jesus Christ our Savior and Lord revealing His Transfigured glory to a world waiting to be born anew. Our Lenten observance is an invitation into an ongoing transformation in Jesus Christ. Wholly Fire and Light!

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