Dear Friends,
Today, we celebrate the Transfiguration of the Lord. For the first time, Jesus shares with his closest three disciples (Peter, James, and John) a foretaste of the glory that the Father will give him through his Passion, Death, and Resurrection. This past week in the daily Mass readings, we saw Moses going up Mount Sinai to meet God, to speak with him “face to face”.
After coming down from the mountain, Moses’ face would be radiant with the
glory of God that had been shared with him.
Notice that Moses is also present in the gospel of the Transfiguration today. The Fathers of the Church saw Moses as a “type” of Christ. That is to say that Moses was a kind of preparatory figure for Jesus Christ. As Moses’ face shined with the glory of God – Jesus Christ himself is the fullness of God’s glory. This is the life that we are being admitted into by our life in Christ and our willingness to share our
sufferings with him. It was only through the Cross that Christ was glorified by the Father.
One of the blessings that can be used at the end of Mass really speaks to what is going here. “May the Lord bless you and keep you; May he let his face shine upon you and show you his mercy; May he turn his countenance towards you and give you his peace.” We want to see the face of God so that our faces may also shine with his radiant glory.
Sincerely yours in Christ,
Fr. Thomas Byrne