A Reflection for the Second Sunday of Lent

Reading today’s gospel, the grammatical nitpicker in me could not get past fiddling with the question of “transformed” vs. “transfigured.” This gospel reading is the Transfiguration—while they may be listed as synonymous on the Internet, are the words really interchangeable? (Spoiler alert: in this context, they are not.)

In the context of the Transfiguration narrative, to be transfigured is to have one’s true nature revealed, not to be transformed (that is, to be changed or remade). When Jesus is on the mountain with Peter, James and John, nothing about him changes, but is revealed—as though the trappings of his full humanity temporarily fall away, to see Christ in the fullness of his divinity—and not just in his divinity, but exactly as God made him and loves him (the “beloved Son” part makes that clear). That revelation includes the setting itself, the mountain, where so often in Scripture humankind interacts with the divine. Jesus is the conduit for this interaction during this narrative, the fully human, fully divine bridge between the two.

A wise woman once reminded me that “trauma does not change you; it only makes you a bigger version of who you already are.” The trauma that is the lived experience of this pandemic begs that same point. Transfiguration has been the modus operandi of this pandemic experience, revealing the truest nature of so many people and realities. What this Lent can provide for us, then, is a chance to sanctify these (hopefully, waning) days of the pandemic with a revelation of our truest natures and figuring out how to take what we learn in these purifying forty days down off of the proverbial mountaintop and into the ordinary life of Ordinary Time. Where do we start? By heeding the words of the cinematic cloud whose voice boomed over Peter, James and John: “This is my beloved Son. Listen to Him.”