Second Sunday of Lent - What's the Transfiguration doing in Lent?

Readings: Genesis 22: 1-2, 9a, 10-13, 15-18; Psalm 116; Romans 8:31-34; Mark 9: 2-10

What’s the Transfiguration doing here in Lent? Why, in the midst of this season of penance, with its sombre purple, does the Church present us with this image of Jesus’ garments becoming ‘glistening, intensely white as no fuller on earth could bleach them’ (Mk 9: 3)? Wouldn’t that fit better with the mood of Eastertide, when the earth is bid to ‘be glad as glory floods her, ablaze with light from her eternal King,’ as the deacon sings at the Easter Vigil?

Indeed, many commentators on this episode in the Gospels do interpret it precisely as a vision of the risen Jesus, pointing forward either to his Resurrection, or even to his Second Coming. That still doesn’t tell us what this account of it is doing here on the second Sunday of Lent, though. I think, perhaps, that we can find out what the Church is pointing to by looking at the other readings appointed for today, and especially the account of the sacrifice of Isaac in Genesis 22.

In this passage, we hear how Abraham, in obedience to God, is prepared to sacrifice his only son to him: at the last minute, an angel of the Lord stays his hand and, having sacrificed a ram instead, Abraham is told of the reward for his faithfulness: his descendants will be multiplied, and by his offspring shall all the nations on the earth bless themselves (cf. Gen 22: 18).

This sacrifice of an only son should, of course, get us thinking: indeed, the Church has often seen in the figure of Isaac carrying the wood for his own sacrifice (cf. Gen 22: 6) a figure of Jesus carrying his cross to Calvary. That sacrifice, of course, was not stopped or swapped at the last minute; only after the last minute, on the third day, did it become clear that this was not a pointless and incomprehensible death (as Isaac’s, too, looked like it was going to be) but the glorification of Jesus – that descendant of Abraham in whom all the nations bless themselves (cf. Gal 3: 16).

So what is the Transfiguration doing here in Lent? I think that, just as it was for the disciples who saw it before they witnessed all the events of Christ’s passion and death, it’s a sign of hope – a reminder for us of the goal of our Lenten journey. But the story of the sacrifice of Isaac reminds us that it’s important how Jesus came to his risen glory – that seemingly pointless and incomprehensible road to death which we commemorate in this season. And that too is a sign of hope – a sign that God, as he did for Abraham and as he did most of all in Christ, can transform and give meaning to our lives even when they may seem pointless or consist in incomprehensible suffering: Jesus, whom God did not spare but gave up for us all (cf. Rm 8: 32), has shared in our humanity, shared in our suffering, shared even in our death, so that in those times of trial we too can hope to share in the glory he revealed to his disciples in his Transfiguration.

And of course, that hope for the future can transform – or, we might say, transfigure – our lives even now, shedding a different light on our difficulties and sorrows, for it enables us to share with St Paul the conviction that, ‘If God is for us, who is against us? … It is God who justifies; who is to condemn?’ (Rm 8: 31, 33)