THE TEXT BELOW IS THE TRANSCRIPTION OF THE VIDEO COMMENTARY BY FR. FERNANDO ARMELLINI

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A good Sunday for everyone. 

As every year, on the second Sunday of Lent, the story of the transfiguration of Jesus is proposed to us; this year, we will have the version according to Mark, which appears in the three synoptic Gospels. It is a very well-known text, very dear to Christians, who thought of setting the scene on Mount Tabor, where the transfiguration of Jesus would take place. 

The Gospel text does not mention Mount Tabor; it speaks of a high mountain, and we’ll see that it’s not a physical mountain but a biblical one, because the evangelists use biblical language and imagery to communicate their message. We are going to try to understand these images and then grasp the message for our lives. The usual interpretation of this narrative is that Jesus privileged three of his disciples, perhaps the best he had, and took them to the mountain, where he showed them a vision of paradise. If things were on these terms, we might be very envious of Peter, James, and John, but this event would not have much to say about our lives. 

Let’s say it right away: it’s not a chronicle; it’s a catechetical text written to nourish the faith of the first Christian communities and ours. This narration seeks to present the path the disciples took to understand their Master’s identity, and all three evangelists aim to make us walk that path, which is difficult to understand and even more difficult to practice, namely, to follow the Master and to have the same experience the three of them had on the mountain. In simple words, if we do not come like the three apostles to see the Master’s transfigured face, we cannot follow him in his life proposal and in how he prepares us for that task. 

Let’s listen to the context in which the evangelist Mark places this story. It’s very important to place it in context, and the evangelist expressly reminds us of its significance. Let’s listen to it: 

After six days, Jesus took Peter, James, and John and led them up a high mountain, apart from the others.

“After six days” – this is a clear invitation from the evangelist to go and verify what happened six days earlier, as if to say, ‘If you want to understand what I’m going to tell you, you have to go and see what happened six days before.’ It had happened that, in answer to a question from the Master, Peter had said, “You are the Christ,” meaning you are the Messiah expected for centuries in Israel. And Jesus had not denied Peter’s answer, so the apostles were immediately filled with great enthusiasm; they thought, ‘Now we too will begin to succeed, to be somebody in this world.’ But Jesus had gone on to say, “The Son of Man must suffer much, to be rejected by the elders, by the chief priests, by the scribes, to be put to death, to be killed, and after three days will rise again.” And immediately afterward, he had added: ‘If anyone wants to follow the same way as me, stop thinking of yourself, take up your cross, and follow me, for if anyone wants to keep his life for himself, he will lose it; if instead, he stakes his life on my proposal and the Gospel, he saves it.’ The apostles’ enthusiasm must have cooled immediately; in the name of all, Peter had reacted and said: ‘This cannot happen,’ because the Torah says that God curses the person condemned to death.’ 

When Mark wrote his Gospel between 68 and 70, immediately after Nero’s persecution, the Christian communities were wounded but still very much alive. The great difficulty, the great impediment for Jews to adhere to Christ and the Gospel, was precisely the Cross, which was considered a curse. How could a crucified, defeated, and failed man be the Messiah Israel had been waiting for centuries? The Cross is the hindrance to believing in Jesus. 

Paul says so in his letter to the Corinthians: “The cross is a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the pagans.” We have the sign of the cross as our symbol and repeat it often to affirm to ourselves and others that we have accepted the proposal Jesus made. But the early Christians did not have the cross as a symbol. 

By the time of Constantine, after the discovery of the Holy Sepulcher, a golden cross was erected on Calvary. From then on, it became the symbol of Christianity. Before this, the anchor and the fish were the symbols Christians used, as were the Chi Rho, which is a Christian symbol for “Christ,” written by overlapping the two Greek letters “Chi (X)” and “Rho (P),” the first two Greek letters of the name “CHRIST;” the peacock, the pelican, the alpha, and the omega were also used, but not the cross. 

A very famous piece of graffiti is found in the ‘pedagogium’ of the Palatine. What was the pedagogium? It was a school for training imperial pages. What is written on this graffiti? First of all, you see a crucified man with the head of a donkey; there is the cross, and then the inscription: “Alexamenos worships his god.” In all likelihood, this Alexamenos was a brother of our faith who was mocked by his fellow imperial pagans for worshipping a crucified man. 

Think of Paul, who was chosen by the community of Antioch, along with Barnabas, to go and preach the Gospel to the Gentiles and to his co-religionists, the Jews who were scattered throughout the world. He went through all the synagogues of the cities of the Roman Empire to announce that the Messiah had come. Imagine the joy of proclaiming that the Messiah has come, but when you add that he was condemned, killed, and died on the cross, no wonder they drove Paul out of the synagogues. 

One of the greatest efforts of the early Christians was to help people see that the cross was not a scandal or a folly but an expression of God’s love and wisdom. This was not easy, and it marked the beginning of the catechesis he addressed to the primitive communities and to us today through the transfiguration narrative. This is the answer to the riddle of the crucifixion.

What happens? Jesus takes Peter, James, and John with him and leads them up a high mountain. These are biblical images we will now try to decipher and understand, because it’s the path we must also walk to find an answer to this mystery. The steps to follow are these if you want to understand how a failed and despised man, executed by men, is the Messiah of God. The first step is to leave the plain where all the people are, where you think by the standards of this world. Let Jesus be with you; let Jesus take you by the hand and lead you up into the mountain. 

What kind of mountain is this? It’s not Mount Tabor, of course. Mountains were the abodes of the gods in all religions, and Israel also used the mountain as a symbol of where God is and where God’s thoughts are assimilated. That’s where Jesus takes his disciples and us if we want to understand this mystery of the cross. It’s not a material mountain; it’s the moment when you engage with the disciples’ thoughts, God’s way of reasoning, and God’s feelings. It therefore represents the inner experience of this manifestation of God. 

We need to get away from the plain, from the earth, and go up to heaven, where God’s thoughts are far from those of the earth. Then, “they alone.” Mark alone provides this detail. To assimilate God’s way of thinking, we need to be alone with Jesus. These moments of intimacy with him, in silence, in meditation, in prayer, are necessary, moments in which we let ourselves be enveloped in his way of seeing the world, people, and life. 

People’s judgmental standards are too strong, too deeply rooted in our hearts. Just think of Peter’s reaction; he reacted, and Jesus immediately added, “You think according to men, not according to God.” So we must move away from vanity, from empty sayings, and from the way of reasoning of people who reason by looking only at realities, to the successes of this world. Take the Gospel in your hand, begin to reflect, form a judgment according to God, and at the end you will conclude that the Gospel is right, that to be a person means to follow the Gospel, the way of Jesus, the way of the gift of life, and that what he told us is worth risking your life for. 

Now let’s listen to what’s happening on the mountain: 

And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no fuller on earth could bleach them. 

When you’re in the mountains, you can’t see things as you used to when you were among people, and you think like them. On the mountain, Jesus looks different. When you enter the world of God, you witness a metamorphosis of his face. He was transfigured before them, not before those on the plain who still see the crucified one as they did before. Now on the mountain, they see him transfigured; on the plain, the people see Jesus as a good man, generous, wise, but as a loser, a defeated man. He won no battles. He is not a great person who conquered kingdoms, ascended the throne, and ruled many… Nobody wants to be like him because, in the eyes of the world, the crucified one is a failure, a loser. 

What happens on the mountain? The disfigured face of the crucified takes on a completely different light that transfigures him; the defeated one on the mountain becomes the winner because greatness is no longer measured on the plain by the battles won, but by the love shown. The garment that Jesus wears: on the plain it is the garment of the servant, the loincloth of the slave. In Greco-Roman society, the slave was despised; it was certainly not the ideal to which men aspired. On the mountain, everything changes; the judgments are reversed, and the garments of Jesus, those of the slave, those of the one who is to serve, to whom all can give orders when they need, become white and shining. 

The evangelist Mark insists on this whiteness, “such as no fuller on earth could bleach them.” These are biblical images: those of white and light. White signifies light; light is the first creature of God, the first word God pronounced: “And he saw that the light was good,” and from that moment onward, all people have always appreciated the light. The Qohelet says that people like the light; they like to see the sun, and the clothing of Jesus becomes luminous and splendid. In biblical language, clothing indicates the person, what the person looks like on the outside. He’s luminous; he’s not what people see; he’s a failure because he’s a servant who has only a loincloth… NO, here he has the shining garment of those who have succeeded in life, because success is not the success of battles won but the success of love. 

These colors recall the Passover: “An angel of the Lord came down from heaven, rolled away the stone and sat on it, his appearance was radiance and his clothing white as snow.” It is the light from heaven, the light of God, which now illuminates the darkest cave of death and signifies the victory of God’s life over death. Mark insists on this white color; he is the only one who mentions that no bleach can make them so white. This is also the clothing that the disciples are to wear. Their whole person must radiate this light, which is the light of love; and the fact that the evangelist Mark insists on the whiteness of Jesus’ clothing means that no one like him lets the light of God’s love shine through, and that this love must now also shine through in his disciples who follow the same path. 

During this incredible experience, two characters now appear. Let’s hear who they are: 

Then Elijah and Moses appeared to them, and they conversed with Jesus. 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 because they were so terrified.

What are these two characters doing in the transfiguration story? Both Moses and Elijah longed to behold the face of God. Moses had asked the Lord, “Show me your glory.” God had answered, “You cannot see my face, but I will cover you with my hand until I pass by. Then I will remove my hand, and you shall see my back, but you cannot see my face.” 

Elijah also wanted to see the face of God. He went up onto the mountain, onto Horeb, and had an experience of God, a shocking one as he waited; he thought that God would reveal himself in the terrifying forces, in the earthquake, in the strong rushing wind, in the fire; instead, God revealed himself in a gentle breeze. He covered his face and began to understand that God was not as he had imagined; God’s face was different. 

Both Moses and Elijah had begun to sense this face of God, but the full revelation was yet to come. This is what the account of the transfiguration tells us. Now Moses and Elijah can finally behold the face of God in Jesus of Nazareth. Their wishes have been fulfilled: what was written in the Old Testament about the manifestations of God prepared for this full revelation. And Peter takes the word; he does not yet understand anything, says the evangelist Mark. He doesn’t know what he’s saying, and asks to make three tents: one for Jesus, one for Moses, and one for Elijah. 

The meaning of these three tents is not easy to determine, but they certainly reference the Exodus. Here, they indicate Peter’s desire to stay there, as the one who builds a tent means he wants to fix his dwelling place in a certain place he does not want to move from. Maybe our spiritual experience can help us understand what Peter was sensing. 

When we hear the Gospel, we instinctively assent to what Jesus reveals to us because we’re made right. Our inner self tells us that the true person is the one who loves, the one who opens his heart to his brother’s needs. It would be good to stop there, because returning to the world and putting into practice this new life we have discovered in the Gospel is complicated. We don’t willingly go back to everyday life… the problems, the social conflicts, the family disagreements, the dramas we all must deal with that instill fear. But a healthy relationship with the Lord does not lead to this isolation. 

There is a time of prayer, a time when we learn to reason by God’s standards, but then we must return to the world of people to carry this light. There’s a note about the disciples being afraid. Why are they afraid? They are afraid because if things are as they sensed on the mountain, that is, if the one who gives life in the sight of God is the victor, then the life that triumphs and the life of those who love are to be feared. If to be crucified is right, we cannot but be afraid, because we are called to lay down our lives as he did. 

And now we have the voice from heaven that clarifies the meaning of the three disciples’ experience. Let’s listen: 

Then a cloud came, casting a shadow over them; then from the cloud came a voice, ‘This is my beloved Son. Listen to him.’ 

Suddenly, looking around, they saw no one but Jesus. As they were coming down from the mountain, he charged them not to tell anyone what they had seen, except when the Son of Man had risen from the dead. So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what it meant to rise from the dead. Peter had asked to build three tents made with men’s hands. God responded by enveloping them in a cloud. 

What is this cloud? It is a persistent biblical image in the Old Testament. The book of Exodus, for example, mentions a bright cloud that protected the people of Israel in the wilderness, accompanying and guiding them. God also had a tent that accompanied his people. He had this tent, which Moses entered to meet the Lord. When Moses went in, a cloud covered the tent, always as a sign of God’s presence. Even when Moses went up the mountain to receive the Torah, a cloud enveloped the mountain. 

The meaning is clear. Mark used this imagery to tell us that Peter, James, and John, in a particularly significant moment, were introduced to the world and the thought of God. They received a special enlightenment that helped them understand, or at least intuit, the true identity of the Master and the goal of their path. 

Jesus had not shown himself to be the triumphant messiah they all expected, but rather as the one they had been waiting for, who, after a bitter conflict, had confronted the religious power, had been harassed and persecuted, and, in the end, had been taken out of the way. At a certain point, these three disciples, enveloped in the cloud, began to realize that they were in the midst of it and that their destiny would be no different from that of their Master. They were afraid. 

Out of this cloud, that is, out of God, came a voice: “This is my beloved son; listen to him.” The phrase “voice from heaven” is one the rabbis frequently use to convey how God sees things. Here is how God sees Jesus of Nazareth: crucified, defeated, yet the beloved son. He had already said it at the time of baptism. And here is an addition: “Listen to him.” 

What does the beloved son mean? In the Old Testament, within Jewish culture, a son was recognized as such by his father when he saw his likeness in him; then he would say to him, ‘You are my son,’ not only by outward appearance but also by the values this son cultivated. Those values had to be his father’s, so he recognized him as his son. Here we have the Father in Heaven who recognizes in Jesus of Nazareth the beloved Son. 

‘If you look at him, you see me, for he is only begotten who perfectly reproduces my face.’ The consequence: “Listen to him.” To listen, ‘Shema’ in Hebrew does not simply mean to hear with your ears; it means to give your allegiance. Only the one who gives his allegiance and listens to Jesus of Nazareth becomes like him, a son or daughter recognized by the Father as one who resembles him. And the resemblance to this Father is given by love. 

I wish you all a good Sunday and a good start toward Easter.