Holy Hour Reading and Reflection

Following our monthly Holy Hour of adoration, the reading (which is always the Gospel reading for the following Sunday) and reflection (which will be written by a different Young Adult each month) will be posted here. Here is the reading and reflection, written by Blaise Benapfl, from the March Holy Hour. (Make sure to check back after each Holy Hour for new readings and reflections!)

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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.

As they were coming down from the mountain,
he charged them not to relate what they had seen to anyone,
except when the Son of Man had risen from the dead.
So they kept the matter to themselves,
questioning what rising from the dead meant.

The Transfiguration is one of the better known gospel stories. We hear it every year at Mass, and it is the fourth Luminous mystery of the Rosary. When Jesus and his inner circle of apostles reach the top of the mountain we see him conversing with Moses and Elijah. In this there is a coming together of the Old Testament and the New Testament; of several old covenants with the one eternal covenant between God and man.

In the Transfiguration, Elijah represents the Old Testament prophets, and Moses the Law. These are the ways which God communicated to His people in the Old Covenants, and as Jesus Himself said, He came not to replace these covenants, but to fulfill them.

It was incredible what God did for us through Moses. Here we were, a stubbornly disobedient people who had already broken at least three covenants with our creator. But instead of turning His back on us, of calling creation just an experiment gone wrong, He gave us rules to live by, which were an insight into divine wisdom. And what was our response? We turned back to idolatry.

God had to up the ante. Due to our fallen nature, just giving us the Law would not suffice. This is how Jesus fulfills the Old Covenant. He didn't come into the world just to reaffirm the old Law, or even to give us a new one. We miss the entire point of the Incarnation and certainly the Passion if we think that Jesus only gave us a new way to live. "For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that world might be saved through him." We already knew how we were supposed to live. Jesus came into the world to make that life possible. It is only through the grace that Jesus provides that we can even begin to fathom the idea that we will one day, "be perfect, as our Father in Heaven is perfect." For most of us this won't happen until we ourselves are in Heaven, but we can get a head start here on Earth. In the graces of Baptism we are born again into the family of God. When we stumble in life we can turn to the graces of Confession, that we may once again echo our Mother's words, "My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my savior."

And this takes us back to the Transfiguration. It was here that Jesus's inner circle of apostles began to see for themselves what Peter had exclaimed six days earlier at Caeseria Philippi, "You are the Christ, the son of the living God." Jesus tells us that these words were given to Peter by the Father, and at the Mount of Transfiguration, the Father Himself reaffirms the statement. "This is my beloved Son; listen to Him." If, by this point, the apostles had recovered from their shock, they certainly would have wanted to hear more from God. After all, how often is it that the Father communicates like this? But there is beauty in God's brevity. He tells us exactly who Jesus is, and exactly what we are to do. "This is my beloved Son; listen to Him." The day that we truly grasp God's words is the day we become saints.

The Apostles were given a brief glimpse of Jesus in His beatific glory. This splendor is camouflaged from us when we see our Lord in the Eucharist, but that doesn't mean that He isn't still there in all his glory. To contemplate that fact, that we are all here, quite literally enjoying quality time with our savior, I can only echo Peter's sentiment, "Lord, it is good that we are here."