Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord (Mt 17.1-9)

His face shone like the sun.”

My dear brothers and sisters,

Tomorrow the Church pauses in the green of Ordinary Time to climb a mountain. Every year, on August 6th, in the middle of summer, we are given a glimpse of Easter glory. Why? Because we need it. We need to remember where we are going.

Look at where Matthew places this story. Just six days before, in Caesarea Philippi, Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter confessed, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And immediately after that triumph, Jesus said something terrible: that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer greatly and be killed.

Can you imagine the shock? Peter even rebuked him: “God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you.”

And so Jesus does something profoundly merciful. Before He shows them the Cross, He shows them the glory of the Cross. Before He asks them to walk through darkness, He gives them light to remember in the darkness.

He takes three of them—Peter, James, and John – the same three who will later see him sweating blood in Gethsemane—and leads them up a high mountain apart.

And there, He was transfigured before them.

Three things happen on that mountain that are for us today.

1. Jesus reveals who He truly is.

Matthew says his face shone like the sun and his clothes became white as light. This is not Jesus putting on a costume. This is the opposite – for a moment, He stops hiding. The glory that was always inside Him shines out.

And Moses and Elijah appear. This is no accident. Moses represents the Law, Elijah the Prophets. The whole Old Testament – all of Israel’s longing, all of its law and promise – stands beside Jesus and speaks with Him. He is the fulfillment. He is what it was all pointing to.

Then the Father speaks, as He did at the Baptism: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.”

In moments of confusion, when our faith feels thin, the Father gives us the one command we need: Listen to him.

2. Peter reveals who we are.

I love Peter on this mountain. He is overwhelmed. He is terrified. And so he starts talking, as we all do when we are terrified.

“Lord, it is good that we are here. If you wish, I will make three tents…”

Peter wants to stay. He wants to freeze the moment, build a tabernacle, and never go down again. Who can blame him? Up there it is beautiful, clear, and safe. Down below there are arguments, sick people, Roman soldiers, and a cross waiting in Jerusalem.

We all know that temptation. We want faith to be only Tabor, never Calvary. We want a Christianity of spiritual highs, of beautiful moments, without the difficult descent into ordinary life, into our families, our work, our struggles.

But you cannot stay on Tabor. The tents Peter wanted to build were not the plan. The true tabernacle God wanted to build was not a tent on a mountain but a human heart transformed by grace.

3. The mountain is given to us for the valley.

Why does God grant us moments of transfiguration? Perhaps you have had them – a moment at prayer when God felt undeniably close, a moment at a retreat, at the birth of a child, or at Adoration, when for a second everything was bright.

He does not give them to us so we can escape the valley. He gives them to us so we can endure the valley.

Jesus and the three come down the mountain immediately. And what do they find at the bottom? A boy possessed, disciples who failed to heal him, a crowd arguing straight back into the mess.

But they come down differently. They now know, even if they do not fully understand, that the One who walks into suffering is the Son of glory. That the Cross is not a failure, but a passage.

My brothers and sisters, perhaps you are in a valley right now. A diagnosis, a broken relationship, a child who has left the Church, a weariness in your own faith. This feast tells you: the glory is still true, even when you cannot see it.

The Transfiguration was not meant only for Jesus. St. Leo the Great said: “In the transfiguration, the principal aim was to remove the scandal of the Cross from the disciples’ hearts.”

And the principal aim for us is the same. God wants to transfigure you, too. St. Paul says in Romans that we are being transformed from one degree of glory to another. Your daily faithfulness, your hidden sacrifices, your listening to Him – this is how your face, too, will slowly begin to shine like the sun.

So today, let us climb with Him. In silence, in prayer, let us listen to Him.

And then, strengthened, let us have the courage to come back down the mountain with Him.

Amen.