Gospel Reflection Sunday February 25th 2024 – Second Sunday of Lent

By Fr Brian Maher OMI

Gospel Reflection for Sunday February 25th 2024 | Second Sunday of Lent

I think the well-known phrase, “the agony and the ecstasy” properly puts into context this week’s Gospel – Mark’s version of the Transfiguration story. Last week we were with Jesus in the desert where he was ‘tested by Satan’; this week we accompany him up the mountain where he experiences very profoundly the presence and comfort of God.

When St. Teresa of Avila said, “Christ is a very good friend because we behold him as man and see him with weaknesses and trials, and he is company for us.” she was, I think, very accurately touching the reality of Jesus’ life and mission.

Like all of us Jesus had ‘weaknesses and trials’, anxieties and worries, doubts and fears. The immediate context of this week’ Gospel is an extremely stressful six days where, for the first time, he openly tells his apostles that he is likely to be put to death, and then has a major confrontation with Peter, saying to him, “Get behind me, Satan.” Referring to his closest friend as ‘Satan’ shows, I think, the strain Jesus was under at this time. Poor Peter, who only a few days before declared Jesus to be the Messiah, must have been deeply hurt by Jesus’ rebuke.

Today’s Gospel incident happened, according to Mark, six days later. Tired, under a lot of stress and fearful about what lay ahead of him, he chose three of his apostles and escaped up the mountain to be alone, rest and recover. Peter must have been thrilled to be included in the three chosen to accompany him. Perhaps Jesus was, in a way, apologising to Peter for his outburst and restoring their friendship.

This was, without doubt, a low point for Jesus. He recognised the opposition he faced from some very powerful people, and he had to face the reality that continuing along the path he had chosen would likely lead to death. When he turned to his closest companions and friends for support he found misunderstanding and opposition. As he climbed the mountain he must have felt very, very lonely.

And then it happened!

Suddenly and unexpectedly, probably while he was praying, his ever-loving Father came to him. A few lines from a poem by William Wordsworth always come back to me when I try to imagine what was happening on that mountain:  “Sad was I, even to pain depressed, / Importunate and heavy load! / The Comforter hath found me here, / Upon this lonely road.”

While Wordsworth was not thinking about anything overtly spiritual in these lines, they capture for me the essence of the Transfiguration. As Jesus climbed that mountain he was, without doubt, ‘sad’, perhaps ‘even to pain depressed’. The realisation that his journey was probably going to lead to his death was a ‘heavy load’ weighing on him, always present, coming closer, inevitable.

Who exactly the ‘Comforter’ was I have never worked out, but for me it is God. I also love that it was the Comforter that found him and not the other way round. We cannot force ourselves on God. We cannot dictate the terms and conditions of our communication with God. More often than not, in prayer, it is God who finds us, usually when we least expect it!

Jesus needed ‘comforting’ on the mountain. He needed reassurance that he wasn’t alone in his mission and that he was on the right track. The Father already knew this and, when the time was right, God wanted nothing more than to say, “This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!”.

The whole experience on the mountain was, what we would today call a ‘mystical’ experience. I prefer to call them ‘moments of God’ because that is what they are, short moments when God allows us to experience a Love which is wordless and thoughtless.

Jesus and the others with him, Peter, James and John, did the best they could to put into words an experience that is completely beyond words. They fall back on accepted Old Testament descriptions of similar meetings with God. Moses and Elijah, two prominent Old Testament figures, both encountered and spoke with God on a Mountain. By referencing Moses and Elijah the experience of Jesus is placed right up there with the greatest of the Bible.

Interestingly, while the experience was clearly granted to Jesus, the message of the Father was addressed to the other three apostles. The comfort and reassurance needed by Jesus was granted to him. How wonderful it must have been for him to know, deep within himself, that he was ‘the beloved’ of God.

The message to the others is possibly a wake-up call for them. Given the confrontation Jesus had with Peter just a few days earlier, I wonder did Peter squirm a bit when he heard, “Listen to him!”?

Poor Peter!  Once again he doesn’t quite grasp the significance of the moment, covering his fear by saying the first thing that comes into his head; “Let’s make three tents and stay here.” Mind you, he seems to have given little thought to how long they might stay! a day, a week, a month, a year, forever?

Mark’s Gospel is particularly hard on Peter, but that’s another story.

The Transfiguration was a very significant moment for Jesus. It is presented in all the Gospels as the moment Jesus sets out on his final journey to Jerusalem where, as he knew himself, his enemies awaited.

Last week we were with a Jesus, alone in the desert, plagued with temptations to use his healing power and attractive personality to become wealthy or influential or politically active in the movement to free Israel from the domination of Rome. These were all very real temptations and they must have returned again and again, right up to his death on the cross.

This week we are with a Jesus who is tired, stressed, aware of his enemies gathering to strike, and misunderstood even by his own companions. In one sense we might see his escape to the mountain as just that; an ‘escape’ from the poor and sick who needed him. Yet he was doing what he knew he had to do. Feeling lonely, misunderstood, and in conflict with his closest friend, Peter, he sought comfort and reassurance from the God of Israel who had never let his people down, and who had always kept his promises to guide and protect them.

In a deeply personal and tender way God calls Jesus his ‘Son’ and tells him that he is loved. It is the reassurance he needs at that moment, and it gives him the strength to set out for Jerusalem where he already knows his enemies await him. As part of his conversation with God, his three companions are told starkly to “listen to him.”. Without doubt poor Peter would have recognised the rebuke in this warning. Still, he is a man without guile and in the enthusiasm of the moment he wants only to prolong the experience for Jesus.

When Teresa of Avila said, “Christ is a very good friend because we behold him as man and see him with weaknesses and trials, and he is company for us.”, she was expressing her own person relationship with Jesus.

He was, for her, “a very good friend”; he was, for her, a person to whom she related on a personal one-on-one basis. Put simply, she enjoyed Jesus’ “company”!

It was possible for her to have this intimate friendship with Jesus because she knew that he shared exactly the same temptations, stresses, loneliness, conflicts, betrayals and misunderstandings common to all of us.

The God who spoke to Jesus on the mountain of the Transfiguration was a God who spoke as a friend. The God of today’s Gospel understood, really understood, Jesus’ need for support and reassurance. The God of today’s Gospel wanted nothing more than to respond, gently and tenderly, to a son who is loved deeply.

This is the God who wants to speak to us this Lent. Not an austere, stern and punishing God but a ‘friend’, an intimate companion who understands each step of our own journey through life – with it temptations, failures, stresses, conflicts and loneliness – and wants nothing more than to be there for us.

We have only to climb our own mountain, find just a little space and time to be with God, and then pray. Ask Teresa of Avila what prayer is and she will say, “Prayer, in my opinion, is nothing else than an intimate sharing between friends.”

“…an intimate sharing between friends.”

This is the God of the Transfiguration – a friend, waiting to share his life with us.

Many thanks,

Brian.

If you have any comments, questions or thoughts on this scripture reflection, please feel welcome to email me at b.maher@oblates.ie

This is my Son, the Beloved