Throughout the year the Church celebrates a number of different seasons. Each year in the Church these seasons help us to enter more deeply into the central mysteries of the person of Christ and his work of salvation – the Paschal Mystery. When the Church is not celebrating a particular season, the days and weeks of the year are described as being ‘ordinary time’. So during this month of August we shall be celebrating the eighteenth to the twenty-second weeks in ordinary time.
As we continue to celebrate the Sunday liturgy each week, how shall we think about these weeks of ordinary time? The word ‘ordinary’ is perhaps a little misleading and suggests something rather mundane. In fact, ‘ordinary time’ in the Church’s year is very rich – focusing on the various events of Jesus’ public life and ministry, his miracles and healings, his teachings and parables. There are also a number of feasts of Our Lady, in whom ‘the Church admires and exalts the most excellent fruit of redemption and joyfully contemplates, as in a faultless image, that which she herself desires and hopes wholly to be’ (CCC 1172).
Also, in celebrating the memorials of many martyrs and other saints, the Church proposes to us all examples of those who draw us ‘to the Father through Jesus Christ, and through their merits she begs for God’s favour’ (para. 1173). One of these feasts is the Solemnity of the Transfiguration of Jesus on Mount Tabor in the presence of three of his disciples and of two persons from the Old Testament – Moses and Elijah.
In one sense, we might say that Jesus is transfigured in the presence of the whole of the Old Testament, since Moses and Elijah are there as representatives of the Law and the Prophets. Part of the beauty and powerfulness of this event is that not only is Jesus himself transfigured and revealed in glory, but also in a real sense something happens to the disciples and even to Moses and Elijah. Therefore, whoever beholds the transfiguration of Jesus is also transformed or transfigured by Jesus.
Let’s explore this thought a little further. In the spirituality of the Eastern Church, the painting and the veneration of icons have always held a prominent place. There is a close relationship between an icon and the Sacred Scriptures. What the Scriptures revealed in the Word, the icon reveals through the media of material and colour and visual representation. Since the Son of God came in the flesh, there is a sense in which God’s revelation can take place through sight and not only through hearing the word. In the early Church, there was a great deal of controversy regarding icons, because of the danger of idolatry. A clear distinction was made between the worship reserved for God alone and the veneration given to icons, whose purpose was to open a door into the mystery of God who came in the flesh. The icons were a means of touching the mystery they depicted. By touching the divine mysteries through an icon, the one beholding and contemplating the mystery is thereby transformed.
It is perhaps not difficult to understand why icon painting began with the Transfiguration. As Raniero Cantalamessa has said, the icon of the Transfiguration is ‘the mother of all icons in the sense that the same light that shone forth on (Mt) Tabor should be reflected in every icon. Every icon of Christ should allow us to glimpse the invisible through the visible, just as the divinity of Christ shone through the veil of his flesh on Tabor’ (The Mystery of the Transfiguration, p. 10).
The revelation of Christ that occurred on the mountain deeply affected those who looked upon him. Indeed, in the account of this event given by Luke, the evangelist explicitly tells us that ‘Moses and Elijah appeared in glory with him’ (Luke 9:31). In other words, they too were transfigured.
The apostles, on the other hand, were merely overwhelmed and fearful. However, after the resurrection, and perhaps years later, St Peter wrote about his experience in his second letter:
For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For when he received honour and glory from God the Father and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased’, we heard this voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain. (1:16-18)
Peter both saw and heard the testimony to the majesty of Jesus, and it is this that he, no longer fearful, is passing on boldly to others. Peter has clearly been affected by this experience. But he goes on to say, ‘And we have the prophetic word made more sure. You will do well to pay attention to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts’ (v. 19). It is clear that Peter expects that all of those reading or listening to his letter can also share in the experience of seeing something of the glory of Christ and of being transformed by it.
While the Eastern Church developed icons as a means of helping people to enter into the mystery and the glory of the Transfiguration, the primary means, indicated by Peter in his letter, are the Scriptures themselves – and here Peter has in mind the Old Testament. ‘And we have the prophetic word made more sure. You will do well to pay attention to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place’. There is a parallel here with the experience of the disciples on the road to Emmaus. Jesus took them through the Old Testament and showed them how the Scriptures were continually speaking about himself and the fact that he would suffer and so enter into his glory.
Before the coming of Christ, the events and persons of the Old Testament had their proper significance as elements of the history of Israel – a history in which God was revealing himself and calling the people into a covenant relationship with him. Everything in the Old Testament can be understood in this light. However, with the coming of Christ, this entire history is transformed. Now the events and persons of the Old Testament are all to be seen as preparations and types of Christ himself. They are all now to be seen in a different way – all in some way looking forward to the revelation of Christ.
An amazing insight regarding the Transfiguration was soon realized by the early Fathers of the Church. After Peter had said, ‘Lord, it is good for us to be here. Let us erect three booths, one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah’, the Father’s voice is immediately heard saying, ‘This is my beloved Son’. After this the gospel writers pointedly tell us that when the disciples looked they saw ‘only Jesus’.
What had happened to Moses and Elijah? The Fathers all agreed that they had become one with Jesus. They are now included as part of the one Son with whom the Father is well pleased. The Old Testament has become one with the New – with Jesus himself.
For this reason, the Church continues in the Liturgy to treasure the Old Testament and to read from it every Sunday. In the reading of the Old Testament the Church discovers Christ, as it were hidden, but now being unveiled and sharing in the glory of Christ.
‘You will do well to pay attention to the prophetic word…until the morning star rises in your hearts’. The words of Peter speak strongly to us today. There is an unveiling of the events and persons of the Old Testament that the Spirit wants to perform in our own minds and hearts. We don’t read the Scriptures simply as a story, nor simply as a history (although it is a history), but we also seek Christ himself hidden in those persons and events. The more we see, the more we ourselves are transformed.
This invites us to go to the Old Testament with a new expectation of finding the presence of Christ hidden in every aspect – whether in the person of Adam, from whose side during his sleep God brought forth his bride, Eve; or in the story of Isaac and the ram which was sacrificed in his place; or in Joseph – the one sold into slavery by his brothers, but who later became their saviour; or the person of Jonah; or King Hezekiah, the suffering servant in Isaiah; or in the various acts of liberation throughout Israel’s history – e.g. the Exodus, Noah’s ark; or in the many sacrifices to be offered in the Temple.
There is no part of the Old Testament which does not give some glimpse of the work and person of Christ to eyes that the Spirit has opened.