By JAMES MONTI
The pages of Sacred Scripture and so rich and fertile that even after a lifetime of hearing and reading the Word of God there always remains something new for our souls to discover. One of the very richest episodes in the Gospels is that of the Transfiguration. It begins in mystery: “And after six days Jesus took with Him Peter and James and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain apart” (Matt. 17:1).
We need to try to picture this. Our Lord, without explaining why, directs the three apostles to come with Him up what must have been a somewhat steep and rugged path through a stretch of wilderness to reach the remote summit of an especially high mountaintop — traditionally believed to be Mount Tabor. It seems probable from St. Matthew’s description that the journey was made largely in silence, the apostles left to wonder to themselves where the Master was leading them and why.
Significantly, St. Matthew tells us this incident took place “after six days” (Matt. 17:1). Although we cannot ascertain from this alone what particular day of the week it was, the identification of it as the seventh day after what Matthew recounts at the end of chapter 16 of his Gospel suggests among other things a similitude to the quintessential “seventh day,” the day of the Sabbath rest, the day that prefigured the new Sabbath of the Resurrection, Sunday. This in turn suggests that the Transfiguration is a prefiguration of Christ’s Easter Sunday glory, and of the Church’s heightened celebration of that Easter glory at each and every Sunday Mass.
Upon arriving at the mountaintop, what does our Lord do? He prays, as St. Luke tells us (Luke 9:28-29). And so what takes place on Mount Tabor begins as a prayer of Christ to His Father in Heaven, witnessed by Peter, James, and John, anticipating in a sense the great prayer of Christ the High Priest offered to His Heavenly Father that we witness in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
It is only after our Lord and the three apostles reach the summit that “He was transfigured before them, and His face shone like the sun, and His garments became white as light” (Matt. 17:2). The encounter with the glory of God, with the splendor of Christ, only begins after a great vertical ascent up and away from earthly things.
In the Church’s longstanding traditions of sacred worship, this vertical directionality permeates everything. The high altar stands at the top of steps that set it over and above the rest of the church interior. In many churches from the Middle Ages onward, an upward soaring reredos magnifies this upward thrust. And the psalm that for many centuries the priest uttered upon arriving at the altar to begin the Mass, the psalm still uttered at this moment whenever the Traditional Latin Mass is celebrated, Psalm 43 (42 Vulgate), defines the Mass as a vertical ascent in the spirit of Mount Tabor:
“Oh send out thy light and thy truth; / let them lead me, / let them bring me to thy holy hill and to thy dwelling! / Then I will go to the altar of God, / to God my exceeding joy” (Psalm 43:3-4).
On Mount Tabor the appearance of our Lord and His clothing are radically transformed: “. . . and His garments became white as light” (Matt. 17:2). We see this at the Mass, in that the priest is transformed in appearance by his liturgical vestments, another essential sign that where we are during the Mass and what is being done is “radically other” and out of this world, as it were. On Mount Tabor, the face of our Lord was transfigured and “shone like the sun” (Matt. 17:2). In the Mass, the face of the priest is invisibly “transfigured” in that he celebrates as an “alter Christus,” Christ acting and speaking through him to confect the Holy Eucharist.
No sooner is our Lord transfigured than He is joined by two others not of this world: “And behold, there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him” (Matt. 17:3). So this place apart from the world to which our Lord has led His apostles is also a place of encounter with those who live outside this world.
So it is too in the Mass that we experience our communion with the saints and angels. The statues, paintings, frescoed ceilings and stained-glass windows of our churches proclaim this communion to us in a very tangible manner. The prayers of the Mass speak of this communion with the citizens of Heaven time and again. And in the Sanctus, we even sing with the saints and angels.
What were Moses and Elijah speaking about in conversing with our Lord? They “spoke of His departure, which He was to accomplish at Jerusalem” (Luke 9:31), that is, they spoke of His Passion. So in this transfiguration in dazzling light and glory on Mount Tabor there is an anticipation of our Lord’s transfiguration in blood and deep darkness on Mount Calvary, an anticipation of the sacrifice that is re-presented in the Mass.
It is an integral component of man’s instinctive longing to worship God that he yearns to give God a suitable dwelling place, a suitable habitation in which to dwell with us. Thus St. Peter’s first thought upon seeing Christ transfigured upon Mount Tabor is to build a dwelling place for Him: “Lord, it is well that we are here; if you wish, I will make three booths here, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah” (Matt. 17:4). Across the centuries, the Church has longed with Peter to raise up suitable dwelling places for the Lord.
As to what constitutes a suitable dwelling place for God, Mount Tabor serves to give us an answer. An essential key to our proper understanding of the Transfiguration is the “where” of it, the setting that our Lord chose for it. It takes place in a totally remote setting, totally away from the world. And this in turn tells us something about what the House of God needs to be. It needs to be a place that is “radically other,” a place that transports us up and away from the preoccupations of this world. It should not be made to be “the house of man,” as all too many modern theologians and architects have seemed to think, but rather truly the House of God in all its grandeur and glory.
It needs to have the otherworldly atmosphere of that “high mountain” where, as the Scripture scholar R.T. France puts it, “…in the experience of the disciples heaven has invaded earth” (R.T. France, The Gospel of Matthew, New International Commentary on the New Testament, Grand Rapids, Mich., William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2007, p. 644).
Peter was scarcely able to finish what he was saying when the Transfiguration took a further dramatic turn: “He was still speaking, when lo, a bright cloud overshadowed them” (Matt. 17:5). Having just beheld two of the great men of ancient Israel, the apostles now encounter that most awesome manifestation of the presence and glory of God during the Israelites’ long journey to the Promised Land, the Shekinah, the pillar of cloud (Exodus 13:21-22). And just as Moses heard from the Shekinah the voice of God speaking to him (Exodus 19:19; 24:15-16), so now, the three apostles hear the voice of God addressing them: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him” (Matt. 17:5).
Medieval cathedrals and Baroque basilicas tell us volumes about what the Mass is, that each and every Mass is an event of cosmic dimensions and implications. A church towering over and around the altar is like the pillar of cloud over Mount Tabor out of which God the Father spoke. The baldachin built over many altars is a more intimate symbol of the Shekinah, yet the church edifice expresses on a grander and more epic scale this overshadowing of the glory of the Lord.
The examples are many, from the vast and sprawling vaults of the Cathedral of Seville to the illusionistic painted ceilings of Baroque churches that give the worshipper the impression of looking up through a cloud-lined portal into the heights of Heaven teeming with exultant saints and angels. And at each and every Mass that unfolds beneath these soaring vaults and sky-piercing ceilings, from the moment of consecration onward, the Father’s voice says to us, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to Him.”
At the sight of the overshadowing cloud and the sound of the Father’s voice, the apostles prostrated themselves: “they fell on their faces, and were filled with awe” (Matt. 17:6). It is man’s fitting and right instinct to respond in this manner in the presence of the divine. Even King Solomon in his great prayer before the altar of the Lord, which he began while standing (1 Kings 8:22-23), must have ultimately dropped to his knees as he continued, for at the end we are told, “. . . he arose from before the altar of the Lord, where he had knelt with hands outstretched toward heaven” (1 Kings 8:54).
Confidence In His Mercy
Our Lord’s words to the three apostles, “Rise, and have no fear” (Matt. 17:7), should not be seen as a rebuke to the apostles for having adored in body and spirit, but rather a reassurance that even while filled with proper awe we ought to approach His “throne of grace” with confidence in His mercy (Heb. 4:16). If our Lord did not want His disciples to respond with awe and reverence, He never would have been transfigured before them in the first place — it would have been pointless. He wanted them to see and believe in His divine glory and to respond to it.
At the end of this episode, the three apostles “saw no one but Jesus only” (Matt. 17:8). Implicit in this also is that the appearance of our Lord had returned to normal, as He was before the Transfiguration. Here too, there is a likeness to what transpires in the Mass. With our human eyes, we see only the White Host, just as the apostles before and after the Transfiguration saw with their human eyes only the humanity of Christ.
It is with the eyes of faith that we see in the Holy Eucharist what the apostles saw on Mount Tabor, the Lord in all His divine glory and majesty. With the eyes of faith, then, at each Mass, may we behold that transfigured glory of our Lord and respond with an awe that brings us to our knees in body, mind and spirit.
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