Dear Parish Family,
All three Synoptic Gospels create a link between Peter’s confession and the account of Jesus’s transfiguration by means of a reference to time. Clearly, this means that the two events, in each of which Peter plays a prominent role, are interrelated. We could say that in both cases the issue is the divinity of Jesus as the Son; another point, though, is that in both cases the appearance of his glory is connected with the passion motif. Jesus’s divinity belongs with the cross – only when we put the two together do we recognize Jesus correctly. St. John expressed this intrinsic interconnectedness of cross and glory when he said that the cross is Jesus’s “exaltation,” and that his exaltation is accomplished in no other way than in the cross.
The Gospels point out that only five days separate two major Jewish feasts that occur in the fall. First there is the feast of Yom-he-Kippurim, the great feast of atonement; the celebration of the weeklong Feast of Tabernacles (Sukkoth) follows six days afterward. This would mean that Peter’s confession fell on the great Day of Atonement and should be interpreted theologically against the backdrop of this feast, on which, for the one time in the year, the high priest solemnly pronounced the name YHWH in the Temple’s Holy of Holies. This context would give added depth to Peter’s confession of Jesus as the son of the living God. One week later on the Feast of Tabernacles itself, Jesus’s transfiguration would accordingly have taken place on the last day of the feast, which was both its high point and the synthesis of its inner meaning.
If we analyze the connections between the transfiguration story and the Feast of Tabernacles we can illustrate the fact that all Jewish feasts contain three dimensions. They originate from celebrations of nature religion and thus tell of creator and creation; they then become remembrances of God’s actions in history; finally, they go on from there to become feasts of hope, which strain forward to meet the Lord who is coming, the Lord in whom God’s saving action in history is fulfilled, thereby reconciling the whole of creation. During the festival of the Tabernacles, there was a liturgy with prayer for rain. The making of the tents, signified the wandering in the desert and they also looked forward to sharing a life of intimacy with God.
By experiencing the transfiguration during the Feast of Tabernacles, Peter, in his ecstasy, was able to recognize “that the realities prefigured by the feast were accomplished. The scene of the transfiguration marks the fact that the messianic times have come.”
The image of the mountain serves – as it did in the Sermon on the Mount and in the nights spent by Jesus in prayer – as the locus of God’s particular closeness. The mountain is the place of ascent – not only outward, but also inward ascent; it is a liberation from the burden of everyday life, a breathing in of the pure air of creation; it offers a view of the broad expanse of creation and its beauty; it gives one an inner peak to stand on and an intuitive sense of the creator.
Our journey of Lent, must have close encounters with God, by leaving the cares and drudgery of everyday living to choose decisively ‘mountain-top-type-of-aloneness’. At these moments we also need to consider the ultimate meaning of all reality as ‘transfiguration’ of life into the bright light of immortality. While our spiritual life is nourished on the top of the mountain, it is put to test and strengthened in the ‘market-place’ of an ordinary day!
Fr. Tom Kunnel C.O.