The Transfiguration of our Lord was witnessed by Peter, James and John. Jesus took them to up the mountain to pray and He transfigured in front of His three disciples while praying. It was a very extraordinary experience for the disciples seeing Jesus changed in appearance conversing with Moses and Elijah, prophets of the Old Testament.
The disciples were so ecstatic about their experience because it was a real magic which unfolded in front of them. They forgot about everything in their life that Peter even got to the point of suggesting, “Master, it is good that we are here; let us make three tents, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”
Peter was born-careless. He will always say whatever he wanted to say without thinking much about the implications and effects. Most of the time he would react regarding a particular incident without looking at it from a wider perspective. A very impulsive and sometimes an uncaring person but, still, Christ entrusted to him His Church.
They were with the Master in His display of divinity and that was, indeed, a heavenly experience. It is not impossible for Peter to suggest that they all remain in that moment of their lives. The transfiguration was a proof of Jesus’ being God in front of His disciples and, in their humanity, the disciples longed to remain in that feeling of euphoria. And who would disagree with Peter’s suggestion? We all want to get to heaven and, for the disciples, it was a real foretaste of what is to come.
But we know that it was just for a moment. After that experience, they need to go back down to the real world and to their ordinary life. Christ did not agree with what Peter had in mind because He knew all the while that He’s got a mission to fulfill and a will to be obeyed. The cup of suffering was always in His mind because that was the purpose of His incarnation.
Going down the mountain, I can imagine that the disciples were probably feeling lonely and frustrated. They were just ordinary fishermen and maybe they were so tired of their daily experience packed with problems and difficulties. Their frustration was a product of their ignorance about the mission of the Messiah and their ambition to be freed from all their problems and pains in their life. Their dreams and ambitions faded away with Christ’s decision to come down. Maybe they also overheard that Jesus, Moses and Elijah talked about the impending suffering and death of Jesus in Jerusalem,
They needed to go back because Jesus will save not only them but the whole creation. Jesus will have to walk His way to Calvary with the sins of all the people on His shoulders. He will soon face death on a Cross as the only way for all humanity to be saved. The disciples failed to look at the whole picture and so they did not understand.
The mission of Jesus is still on-going in our world and in our time. There are still a lot of things to pursue and to be done. We cannot rest and be off-guard because the devil is also working hard to bring us down and to ruin everything what Christ and the whole Church had worked hard for.
Sometimes there are persons who aim to alleviate other people from their misery but I wonder if this dream is genuine. Most of the times, as we all experienced from some candidates, their plans are just dreams and make-believe. During the campaign period, they seem to be very concern with the quality of life of their constituents. But after election time, after they have won, their true color slowly appears.
Christ wanted to go down in order to save the people from sin and death. These candidates wanted to go up the ladder of politics in order to save money for themselves and to live in sin of corruption, and to just merely look at the people who are slowly dying because of poverty and hunger. They seem to be so insensitive about the plight of those poor orphans and those who never had a chance to live in a real place called home.
We all have our own mission in life because we all share in the mission of Christ. Our mission is not to bring the people to their experience of the transfiguration but rather to make them experience heaven here on earth. But how do we do this?
It is in sharing God’s love to our brothers and sisters that we can make other people experience heaven on earth. In heaven, angels and saints do not have to work for their own. They do not have to feed themselves for they are spirits. All they do is to love and give glory to God. Heaven is a state where love abounds and, if we can only share this divine love to our brothers and sisters, we are sharing in the mission of Christ and we are fulfilling our mission in our own little ways.
Our mission is to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, shelter the homeless, clothe the naked, and visit the sick and those who are imprisoned. There will be times when we will have to go the extra mile of our benevolence and generosity, but still, we need to silently do everything for them not because we want to be proclaimed as saints and martyrs, but because it is our mission here on earth as Christians. This is the meaning of our Christian life and Christian perfection. The call to discipleship must lead us to cross of Christ and share in His sufferings and death. Our acceptance of this cross of Christ is our own way of sharing His love to our little brothers and sisters who need our love, care and attention.
One day we can loudly say, it is good that we are here because we are in love and we are sharing His love to everyone!