However, what is of interest to us is how these two theophanies—the Baptism and the Transfiguration—also reveal to us who we really are. According to St Thomas Aquinas, baptism is the sacrament of regeneration and the Transfiguration is the “sacrament” of Man’s second regeneration.
It is this second regeneration that we want to further reflect upon. Firstly, the word “transfiguration” is itself instructive. From the Gospel’s usage, there is a connotation of the stupendous or something extraordinary. His clothes became dazzlingly white or our translation has it as “his face shone like the sun and his clothes became as white as the light”. It is as if the eyes of our mind are led to focus on the astounding or outstanding. Perhaps, the word “transfiguration” should be contrasted with another word which we also know, “disfigurement”. Here, the eyes of mind are led to the hideous or rather the once beautiful rendered ugly, like for example, a young woman’s beautiful face “disfigured” in an acid attack of a jilted lover.
The connexion between the Sacrament of Baptism and this so-called “sacrament” of second regeneration [Transfiguration] is more apparent now. Christian life is an ascent to Mount Tabor and what destroys this ascent to Transfiguration is sin because sin disfigures what was once made beautiful by the Sacrament of Baptism. According to the second reading, Christ abolished death and He has proclaimed life and immortality through the Good News. Through the Sacrament of Baptism, He calls us to be holy and invites us to the grace of the Transfiguration. Yet, the fact remains that many are gripped by the attraction of sin or are caught in the vice of disfiguring sin. How to explain, not excuse nor justify this attraction?
The first reading may help us understand why it is that we are attracted to sin. It begins with Abram’s father, Terah. The patriarch Terah uprooted his family from what we know to be the Fertile Crescent—that agrarian band of land framed by the Rivers Tigris and the Euphrates. They left Ur of the Chaldean for Canaan. But, when they came to Haran, which is at the source of the Euphrates, they settled there and it was here that Terah died. From here, we hear the call for Abram to uproot himself again.
What can we learn from this?
First, Haran was analogous to a pit-stop. Haran was never meant to be the final destination for Terah and his family which explains Abram being asked to leave again. Often in life, we mistake a pit-stop for the final destination. It is almost like stopping at one of the lay-bys along the North-South Highway and saying “This is where I am supposed to be”. That is what you get in the Gospel. Peter, with good intention, wanted to construct tents to commemorate a compelling encounter. He mistook the pit-stop for the final destination.
Second and more importantly, to settle for what is not our final destination always leaves us short. Sin is comparable to mistaking a pit-stop for a final destination. This may explain, and as I said earlier, not excuse nor justify our attraction to sin. In fact, it maybe help us in our decision making if we understand what sin is.
No one will knowingly choose evil. Sometimes we hear that people have to choose between “good” or “bad”. It is a no-brainer because there is really no “choice”. We always choose the good. Therefore, the attraction of sin lies not in its wrongness but our mistaken judgement or evaluation that it is something right and good. When we sin, we are in actual fact, choosing something which is less good believing that it is the good. It is, in a sense, believing that a pit-stop is good enough to be the final destination. The effect of settling for something less leaves us incomplete, or in other words, unformed [not fully formed], and therefore, disfigured. It makes sense now to say that “choosing” evil never leaves us satisfied even if at the time of commission, it feels satisfying. As such, our constant battle in life is not to allow sin to ensnare us with its false promise that it can fully satisfy us.
Lent consists of prayer, fasting and almsgiving. Every moment of prayer and contemplation, every sacrifice of fasting and abstinence and every good deed of almsgiving and charity is a step along the ascent to Mount Tabor. As we journey into Lent, the Transfiguration, that moment when Christ discloses His divinity is also a foretaste of what the future is going to be like. We catch a glimpse of our future. We may be taken up by the brilliance of the event but let us not forget that the grace of the second regeneration also describes a process by which our bodies are slowly reconfigured. How? Simply through the rejection of sin. Every sin rejected transfigures our bodies.
Christian life is a daily grind, a constant struggle to reject sin, to choose the better as we long and wait for the day, either at our death or at His Second Coming, when He will change, transform and transfigure our lowly bodies into copies of His own body in glory (Phil 3:21).
- The Alkitab [they are our Catholic Bibles because they contain the books called Deutrocanonical] issue basically boils down to this. For a long time, in the name of national security and interest, we have been accustomed to not rocking the boat, to have even adopted self-regulation and are restrained. The issue boils down not just to Christians but to any religious persons. Are they entitled to use their scripture without being subjected to state control? The time has come and our leaders have decided that enough is enough. The goal-post has been constantly changed. Conditions have been incrementally made more stringent. We need to consider if we are content with the crumbs that fall to the ground even though some morsels seem to be more generous than others. Perhaps it is time to consider that our rightful place is at the table and not at its foot. How to respond to this? Our leaders have called us to remain calm and pray and commit this issue to pray. Let us stand in solidarity and pray for our leaders and forour country.
