Mystical graces are not given in order to establish a pleasant existence on this earth, but Given so that we have the strength to face life’s challenges
Newsroom (19/03/2025 21:26, Gaudium Press ) Throughout the period of Our Lord‘s public life up to the episode narrated in the Gospel for this Second Sunday of Lent, the Apostles were accustomed to seeing Him perform the most amazing miracles. These wonders clearly attested to Christ’s divinity, and His omnipotence would be manifested with even greater splendour in the institution of the Eucharist. At the same time, He had just revealed His forthcoming Passion, which would bring a terrible trial: after receiving Communion for the first time, the Apostles would see Him arrested, tried, scourged, crowned with thorns, carrying the Cross on His back and then crucified.
How would it be possible for the Divine Master’s closest followers, witnessing these sufferings, to continue to believe in the Resurrection on the third day? What would He do, in His infinite wisdom, to keep the Twelve’s faith alive in the midst of the storm that was already looming on the horizon?
Jesus reveals the glory of His Soul in His Body
‘AT THAT TIME, JESUS TOOK WITH HIM PETER, JOHN AND JAMES, AND WENT UP ON THE MOUNTAIN TO PRAY. WHILE HE WAS PRAYING, THE APPEARANCE OF HIS FACE WAS ALTERED AND HIS CLOTHES BECAME DAZZLING WHITE’ (LK 9:28-29).
In order to prepare them for the events to come, Our Lord called the three Apostles with whom He was most familiar and took them to Mount Tabor. They were then to strengthen the others by telling them what they had witnessed.
Although prayer had a central place in the Master’s life, it was not His only aim when He climbed the mountain. More than that, He wanted to show who He really was, as Maldonado emphasizes: ‘Christ used to go up to the mountains to pray, where the solitude is greater and the contemplation of Heaven is freer. We should not conclude from Luke’s words, however, that Christ went up only for the purpose of praying, but that, in accordance with His custom of praying in arduous matters, He wanted to do so this time before manifesting His glory. […] Let us not forget, either, that most of the time God’s glory is manifested in the mountains, which are closer to Heaven and further from earth, and not in the valleys.”
This externalization of divine glory is a phenomenon that reveals the true state of Jesus’ Soul, which, created in the Beatific Vision, possessed the supreme degree of capital grace from the first moment of the Incarnation. This is so called because He is the head of the Mystical Body and the origin of the grace from which the Church lives. His Soul has always been in contemplation of God face to face and so it would be normal for His Body to be seen habitually in a glorious state, like a mirror of the beatitude of His spirit, as it was manifested on Tabor in the sight of St. Peter and the sons of Zebedee. It was only out of love for us that Our Lord wanted to clothe Himself with the characteristics of the suffering body in order to bring about the Redemption. So, from a certain point of view, the verb ‘transfigure’ does not accurately define what happened, because Christ actually made the subfigure in which he lived cease to be.
As far as some other moments in His public life are concerned, we can assume that He took on only some of the attributes of the glorious body, such as when He walked freely among those who wanted to throw Him down the cliff in Nazareth, or when He walked on the waters of the Sea of Tiberias.
The temptation of an effortless life
‘PETER AND HIS COMPANIONS WERE VERY SLEEPY. WHEN THEY AWOKE, THEY SAW THE GLORY OF JESUS AND THE TWO MEN WHO WERE WITH HIM. AS THESE MEN WERE GOING AWAY, PETER SAID TO JESUS, ‘MASTER, IT IS GOOD THAT WE ARE HERE. LET US MAKE THREE TENTS: ONE FOR YOU, ONE FOR MOSES AND ONE FOR ELIJAH’. PETER DID NOT KNOW WHAT HE WAS SAYING’ (LK 9:32-33).
Taken by torpor – a surprising detail – the three witnesses were asleep at the beginning of the divine manifestation. Such sleep is symbolic, because whenever the cross, the effort and the sacrifice are presented to us, we are overcome with boredom as a result of our weak human nature. This also happened later, in the Garden of Olives, when the three succumbed to exhaustion, on the verge of the Passion, leaving Our Lord alone in the face of suffering (cf. Mt 26:40). Waking up unexpectedly, still under the effects of sleep and surprised by the intense light before them, they were so dazzled that St. Peter could not think of a reaction to match what was happening. In reality, with his words he was manifesting, perhaps without being fully aware of it, a certain bad tendency in the depths of his soul. Overwhelmed by the sight of that marvel, he immediately wanted to take advantage of it, showing his desire to live uninterruptedly under the influence of the Master’s glory. He saw this enjoyment as the attainment of happiness, and if he did not ask to make three tents when the Lord announced the Passion, he did not hesitate to do so at that time. Peter imagined that he had already reached the end of the good fight, when there was still a long way to go. He perhaps saw, in the presence of two men of the stature of Moses and Elijah, how easy it would be to give supremacy to the Jewish people over all the other nations of the earth. The head of the Church had yet to learn that, before obtaining the fruits of the promise, one must follow the path that leads to them, according to the example set by the Redeemer.
Consolations sustain us towards final victory
This Sunday’s liturgy teaches us that the mystical graces we receive in the course of our spiritual life are not given to us with the aim of establishing a pleasant existence on this earth, where we would like to pitch a tent to remain in static contemplation. They are given so that, through them, we may have the strength to face the struggles of life in view of the end to which we have been called. In fact, the mystical way is a foreshadowing of eternal bliss, and not an enjoyment of earthly life. Happiness in this world stems from the struggle against evil within and without us and, above all, from the struggle for God’s glory, so these consolations are offered to us to nourish the virtue of hope.
Emphasizing the importance of these graces, Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira says that they ‘are a kind of foretaste of the beatific vision in heaven, and have the effect of making our souls much more open to supernatural understanding, to understanding the marvelous, to the desire for great things, great deeds, great moves.’ For this reason, let us be attentive to the divine manifestations in our lives, dispelling any torpor that prevents us from perceiving them and growing in the certainty that, after the passing struggles of earthly life, the joys of eternal coexistence with God, to which we have been called, await us. In Heaven, where it will not be necessary to pitch tents, our dwelling is prepared by the Divine Master to make the joys of His splendid Transfiguration last forever!
Extract, with alterations, from: CLÁ DIAS, João Scognamiglio. The unpublished Gospels: commentaries on the Sunday Gospels. Città del Vaticano-São Paulo: LEV-Instituto Lumen Sapientiæ, 2012, v. 5, p. 203-209.
Compiled by Sandra Chisholm
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