Many today speak of the need for change, some speak of coming to a point in life where it is ‘time for a change’ and indeed some have made a cult of change where the latest thing must displace the past and even the present thing. But there is change and there is change. There are external changes, circumstantial changes and even surface changes. But there is also the much more painful and real form of change that is both internal and external, both spiritual and physical, both objective and subjective because it is the change that goes from potentiality to actuality, from something broken to something made whole, from something accidental to something essential, from a state of mortal sin to a state of grace, from a change of mind to a profound change of heart, mind, body and soul and it is called Transfiguration!

Lent is a spiritual journey whereby the Holy Spirit brings about in us a transfiguration [Greek: metamorphosis] into the image and likeness of Christ, if we cooperate with his Lenten graces. It all begins with us recognising something external to us and beyond us and beyond our control, namely, it begins with us recognising God’s love for us as revealed in the life, passion, death and resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Indeed Our Lord’s transfiguration on the mountain was not so much a change in Our Lord but a change in his three Apostles perception of him. Indeed, Our Lord’s transfiguration was really a revelation of the essential and permanent truth of his being, namely, that he is true God and true Man and for the three Apostles and for us it is into this reality and by this reality that we have to be changed.

The obstacle to this transfiguration is always our pride. Pride is fundamentally making life one of being centred on ourselves, in other words, we make ourselves God. We speak of life in terms such as these: ‘it’s my life I can do what I want with it’, ‘I decide the meaning and purpose of my life’, ‘life is all about me, myself and I.’ But here is where we are wrong.

Firstly, life is not about me nor about you! Life is a God-given gift that is rooted in the one God who loves to give. God, however, does not need me or you! He did not create me out of need or necessity. He created me out of love because he loves to create. So, we need to grasp two things.

Firstly, at the root of our being God is giving us existence continually and that is why prayer is so important. Prayer is about getting, being and remaining in touch with reality, with the one who is the really real, God.

Secondly, life is a drama but it is not a drama centred on me, it is not an ego-drama. Life is what the theologian Hans Von Balthasar called a Theo-drama where our final destination is determined by whether or not we put God at the centre of our lives.

It is pride that denies God and turns us away from God and thus we turn inwards, we turn in on ourselves. What St Augustine describes as curvatus in se, a curving in on ourselves that is also a flight from reality, from truth, from goodness and from beauty towards an ego drama, a selfish self which says ‘poor me’! God wants us to break out of a selfish self – this ego-drama – and be open to him daily to discover how to become a selfless person who is in communion with the divine persons, the angelic persons and baptised persons, our brothers and sisters in Christ! But many choose to oppose this by staying in a ‘poor me’ mode, namely, they prefer to stay in that state, called by spiritual directors, the pride of the wounded ones.

It is for this reason that Our Lord knows that in turning towards Jerusalem he will meet increasing opposition to himself and his mission because of the pride of both the leaders of Israel and the people of Israel and, yes, even from his own disciples. An opposition because they want Jesus to conform to their expectations and their needs rather than they conform to the Master of the Way, the Truth and the Life, Jesus.

So, why was Moses and Elijah sent to meet Jesus on the mount of transfiguration? Because these 2 figures knew all about this opposition. One had to face down leaders who were his mortal enemies and the other had to face down the resistance of a stiff-necked people.

Moses had to deal with a people who moaned, complained, rebelled and betrayed him at Sinai, in the desert and at the waters of Massah and Meribah:

And he called the name of the place Massah and Meribah, because of the quarreling of the people of Israel, and because they tested the LORD by saying, “Is the LORD among us or not?”[Exod 17:7].

Elijah had to deal with the opposition of a King and Queen, Ahab and Jezebel, plus 400 prophets of Baal who had deceived the people.

When Ahab saw Elijah, Ahab said to him, “Is it you, you troubler of Israel?” And he answered, “I have not troubled Israel, but you have, and your father's house, because you have abandoned the commandments of the Lord and followed the Baals [1 Kings 18:17-18]

Our Lord turned to them for strength for the final stage of his mission in Holy Week when opposition would reach its climax with satanic force. In bringing Peter, James and John up the mountain Our Lord was bringing them up to witness his divine reality. He is in fact bringing up the first Apostle to die, James, the last Apostle to die, John and the Prince of the Apostles, Peter. They are the three hinges of the Apostolic witness that will go out to the end of the world in time and space and these three Apostolic witnesses will be strengthened for the terrible time ahead that is Holy Week when they will all be tested and found wanting, but this event of the transfiguration will hold them off from despair and offer them hope in their darkest hour.

An old parish priest once said: ‘the role of a parish priest is to worry the comfortable and comfort the worried.’ So, Lent calls us out of our comfort zones that we may be conformed to Christ and not to the world in the use of our time. Let us not be like the stiff-necked people of Israel or like Ahab and Jezebel who were deaf and blind and dumb to the call of God to repent and change.

For far too many of us do not step out of our homes and home-comforts to do the Stations of the Cross on the Fridays of Lent. Many of us seem not to even want to bring Christ into our homes through the Anchor course, Catholic websites and Catholic podcast commentaries. Wake up! Read the signs of the times and note that this year is the year of the configuration of events that point to the message of Fatima and especially the third secret of Fatima. In truth this may well be the most important Lent of our lives!

Starting next Sunday for three Sundays we will experience how the catechumens are to be prepared for the sacraments of initiation through the Scrutinies. The Scrutinies will unveil the miracles of Jesus as signs of how Jesus delivers us from the blindness of sin, the deafness of sin, the dumbness of sin, the crippling nature of sin, the paralysis of sin, the leprosy of sin and that spiritual as well as physical death that are the wages of sin. The Scrutinies are also given to us as a sign to us who are baptised to get rid of the leaven of sin, evil and wickedness in our own lives.

Let us get out of the comfort of our homes which can be tombs of decay where we sleep before the screens of TVs and laptops and come instead out into the Lenten desert that is offered to us in the parish services and courses that mark this Lent.

Let us not resist the graces of Lent! Let us co-operate with the graces that the season of Lent offers us so that we may be transfigured. Nature offers us a wonderful example of transfiguration or metamorphosis when a catapillar eats a leaf and rolls into a cocoon and then bursts forth as a butterfly; may we rest on the leafs of Scripture, eat the Word made flesh in the Eucharist so that we die to sin and self through the sacrament of Confession and bloom into that flight from evil that becomes that flight of self-transcendence that makes of us a spiritual wonder in this fallen Creation.