Transformation, transfiguration and the impetus to change

Christ calls us to transform our selves and change so that we may become transfigured in his image. This seems an amazingly difficult undertaking to transform and change so that we become transfigured. We need to really understand these terms and how we use them. This last Sunday of Epiphany is the day that is often used to celebrate the transfiguration as told in the gospels (Lk 9.28-36). The term used in the Greek is metamorphoses but in Latin transfigure which seems to indicate both transformation (metamorphoses) and transfiguration. So what are we actually being asked to undertake and perhaps become?

The possibilities are endless as we transform ourselves into newness of life

Perhaps, it is true to say that the very first thing we are being asked to achieve is change. No amount of words can get around this fact. We are all reluctant to participate in change unless we ourselves become enamoured and enthused by the process. The only way that this will actually occur is if we ourselves change. That seems a bit of a chicken and an egg and perhaps it is but the seed of change is introduced into our lives at baptism. It needs to be watered and nurtured so that change can take place. This does not mean that someone outside ourselves has to enforce the change or be the continual source of water. They may inspire us and trickle some water into our lives leading us to a starting point to begin the process of change but cannot do it for us. So, our first port of call, so to speak, is our selves. In understanding our selves we begin to understand the issues that initiate our ability to encompass the transformation that Christ requires of us. Simply put Christ is asking and drawing us away from our selfish inner selves towards a transformation that opens our hearts to those who are other. This is perhaps the first stage in the process of transformation, an understanding of our own being that shows us the accumulation of harmful debris and sheltering obfuscation that prevents us from opening our hearts.

In beginning this process we begin the process of change and transformation. Like a caterpillar cocooning itself we breakdown our internal selves to allow a reformation into something different but the same. If we ourselves do not undergo this transformation our glory will not be available for our transfiguration. Christ shows us his glory in his transfiguration, not his transformation, for he does not need to transform it is we who need to transform. If we were to try to become transfigured we would expose only our ugliness to the world. Our hatred, our vilification of the other, our darkness because that is what transfiguration does it exposes our inner selves to the world. That is what Christ exposed to his disciples the pureness of his inner self that was not different from himself. It is this state of being that we are called to in Christ for if we are in Christ the pureness of our being will be shown to the world.

So this brings us back to our own selves and are ability to change from who we are into what Christ calls us to be. It is our transformation that is asked for at Baptism not our transfiguration. Until we are able to embrace this change, the change that totally changes our very being into something more glorious, we cannot strive towards our transfiguration. This is the hard journey. This is the journey that takes us beyond even ourselves so that we can embrace our totality and not hide the darker side of our selves behind the falseness of everyday living. We cannot and should not shy from this task and our coming Lenten journey is a place for us to start, or continue, or end our own transformative process.