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If we try to put ourselves into the shoes of the ancient Roman catechumens, being prepared from the pre-Lent “Gesima” Sundays onward, we can perhaps grasp the psychological and pedagogical importance of having the Gospel reading about the Transfiguration on this 2nd Sunday of Lent. Much of the content of the Mass formularies and the very Roman Station Churches themselves, formed as they were in a time of upheaval and anxiety from invasion, plague and famine, could have been designed to put the fear of God into aspirants for baptism. The antiphons have included plaintive cries for help. The Stations recalled brutal martyrdoms. Even this Sunday the Introit, Gradual and Communion antiphon ring with pleas for divine intervention.
The point: “Take this seriously.” After that: “Now that we have your full attention…”.
The Collect for the Mass forcefully underscores the idea of purity of body and of thoughts.
Deus, qui cónspicis omni nos virtúte destítui:
intérius exteriúsque custódi;
ut ab ómnibus adversitátibus muniámur in córpore,
et a pravis cogitatiónibus mundémur in mente.
Note the parallelism in those last two lines, along with the assonance, alliteration and parachesis (repetition of the same sound in several words in close succession).
Conspicio means “to look at attentively”. In the passive, it is “to attract attention, to be conspicuous”. Conspicio is a compound of “cum…with” and *specio (that asterisk indicating a theoretical root which has to do with perception). The useful French dictionary of liturgical Latin we call Blaise/Dumas says that conspicio refers to God’s “regard”, presumably because God “sees” all things “together”. Also, don’t we have a Collect on the 5th Sunday after Epiphany with custodi and a passive of munire, (“to wall about, fortify”)?
LITERAL VERSION
O God, who see that we are destitute of any strength
guard us within and without;
so that in body we may be fortified against all adversities,
and in mind we may be purified from mental depravities.
Since I have little self-control when it comes to the structure and vocabulary of Collects, and parachesis really winds me up, allowing me to drill away at this one for a few lines. This prayer was in the so-called Gelasian Sacramentary of, at least, the mid-8th century, containing Gallican elements and Roman elements going back to the reforms of Pope St. Gregory I (+604).
In the Collect’s protasis we have a statement of fact: “O God, in a comprehensive look you see that we are entirely without strength”, that is, “strength of our own”. The point being that any true strength is lent to us by God in such a way that it is ours but remains His. As we read in John 15:5: “apart from me you can do nothing”.
Moving into the apodosis, the last three lines as arranged above, we get to the petition and theme of the oration. The petition is “guard”, custodi, which forms a homoioteleuton with destitui (a kind of parallel because of similar -i endings). The third and fourth cola have close grammatical symmetry, synchesis (a… -ibus… mun_mur in _e). Thematically, the “in body… in mind” makes a chiasm (X pattern) with the second colon’s interius exteriusque.
All bases are being covered, which is what these jewels of Latin prayers do, putting on high display how the Roman genius operates. In our Roman prayers we often find strings of related words and parallelisms to tune finely what it is we are petitioning or effecting. In this case also that et in the last colon isn’t just “and”. It’s a signal that we are moving from an important thing (“being fortified in body” to something even more important (“being purified in mind/soul”). We might render that thusly: “may we be fortified in body, so that we may be purified in soul”.
In the Epistle reading from 1 Thess 4:1-7 we hear an exhortation from St. Paul about Christian chastity and purity contrasted with pagan passion and lust (v. 5). In these matters “the Lord is an avenger” (v.6).
In our Gospel reading, we have again a theme of purity in the glory of the Lord’s face and shining splendor of his garments. In fact, this echoes the within and without found in the Collect.
Can I tie this together?
I started out by saying that the Church, like a good Mother, probably tried to put the fear of God (aka the beginning of wisdom) into the still partly culturally pagan catechumens. Even that line about God being an “avenger” concerning purity surely got their attention. Would that it would get people’s attention today! I can think of a few who grin over their Roman collars while soft-peddling unnatural acts.
Odd… this reading from 1 Thessalonians is not read in the Novus Ordo Lectionary. One could wonder why, but that would be a digression.
There is a thin permeable line between fear of God and elated awe. One calls to mind the description of an encounter with divine mystery as being tremendum et fascinans, frightening and alluring. When the Lord allowed something of His glory to shine out through His human body and garments, Peter, John and James must have been filled with some exhilaration, since in his enthusiasm Peter says, “Lord, it is well that we are here” (v.4). Then the luminous shekina Presence Cloud appears and the Father’s voice speaks. The apostles fell on their faces and were ephobéthesan sphódra, “afraid to an excessive degree”, “exceedingly afraid” (DRV), “filled with awe” (RSV). The experience has been especially hammered into them even with the voice of the Father, who is heard to speak only three times in the Gospels.
Why would Jesus, “gentle and humble of heart” want to hammer holy fear into his three chief apostles? To get their heads and hearts, their withins and withouts, into a place and condition to bear the horror of His upcoming Passion. Just before this, in Matthew 16, Christ had to rebuke Peter for resisting the very notion of Christ’s sacrificial suffering. Is this a Peter who would stand strong during the Lord’s trials? In fact, even with the Transfiguration experience, Peter and James ran away from the Garden arrest and Peter denied Christ. John had fled the Garden but was at the Cross. How bad would it have been for the Apostolic College if the chief three hadn’t experienced the Transfiguration? One can only assume that Christ knew that, without this encounter, they would have not only run, but they would have kept on running.
We have sermons of Pope St. Leo “the Great” (+461) from this Sunday (s. 51) about the Transfiguration. For Leo, the main purpose of the Transfiguration was to remove the offense of the Cross from the hearts of his apostles and to prevent them from losing their faith when they saw His humiliation. Keep in mind the totality of degradation which was inflicted during crucifixion: the condemned was stripped bare.
Christ handed that fortifying and purifying gift down to the Three and through them to the Twelve. Paul handed his fortifying and purifying down to the Thessalonians and from them to us. The peek at something of Christ’s divinity was to bolster them against the trials they would undergo in the gruesome meatgrinder of the Passion. The sharp admonitions made by Paul in his letter were to strengthen them in their trials, in particular in this reading about purity in the relentless meat-mind grinder of still dominating paganism.
Some say, and probably they are not wrong, that we are living in post-Christian times. These are pagan times anew, with all the resultant impurity. With ever-escalating depravity, impurity is celebrated and, through the devious machinations of The Powers High Atop The Thing which control the mass media, impurity of the most twisted and unnatural sort is being unavoidably forced on everyone. There was once a maxim that “everything not forbidden is allowed”. Now there looms over us the horrifying and logical consequence of the totalitarian principle, “everything not forbidden is mandatory”.
Peter denied the Lord, James fled, and only John returned to be at the foot of the Cross. Let us not get puffed up about how tough we are in view of the Enemy of the soul’s relentless body-mind grinding. In fact, we find the satanic mill within the Church as well, now more than ever.
We need the view of the Transfiguration to strengthen the whole of the Church! I think we can most effectively encounter that transformative mystery in our worthy sacred liturgical worship, more precisely in our traditional Roman Rite. In our sacred liturgical rites we have the opportunity for an encounter with the mystery that transforms us. We must ask the pointed question: If what I am regularly attending does not, in fact, help me to prepare to resist the world, the flesh and the Devil – which we cannot avoid as humans – and to ready ourselves for the Passion – which we cannot avoid as Christians – then… what am I doing?
The moral exhortation of Paul with the account of the Transfiguration remind us of the dangers we face from within and from without. As Lent continues, let us remember the lessons of our forebears, which they gave us as loving gifts.