Last Sunday after Epiphany; 11 February 2024; Last Epiphany B (RCL); 2 Kings 2:1-12; Psalm 50:1-6; 2 Corinthians 4:3-6; Mark 9:2-9.
I entertain a theory, for which I have little evidence, that one of the primary uses of the Gospels in the early church was as “training manuals” or formation material for the newly baptized. Catechumens were dismissed after the liturgy of the word, and before the reading of the Gospel and sermon, and so would be unfamiliar with the Gospel prior to baptism. I believe that during the long vigil before baptism, in addition to readings from the Old Testament, the baptisands would likely hear whichever Gospel their community used, read from cover to cover.
Think of the emotional impact such a hearing would have on those waiting to enter the water, who had been in training for weeks, and possibly months or years. The Gospels would sound very different in such a context than we are used to hearing them. The baptisands would be invited to hear themselves in the story as they made their way to their own paschal mystery, their own death and resurrection in the waters of baptism.
The voice from heaven comes to Jesus, both at his baptism and at his transfiguration on the holy mountain. Baptisands would be awaiting their own adoption as children of God through the Spirit in baptism (see Romans 6-8). This voice would be speaking to them, and they would understand that baptism was their own transfiguration into glory. In the last thirty to forty years, the western church has begun to recover the doctrine of deification (it was never really lost, just not emphasized; the Wesleys, among others, kept it alive in the idea of sanctification).
The goal or purpose of the Christian life is to be conformed to Christ, to be Christified or deified. We are to become by grace what Christ is by nature, both human and divine. The story of the Transfiguration is placed in the Gospel accounts where it is (prior to Jesus turning toward his passion in Jerusalem) as part of the formational purpose of the Gospels, to remind the baptisands of the journey they are beginning, and its outcome. It is this transfigured Christ who walks toward Jerusalem, just as those to be transfigured in baptism will walk again into their lives in this world, but with the purpose of the deification of the whole creation (Romans 8).
While we speak of Lent as a season of preparation for baptism, we tend not to think of Lent as preparing us for transfiguration, for Christification or deification, but that would have been the purpose of catechetical preparation in the ancient church. Lent is not just preparation for Easter, but eschatological preparation as well.
