Read­ing Time: 2 minutes

Introduction   

This Sunday is the 18^th Sunday (A) of the Church’s litur­gic­al cal­en­dar. Since August 6, 2023, which hap­pens to be the feast of the Trans­fig­ur­a­tion of Jesus, occurs on a Sunday, the feast with its read­ings, replaces the read­ings of the 18^th Sunday (A). The par­al­lel texts to Mat­thew 17:1–9 are Mark 9:2–8 and Luke 9:28–36. Among the three evan­gel­ists, only Luke under­lines that Jesus went up the moun­tain with his three dis­ciples to pray. And as he was pray­ing, Luke says his coun­ten­ance changed. That is, he was trans­figured. This is not sur­pris­ing because Luke gives much import­ance to pray­er. He con­ceives pray­er as intim­acy with God. Before tak­ing any ini­ti­at­ive, Jesus always con­sults his Fath­er in and through pray­er to be enlightened and instruc­ted on the best way to act. The trans­fig­ur­a­tion of Jesus is a detailed explan­a­tion of the exper­i­ence nar­rated by Daniel (cf. First Reading).

Moses and Elijah

Imme­di­ately after Jesus meta­morph­osed, Moses and Eli­jah appeared on the scene. But why these two? The most likely explan­a­tion is that Moses the law­giver appears as the rep­res­ent­at­ive of the old cov­en­ant and the prom­ise of sal­va­tion, which was to be ful­filled in the pas­sion, death, and resur­rec­tion of Jesus. On the oth­er hand, Eli­jah appears as the proph­et of the eschat­on—the end times (cf. Mal 4:5–6; Mark 9:11–13). Accord­ing to Matthew’s account, which dif­fers from Mark and Luke, the meta­morph­osed Jesus rep­res­ents the new Moses, who meets God on the new Sinai, in the cloud (Matt 17:5. Cf. Exod 24:15–18), with a lumin­ous face (Matt 17:2. Cf. Exod 34:29–35; 2Cor 3:7–4:6), assisted by the two import­ant per­son­al­it­ies of the Hebrew (Old) Test­a­ment, who had already bene­fit­ted from the divine rev­el­a­tion on the Sinai (cf. Exod 19; 33–34; 1kgs 19:9–13), and rep­res­ent the law and proph­ets, which Jesus has come to ful­fil (cf. Matt 5:17). Luke goes fur­ther and explains that both Moses and Eli­jah dis­cussed the death of Jesus (cf. Luke 9:31), but failed to give the con­tent or detail of such a dis­cus­sion. We understand.…

Conclusion

Jesus has taken office from Moses and Eli­jah. He is now in-charge of every law, proph­ets and proph­ecy, and even of every life. Def­in­itely, he did and he is still doing all things well. He is not like many politi­cians and reli­gious lead­ers, who buy their way to the offices just to work only for their selfish interests. In Jesus’ ten­ure, there was no iota of cor­rup­tion. Do not ask me about many of our politi­cians and reli­gious lead­ers. Because I am sure you know them bet­ter than I do. As indic­ated above, Luke under­lines that Jesus went to the moun­tain to pray. And that his trans­form­a­tion took place while he was pray­ing. Do not for­get the import­ance of pray­er in your life. But remem­ber, God answers only the pray­er of a just per­son. Do not pray when you should work, and do not work when you should pray. The prin­ciples of time and sea­son for everything (cf. Eccl 3:1) should be respected.

FOR DETAILS, GET YOUR OWN COPIES OF THE BOOK “THE WORD OF LIFE:
SUNDAY REFLECTIONS” (vols. I‑II-III)! The reflec­tion for the Trans­fig­ur­a­tion of Jesus (A) is found in The Word of Life, vol. I, pages 150–163. Happy reading!

For details on how to get it, con­tact the author on this link: https://m.me/uchennabiblia?fbclid=IwAR2yeg4a6sDGBp9QGkIvKj6FSADumMokN6lshdE0zuo-JHs6qOmlhA7jyHo
or email me at: postmaster@uchennabiblia.com
or simply send an SMS on 08116100926, and I will get back to you.

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