AUGUST 6 2026 MSGR. SAM BIANCO
“He was transfigured.”
The great theologian and scripture scholar Romano Guardini says: “The transfiguration is like summer lightning.” And not so much in urban areas, but if you’re out in the country, you’re out in nature, and it’s dark at night or something, and there’s a thunderstorm, then you see lightning going across the skies.
It’s extraordinary. It lights up the whole sky for miles and miles. At least for a few moments you can see in all directions. And it’s sparkling and it’s brilliant. I appreciate there are dangers with that of fire, but if the ground is moist then it’s good, that the fire doesn’t happen. What happens is it’s the light, the brilliance, that’s so unusual and unique.
It startles and it holds you back. And you’re left, at least one hopes for a moment, in awe and in wonder of what is happening. Jesus was transfigured. The sky was opened up for Jesus’ disciples. And they saw in Jesus something of Moses. You know Moses represents and is the law. It’s the essence of the law that Moses particularly represents.
“Thou shall love the Lord thy God with all thy heart “and mind and soul, and your neighbour as yourself.” All the laws, summarized in that two-part commandment. And they see for a moment in Jesus everything that Moses brought to the world. Jesus is the one who loves God with all his heart and his soul and his neighbour as himself.
And then they see Jesus with the prophets. All the great prophets, Elijah, Ezekiel, Micah, Jeremiah. Like Isaiah. “I will raise you up on eagles’ wings.” As with Isaiah, “Does a mother ever forget the child borne in her womb?”
All the things that are beautiful, that are challenging, that are so poetic, so spiritual, about all the prophets throughout all of history, they’re part of the reality of who Jesus is. So that lightening lights up that in Jesus, it lights up the prophets and Moses, but the lightening tells us something about who Jesus is.
We know as best we can from the way he talked, and walked, and preached, and lived, that Jesus was a human being in communication with others. He touched people. He was close to them. He was with them in all the things, the good things they did. He was the very best of what it meant to be a human being, but without sin.
But to understand something of a human being, and you and I know this, we meet a person, and gradually over time it becomes apparent to us that more and more that person is being revealed to us. We thought we knew the person, then we saw something more about them. And that the way, brothers and sisters, is with Jesus.
The lightning lights up the fact of the depth of Jesus. It shows not only the humanity, which is so close to us in all ways. It shows Jesus integrating into himself the suffering of the world, and his own suffering. But it’s not suffering without meaning to it. Jesus never talks about death without always talking about the resurrection.
So what we see in Jesus is not only the suffering that he shares with all of us, but the deep hope all of us want, that suffering is not meaningless. That in some way, partially on earth, it will lead to the fullness of life, to the resurrection. And in that moment, that inspiration on the mountain, that’s what the disciples see.
Still, they see more there. The words that are used by the disciples is this: “Beloved Son.” To be beloved means someone loves you, and you receive that love. So what’s being revealed in Jesus is that there’s a God, a Father who loves Jesus with all his being. He loves and pours everything into Jesus, and Jesus receives that love.
He’s the beloved. There’s not such thing as being beloved without there being a source of love. And in Jesus’ case, is a case of reciprocity. The Father loves Jesus in everything that he is, and Jesus returns that love. It’s reciprocal, it’s communicated.
There’s no such thing as isolated autonomous love. Love always means relationship, being in communion with one another. And that has implications for you and me. The great teacher of the Church, Irenaeus, says about this passage: “The glory of God is man alive.”
And what Irenaeus is saying is human beings reflect the beauty and the glory of God. But we human beings never reflect that glory without being in communion with one another, without being in association with one another. And then Irenaeus goes on to say: “The life of man is the vision of God.”
I know so many people say: “I’m spiritual, I don’t need God.” That’s not the reality of who Jesus is. At one and the same time he’s in communion with others, but he’s always praising and worshiping God. And that’s what we offer to ourselves and to the world. That’s the revelation that transfigures the world.
And small acts can do that. I belong to the Saint Vincent de Paul. A lady told me she visited someone who was in need of assistance. The lady said responded to the assistance. But the lady was filled with a sense of strength and of goodness. To my mind, that’s transfiguration.
When we can be in communion with one another. When we can assist someone, but at the same time receive something from the other person. That’s to be transfigured, that’s to be changed. And that’s what the glory of God is.
When we see the goodness in other people, and know that God is giving us that gift. It might be a small act. It’s the whole combination of small little acts of transfiguration that changes us, and changes our world.
