Mark 9:2-10, 2nd Sunday of Lent

Eclipses used to be a dreadful thing. Ancient cultures saw omens in them, portending evil and tragedy. Imagining some dark monster eating the sun, they took fright.

Now we know an eclipse is just the same moon we see at night, making its way during the day and crossing the light of the sun. Thankfully an eclipse is just a passing shadow of a moving moon. Thankfully it is only for a moment.

Beyond astronomy, despite eclipses being momentary, we still dread light going out where and when we expect light to shine. We do not like being eclipsed ourselves by whoever darkens our sight. We avoid shadows even as they are cast by the light. Our fear stays even when shadows come and go. 

In the shadows, we are anxious to let the darkness go away. We worry it will not. We do not know when or if it will. Day turns into night and the dark seems to stand still. The evil monster seems to bide its time while it eats the sun. The sun stays in its place and lets itself be devoured. This unsettles us and we are too scared to move out of the shadows.

We tend to think of Lent as an extended eclipse of 40 days, when the light of heaven is hidden from our sight. And yet every year we remind ourselves that 40 days may be a long time, but it is not forever. Lent is our ritual reminder that even in darkness, love endures. Amid iniquity, there is mercy. From the darkness of our Lord’s passion we are brought to the light of Easter.  

G. K. Chesterton once wrote, “We should always endeavour to wonder at the permanent thing, not at the mere exception. We should be startled by the sun, and not by the eclipse.”

Our Gospel story today is meant to startle us as it did Peter, James, and John when they went up that high mountain and they saw Jesus in dazzling white, transfigured before their very eyes. They were startled by the sun. Peter was so enthralled he did not want to leave the mountain.

The unexpected special effects help but we wonder if we are astonished more by the eclipse than by the sun. Does the light dazzle, the revelation that Jesus is at last the very fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets? Does it still startle us to hear that Jesus is the beloved Son of God?

And yet what is truly startling about the transfiguration is the whiteness of it all, knowing how all this would soon be drenched in blood and eclipsed on the cross. With Abraham and Isaac, we are relieved that God held back. When it came to God’s beloved Son, God did not. God not holding back is the mystery  that should astonish us. It is the graciousness of God “who did not spare his own Son but handed him over for us all” (Rom 8) that is the more permanent thing. 

When we look at all the heartbreak in our world today, we ask if the darkness will ever go away. We worry it will not. We turn anxious when evil bides its time while it eats the light of our goodness and hope. Night takes long and the shadows come to a standstill.

Even today as we remember EDSA, we see the glory of our exodus being eclipsed methodically and forgotten. We wonder whether the epiphany of courage and solidarity at EDSA was only for a moment, just some brief interlude of light between the shadows, an exception.

The fourth mystery of light, the transfiguration, reveals otherwise and remedies our disillusion. The light of Christ that dazzles us on the mountain is the same light that kindles our courage and compassion, the same light that emboldens us to take on the monsters that are eating the sun.

It is the sun that should startle us, not the eclipse. The light of Easter on Sunday is the more permanent thing. And the shadow of death on Friday is just that, a shadow that can neither stand still nor remain.