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Jesus took Peter, James, and John with him up a high mountain and was transfigured before them, [his garments] becoming so dazzlingly bright that they were “whiter than the work of any bleacher could make them” (Mark 9:2-10)… .
On the transfigured face of Jesus, a ray of light which he held within shines forth. This same light was to shine on Christ’s face on the day of the resurrection. In this sense, the transfiguration appears as a foretaste of the paschal mystery.
The transfiguration invites us to open the eyes of our hearts to the mystery of God’s light, present throughout salvation history. At the beginning of creation, the Almighty had already said: “Fiat lux—let there be light!” (Genesis 1:3), and the light was separated from the darkness. Like the other created things, light is a sign that reveals something of God: it is, as it were, a reflection of his glory which accompanies its manifestations. When God appears, “His brightness was like the light, rays flashed from his hand” (Habakkuk 3:4).
Light, it is said in the psalms, is the mantle with which God covers himself (see Psalm 104:2). In the Book of Wisdom, the symbolism of light is used to describe the very essence of God: wisdom, an outpouring of his glory, is “a reflection of eternal light” superior to any created light (see Wisdom 7:26, 29ff).
In the New Testament, it is Christ who constitutes the full manifestation of God’s light. His resurrection defeated the power of the darkness of evil forever. With the risen Christ, truth and love triumph over deceit and sin. In him, God’s light henceforth illumines definitively human life and the course of history: “I am the light of the world,” he says in the gospel; “he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (John 8:12).
In our time, too, we urgently need to emerge from the darkness of evil, to experience the joy of the children of light! May Mary … obtain this gift for us.
—Angelus, August 6, 2006