Keeping Silent...or Not

[A reflection on the Gospel for the Last Sunday after Epiphany (Quinquagesima), March 2, 2025, which may be found here.]

Imagine being let in on a secret, a marvelous secret, and being told to keep it. Then imagine having no trouble keeping it because processing it and understanding it remains difficult, if not impossible. Words fail. We cannot wrap our minds around it. We don't know where to start. Every attempt we make trying to explain it sounds odd at best and barking mad at worst. Frustration is a good word to describe the situation, but also ambivalence, or even confusion.

The Apostles Peter, James, and John found themselves in the same predicament. They saw their Teacher's appearance change. They saw two prophets who had gone on before them many hundreds of years before. They heard the voice of God telling them (again) just Who was before them and to listen to them. Then when everything went back to normal...but can anything be normal ever again after that...they (wisely) kept a lid on it. Who would believe them? When pressed for details, what could they say?

It was not until the fateful events in Jerusalem had unfolded when they finally had enough to process what had happened and how they could relate it to everything that they witnessed. Jesus, Moses, and Elijah had discussed the mission in Jerusalem, the Passion, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection, and the Apostles had no frame of reference to understand what those three were discussing, or even why they were discussing those topics. It was not until these things came to pass that understanding dawned upon the Apostles and the full weight of what they saw came upon them.

Fortunately for us, they waited until they understood the wonder they beheld, they waited until events were made clear and the purpose of that celestial conference manifested. If they had not, would there have been a meaningless shrine on Mt. Tabor commemorating a vision without substance, an apparition without purpose? Or if they had spoken out of turn would everyone else written them off and not understood that the Passion, Death, and Resurrection was a planned event known to the Council of Heaven, a continuation of the mission of the Law and the Prophets? They did wait, and because they waited we know that the events we will mark in the next few, short weeks were part of the larger plan for our redemption and salvation.