Transfiguration

I noticed it almost by accident. I was telling a childhood story out loud — one I'd told a hundred times before, always the same way, always with that old ache underneath it — and the ache wasn't there. I kept talking, waiting for it to catch up with me the way it always had. It didn't come.

It happened in the season after my mother passed. I can still see the shape of certain incidents from childhood — enough to know they happened — but the specific edges of them, the details that used to cut, aren't there anymore. I don't think that's memory failing me. I think it was healed, taken somewhere I can't reach anymore to feel it the old way.

Why the Transfiguration Matters

The Gospels describe Jesus taking Peter, James, and John up a mountain to pray, and something happens there that none of them expected. His face and clothing become radiant, filled with light. Moses and Elijah appear beside Him — the Law and the Prophets, standing with the One who fulfills both. Then a voice speaks from a cloud: "This is my beloved Son. Listen to Him."

The disciples fall to the ground, overwhelmed. Peter, still catching up to what he's seeing, offers to build tents — as if the moment could be kept, staged, held onto exactly as it is. It's a very human response. We do the same thing with our own graces: we want to bottle the feeling rather than let it change us.

The Transfiguration happens shortly before the Passion — not by accident. It's a glimpse of glory given right before the hardest stretch, as if to say: remember this is who He is, even when what comes next looks nothing like glory. That timing matters for us too. Whatever quiet transformation God is working in you right now may be preparing you for something you can't see yet.

Saint John of the Cross wrote about a similar kind of transformation — one that asks us to let go of our attachment to worldly comforts, not because they're evil, but because holding onto them tightly is what keeps us from being changed. His "dark night" isn't punishment; it's the stripping away that has to happen before something new can take root. Transfiguration and that kind of letting go are close cousins.

If you're curious where you might be in that larger pattern — purgative, illuminative, or unitive — there's a short spiritual journey stages quiz that can help you see it more clearly.

Six Questions on Transfiguration

If you're wondering where transfiguration might already be at work in your own life, here are six places to look.

Practical Ways to Sit With Transfiguration

You can't force this kind of change, and honestly, most of my own transfiguration didn't come from effort. It came from waiting. That's not a comfortable answer, but it's the true one.

We wait for trains, for guests, for the occasional big wave to roll in. But most of us fill every quiet minute with a phone, a task, a distraction — anything to avoid the discomfort of just sitting in the silence where God tends to speak. If you want to give transfiguration room to happen, that's the first practical step: make space for the waiting instead of filling it.

Ask yourself, honestly, what you're holding onto that you'd resist letting go of, even if you knew it was keeping you from something better. You don't have to release it today. Just naming it honestly is often the beginning.

And when a change does happen in you — even a small one — try not to rush past it the way Peter wanted to build tents and freeze the moment. Let it settle. Notice it. Thank God for it, even if you don't fully understand what shifted.

Carry this virtue into the Rosary and let the Mysteries deepen what you have found here.