NOTES for Luk 9:28-36

In the account of the Transfiguration, the themes of Christ’s glory and His sufferings merge into one. On the mountain He speaks with the prophets about His “exodus”: Golgotha. Descending from the mountain, Jesus foretells to the disciples what awaits Him in Jerusalem. Interestingly, the disciples prove unable either to see the glory of the transfigured Jesus or to hear His words about the Cross. Perhaps these things are also connected. We can judge from our own experience: the less we see the Lord’s presence in our lives and the less we know what glory is, the worse we understand the words about the cross. The cross seems to us to be our everyday troubles rather than the way of faith and self-denial. We can attain this new understanding of the cross only by seeing Glory, the living presence of God, whether openly, like the Apostle Paul, or in a veiled way, by discerning His action in the circumstances of life.