It is on Mount Sinai that Moses both experiences God and is given the commandments for his people. He first encounters God in the episode of the burning bush, and it is at Sinai again that he goes up the mountain to receive the commandments that will govern the lives of the people of Israel, spending 40 days and nights with God. After the people’s apostasy, Moses has to return a second time to negotiate with God, and Moses asks that he might see God’s glory. When Moses comes down the mountain this time, his face is so illuminated that the people cannot bear to look at him, and he has to cover his head with a veil. Elijah stands for the prophets, those whose task was to bring God’s erring people back to the faithful practice of the covenant. Elijah too experiences God on the mountain, waiting until all the storms and winds have passed. All of this Jesus brings to His disciples as He takes them up the mountain. He is the new covenant with God, but the gift of that covenant is hallowed and experienced by His disciples in an encounter with God’s glory.
We have begun our Lenten journey, following Christ into the wilderness for 40 days. Today we too are taken up with His disciples to the mountain top so that we too may be touched by His glory. We all, through different ways, need to be touched by the experience of the living God, as given to the disciples as they witnessed the Transfiguration of Jesus and in the Pascal mystery of being with God. For some people such moments become the foundation of their conversion to Christianity. Others find sustenance for their belief in their experience of prayer and worship. Others again, in moments of natural awe and wonder in the natural world, in their loving relationships, or in the world of the arts or discovery. God reaches out to touch the heart of each of us in such a way that we can journey onwards, not just through Lent but through the darker moments of our lives when faith, knowledge and our comfort zone may be challenged by life’s mysteries.