“Becoming fully awake,
they saw his glory.”
Gospel: Luke 9:28-36
Have you ever had a moment when something just clicked into place? Where, just for a second, the ordinary world seemed to break open, and you saw things more clearly than ever before? Maybe it was a conversation that changed the way you saw yourself, or a song lyric that hit you at just the right moment, or the way the sun caught your loved one’s face, and suddenly, everything felt … different.
That’s what happens in this Sunday’s Gospel. Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up a mountain, and suddenly—boom. “His face changed in appearance, and his clothing became dazzling white” (Luke 9:29). It’s like the curtain is pulled back. For one brilliant moment, his divinity breaks through his humanity, and his friends see him as he is.
Luke describes Jesus as “dazzling,” and that word should grab our attention. It’s an echo of a moment in the Old Testament, when the prophet Ezekiel was given a vision of God. That scene, by the way? Straight-up nightmare fuel. Fire everywhere, angels with wheels and way too many eyes... But above all this chaos, Ezekiel sees “one having the form of a man,” seated on a throne, and clothed in dazzling light (Eze 1:26).
Now, on the mountaintop, Peter, James, and John experience the same mystery in reverse. Ezekiel saw God’s glory, unexpectedly, in the form of a man. The disciples of Jesus see, within the man, the glory of God.
But this moment of revelation is deeply strange. It happens within a cloud, like the frightening, dreamlike moment in Genesis when God makes his covenant with Abraham. There, too, God’s presence was experienced in the dark, in a kind of liminal space, half-seen and half-understood.
Moments of revelation often come like this. We can struggle to understand what we’re seeing. We might wonder if it’s coming from God or just our own imagination. Nonetheless, something shifts. Something deep within us stirs. And later, as we continue along our journey of faith, knocked off balance by what we have seen, we come to a deeper awareness of the truth that was revealed.
I remember one such moment in my story. Years ago, in a healing prayer session, I was sharing about my same-sex attraction, hoping—if I’m honest—to be “fixed.” I felt so much shame even saying the words out loud. But the person leading the prayer invited me to imagine myself in a Gospel scene: the moment when Jesus calls his first disciples.
“What do you notice?” he asked.
I saw Jesus standing on the shore, watching Peter and Andrew, James and John as they worked in their boats. He was looking at them with such tenderness and affection—not just looking, but seeing them. And as I described the scene to him, the man leading that prayer said something that sent a shockwave through my whole body.
“They were attracted to a man, weren’t they?”
I froze. My heart was pounding. And then suddenly, I understood. Of course they were. They were drawn to Jesus. Maybe not in a sexual way, but still, they were attracted to him, drawn by desire. And that wasn’t something to be ashamed of. It was holy.
Pope Benedict XVI, in his encyclical Deus caritas est, writes beautifully about the role of desire in Christian spirituality. Erotic love is something much bigger than we usually imagine. It’s not just sexual attraction. Eros is the hunger for what is beautiful, true, and good, the longing to reach for something beyond ourselves. In fact, for the Greeks and the Eastern Christian tradition, eros was always, ultimately, the desire for God.
What were those first disciples feeling when they met Jesus? They saw something in him—truth, beauty, goodness, love—and they were drawn to him. Even before they understood who he was, “deep called unto deep” (Psalm 42:7). They glimpsed the depths of his heart in the beauty of his eyes, and something inside them said: Yes. More of that. “They left everything and followed him” (Luke 5:11).
Now, on the mountaintop, the depths of his dazzling glory are finally revealed before their eyes. It’s no surprise that Peter wants to stay there forever. But they can’t. This moment isn’t the final destination. It’s a glimpse, a preview of the joy that awaits them on the other side. There’s an exodus yet to come, a journey that will lead through suffering, confusion, and loss—but ultimately to a deeper union with the One they long for.
Now, isn’t this a familiar story?
Along the journey of faith, we all experience moments of revelation—times when something clicks, when God reveals new truths to us that knock us off balance. We don’t understand them completely in the moment, because the moment isn’t the point. It’s only a “momentary stay of confusion,” as Robert Frost might say, before we take the next step on the long exodus of faith.
For many of us, especially those of us who are Catholic and LGBTQ+, this journey has been marked by intense experiences of longing, attraction, and beauty, but also by shame and fear, not knowing how to interpret what we were feeling. We have been told that our desires need to be “purified” or “healed” in ways that sound a lot like rejection and repression.
But if eros is truly the longing for God, as Pope Benedict suggests, then we don’t need to fear it or reject it. Our desire is holy. And it’s meant to lead us, like Peter, James, and John, from “sea level” to the mountaintop—and ultimately, all the way to Heaven.
At the end of this Sunday’s vision, when the cloud lifts and the brilliance fades, the Gospel tells us simply: “They saw only Jesus” (Luke 9:36).
In the end, I hope that’s where desire leads. To that still, sacred moment where all the noise, the shame, the fear is stripped away, and all that’s left is Jesus. To see the face of the one who sees us, who knows us, and who has long desired to draw us into his own dazzling light.
And maybe, when we finally see him, we’ll realize something stunning.
Our desires were never something he meant for us to repress.
They were always—already—the stirrings of transfiguration.
Reflection Questions:
Have you ever had a moment of revelation, where you saw yourself, God, or the world in a new way, even if you didn’t fully understand it at the time? Looking back now, how do you see that moment? Has its meaning changed for you?
Have you ever felt drawn toward God—not out of fear or obligation, but from a deep desire for something truer, more beautiful, more whole? What was that like?
How might your own experiences of longing and desire be drawing you deeper into the mystery of the divine?