People often complain that God treats them unfairly in sending sending them trials, sometimes even regardless of how huge or small such trials may be. They often say that God's sends them "suprise quizes" likes the ones we have at school where, without previous notice the teacher would announce at the start of the class that there's an exam for his or her subject and that we need to immediately put aside our books and notebooks and get a pen and a sheet of paper and answer the following questions. We complain that it's unfair, that we should be forewarned, that we may be prepared for these "surprise" testings.
What I say is that God is definitely more sensible than that. For reasons beyond my comprehension, God does send crises, trials, testings in our life and quite often, they do come as a "surprise." But is such really the case?
The feast of the Transfiguration offers us so many themes to reflect, themes that abound in the general topic of Christian Life. One of the central concerns of this event in the life of the early Christians is that Jesus was preparing his disciples for that "great trial of Faith" that they will encounter in the Cross. After having revealed his eventual tragic death to his disciples, he called some of them to be witnesses of his true destiny: the Glory of the Resurrection. His message was clear, the gathering darkness of the Night is only a prelude to the grandeur of Daylight.
Unfortunately, even this simple preparations sessions weren't enough, or perhaps they weren't so clear to Jesus' disciples. This is obvious in Peter's remark of staying in the mountain and building three tents. The fact that Peter misunderstood the whole scence was evident in the gospel observation that while Peter was still speaking a voice was heard from the clouds saying "This is my beloved Son.... listen to him."
The question is: did Peter listen? Was he attentive? No! This is obvious because on the next occasion wherein Jesus revealed to his disciples that he shall be handed over to the enemies and shall be tortured, will suffer and eventually die, Peter was the first to say that he shall not allow this to happen. To which Jesus retorted, "Get behind me Satan!" Yes, Peter's stubbornness to insist on what he thinks, rather than pay attention to how Jesus was preparing them for the Crisis of the Cross was crystal clear.
But before we eventually have this totally bad image of Peter, the point for reflection is this: aren't we all like Peter? Do we not share in the same predicament, or condition of stubbornness before the formative hand of God? God will never test us beyond our capacity. He prepares us for the day of test; it is us who couldn't pay attention to how he is preparing us.
