The First Transfiguration

Reflection for December 21, 2025 — The Fourth Sunday of Advent

In this Sunday’s Gospel reading, we hear how the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, thus fulfilling a prophecy. Find the daily reading here.

I imagine Joseph waking up the morning after the dream, blinking in the dim half-light of the dawn.

One day, decades from now, the baby his wife carries will stand on a mountaintop. His face will shine like the sun, and those who look upon him will fall down upon their own faces in fear.

We call this the transfiguration, and Joseph won’t be there to see it. But that doesn’t matter. What those men will learn on the mountaintop, Joseph already knows. He learned it last night.

Today, he shrugs off the remnants of slumber and stands up.

“Rise, and do not be afraid.” This is what the baby — a baby no longer, but a man now, one in the last days of his life — will say to his companions on the mountain a few decades from now. They will look up to see him standing there the same as he always was, and they will realize that he did not change at all. They did.

“Do not be afraid.” This is what the angel said last night as he revealed to Joseph the will of God: that Joseph take Mary and the Child as his own, despite having so many reasons not to do so. And today Joseph wakes up and the world is the same as it always was: Mary is pregnant, and the Child does not belong to him.

No, the world has not changed. Joseph has.

He rises, and goes to Mary.

Advent is drawing quickly to a close, and Christmas is coming soon. The change is upon us. Do we rise to accept it, or do we fall on our faces in fear?

©LPi