No Tents on the Mountain
Gospel Matthew 17:1-9
Fr. Jijo Kandamkulathy, CMF
Claretian Missionaries
The journey to that mountain of transfiguration was a startling experience for the disciples. The man that they had been walking, talking, and eating with, suddenly appears in his original divine nature in front of them. Peter, James, and John climbed the mountain that day, expecting nothing more than another journey with their teacher. Instead, they are plunged into a mystery that shatters every category they possess. The face of Jesus, so familiar to them, becomes blinding light. Two heroes, Moses and Elijah, who had died centuries ago, appear and converse with him. And in that moment, something happens inside each of them that is more complex than simple awe.
Peter speaks, and his words betray him. “Lord, it is good that we are here. If you wish, I will make three tents…” But listen to what is really being said. Peter is not merely offering hospitality. He is trying to control the uncontrollable. The transfiguration terrifies him precisely because it exceeds his comprehension, and the human mind, when confronted with overwhelming mystery, reaches for what it knows. Tents. Structures. Something to do. Peter cannot simply receive this moment; he must manage it, contain it, reduce it to something he understands. The offer to build tents is a defense mechanism against the sheer otherness of what he is witnessing.
And there is something more. In that moment, Peter glimpses the possibility that Jesus might not be the Messiah he wants—a political liberator, a restorer of Israel’s glory. Moses and Elijah are speaking of departure, of exodus. The word in Luke’s Gospel is heavy with meaning: it evokes the first exodus, but it also points toward death. Peter’s unconscious mind registers this threat, and his response is to freeze the moment, to keep Jesus forever in this glorious state, to prevent the descent that must follow. “It is good that we are here” is, at its deepest level, a plea: Let us stay. Do not go down. Do not let this end the way it seems it will.
James and John say nothing. Their silence is its own kind of terror. They have been brought higher than they ever imagined, only to find that height itself is dizzying and unsafe. The voice from the cloud will soon send them prostrate, face-down in the dirt, unable to look. This is the psychological truth of encounter with the divine: it does not leave us comfortable. It exposes us. It strips away our pretensions. These men who have argued about who is greatest among them now lie on the ground, speechless with fear.
But look at Jesus. His experience of this moment is utterly different, and this is where the psychological depth truly lies. He stands in the same light, hears the same voice, yet for him it is not a terror but a confirmation. The Father’s words—“This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him”—are not new. He heard them at his baptism. But now they come with a specific weight. The conversation with Moses and Elijah has been about Jerusalem, about the suffering that awaits. The Father’s voice is not a consolation that bypasses that suffering; it is a reassurance that the suffering itself is the path of sonship. Jesus receives his identity not despite the cross, but precisely in and through it.
This is the psychological chasm between Jesus and his disciples. They stand in the same place, hear the same voice, yet their souls are oriented in opposite directions. For the disciples, the mountain is an escape from the valley. For Jesus, the mountain is the source of strength to enter the valley more fully. They want to build tents and stay. He must descend and walk toward Golgotha. The same experience, received by different hearts, produces entirely different fruit.
The descent from the mountain is therefore the most psychologically revealing moment of all. Jesus touches them—that gentle, restoring touch—and says, “Rise, and do not be afraid.” He does not scold Peter for his foolish offer of tents. He does not mock their terror. He simply brings them back to themselves, back to him, back to the ordinary. And when they raise their eyes, Moses and Elijah are gone. The cloud is gone. There is only Jesus, looking as he always looked, walking the same dusty path they have always walked.
But he is not the same. And neither, though they do not yet know it, are they. Something has been planted in them that will only bear fruit after the resurrection, after the descent into their own failure, after the long processing of trauma and grace. The command to tell no one until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead is not merely about timing. It is about integration. They cannot speak of the glory until they have lived through the shame. They cannot preach the transfiguration until they have stood beneath the cross and wondered if everything they believed was a lie.
This is the journey we all make. We are given moments of clarity, of intimacy, of transcendent certainty. And our first impulse, like Peter’s, is to build tents—to freeze the moment, to possess it, to make it a permanent escape from the ambiguities of ordinary life. But the voice from the cloud does not say, “Stay here forever.” It says, “Listen to him.” And listening to him means following him down the mountain, into the valley, into the places where glory is hidden and faith is tested and love is demanded not in brilliant light but in the grey twilight of daily fidelity.
The same road, traveled by different hearts, leads to different destinations. Peter will eventually understand. But not yet. For now, he must simply rise, and not be afraid, and walk with Jesus toward a future he cannot yet imagine.
© Claretian Publications, Macau
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