Move back down the mountain

We live in a world that seems permanently on edge: wars without resolution, political rhetoric without restraint, and leaders who often inflame division rather than heal it. Chaos seems no longer an exception; it’s the atmosphere. In such a climate, despair appears rational and aggression masquerades as strength.

But the message issued by the Vatican’s Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue for the holy month of Ramadan cuts directly against this tide.

It insists that believers must resist both despair and violence, keeping their gaze fixed on the “invisible Light who is God—the Almighty, the Most Merciful, the only Just One.” That insistence is not naïve. It is disciplined realism.

The Dicastery’s text, released February 20 (see page 23), recognises that the overload of information, competing narratives and relentless crises cloud discernment and intensify suffering.

This is precisely the terrain where poor leadership thrives: confusion breeds fear, fear breeds anger, and anger is easily manipulated, for when leaders abandon moral clarity, societies begin to mirror that disorder. The result is a cycle of hostility justified as necessary toughness.

Matthew’s account of the Transfiguration, this Sunday’s gospel (Mt 17:1–9), offers a corrective. It recounts a moment when Christ’s glory breaks through fear, confusion and impending suffering. Peter wants to remain on the mountain, to freeze the brilliance and avoid the cross that lies ahead. But the vision ends, and Jesus leads them back down into a troubled world.

That movement—from revelation to responsibility—is the heart of Christian discipleship in an age marked by fractured societies and faltering leadership.

The Transfiguration is not an escape from history but a revelation of how history must be faced.

Scripture says the voice from the cloud does not say “admire him” but “Listen to him.” Listening to Christ means rejecting the seduction of violent shortcuts and the paralysis of hopelessness. It means returning from the mountain to a broken world with renewed moral sight.

Providential convergence

The Dicastery’s message highlights a providential convergence: Christians journey through Lent while Muslims fast during Ramadan. Both traditions emphasise prayer, fasting and almsgiving/charity as means of purification and renewal. These aren’t just private devotions; they are countercultural acts.

Fasting disciplines appetites for power and revenge. Prayer recentres judgement beyond partisan passions. Charity disrupts the logic that reduces humans to enemies or collateral damage.

The Dicastery’s message issues an appeal to overcome evil with good. That is demanding, precisely because it refuses easy theatrics. Violence promises immediate results; goodness requires patience, courage and interior disarmament.

Here the words of Pope Francis in Fratelli Tutti resonate: humanity is “all in the same boat.” When leadership fails, believers cannot outsource responsibility for peace. They must become its architects at the level of conscience, community and public witness.

Likewise, the call echoed by Pope Leo XIV in his World Day of Peace message on New Year’s Day for a “disarmament of heart, mind and life” strikes at the root of today’s chaos. Structural peace will never emerge from hearts still armed with resentment, ideological absolutism and contempt for the other.

The Transfiguration ends with Jesus alone. The dazzling vision fades, but the command remains. Christians are not permitted to linger in spiritual comfort.

They are sent back down the mountain—alongside our Muslim brothers and sisters and all people of goodwill—to labour for a peace grounded not in illusion, but in conversion, justice, and the difficult courage of mercy.