TRINITY · 6 AUGUST
The Transfiguration of Our Lord
Principal Feast · The Glory Disclosed · The Answer to the Question: Who Is He?
Transfiguration — trans-fig-yoo-RAY-shun · Tabor — TAY-bor · Hermon — HER-mon · Moses — MOH-zes · Elijah — ih-LY-jah · metamorphothe — meh-tah-MOR-foh-thay
O God, who on the holy Mount didst reveal to chosen witnesses thine only-begotten Son wonderfully transfigured, in raiment white and glistening; Mercifully grant that we, being delivered from the disquietude of this world, may by faith behold the King in his beauty; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord.
Six days after the confession of Caesarea Philippi — where Peter had said Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God and had immediately shown that he did not understand what he had said — Jesus took Peter and James and John and led them up a high mountain apart, and was transfigured before them. The Greek word is metamorphothe (meh-tah-MOR-foh-thay): he was transformed, his form changed, his appearance altered so radically that his face shone as the sun and his raiment became white as the light. And Moses (MOH-zes) and Elijah (ih-LY-jah) appeared, talking with him. The Law and the Prophets — the whole of the Old Testament, summed in its two supreme figures — stood with him on the mountain, speaking of the exodus he would accomplish at Jerusalem. And a bright cloud overshadowed them, and out of the cloud came a voice saying This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him. And the disciples fell on their faces. And when they lifted up their eyes, they saw no one save Jesus only. The Transfiguration is the answer to the question Peter had answered at Caesarea Philippi: who is Jesus? He is the fulfilment of the Law and the Prophets; he is the beloved Son in whom the Father is well pleased; he is the one whose glory is the glory of God himself, which the body of flesh contains but cannot permanently conceal.
The theological content of the Transfiguration is the most concentrated statement of Christology in the synoptic Gospels. The presence of Moses and Elijah declares that Jesus is not in competition with the Torah and the prophetic tradition but is their fulfilment and their goal: the Law was leading to him, the prophets were speaking of him, and now they stand with him in the light of his glory, speaking of the death that will accomplish what both had pointed toward. The voice from the cloud is the same voice that spoke at the baptism — the Father’s declaration of the Son’s identity — but now confirmed on the mountain before witnesses, as the Law required for any testimony to be legally established. The disciples fall on their faces because they have seen the divine glory — the kavod, the weight of divine presence, the same glory that filled the Tabernacle and the Temple — breaking through the veil of flesh in the person of the carpenter of Nazareth. And when they look up, there is only Jesus. The Law is not abolished; Moses and Elijah have not been displaced; but the one who fulfils them both is there, alone, sufficient.
The feast falls on 6 August in Trinity-tide — deep in the long green season of ordinary faith, the season in which the Church lives out day by day the implications of what it believes. The Transfiguration is placed in this season as a reminder of what underlies the ordinary: that the one who is present in the Eucharist, in the scriptures, in the poor, in the gathered community, is the same one whose face shone as the sun on the mountain. The glory does not disappear after the descent; it is contained, revealed in the ordinary, waiting for the eyes of faith to recognise it. This is what the Eastern theological tradition calls theosis (thee-OH-sis) — the progressive transformation of the human person in the divine light — and the Transfiguration is its scriptural ground: the human body, perfected and glorified, shining with the uncreated light that is the life of God.
The Transfiguration answers the question the whole of the Gospel has been asking since the beginning: who is this man? He is the Son of God, clothed in human flesh. His glory is the glory of the Father, temporarily veiled by the conditions of the Incarnation and fully disclosed only once — here, on the mountain — to the three disciples who will also be present in Gethsemane, in the hour when the same humanity that shone in glory will sweat blood in the dark. The mountain of Transfiguration and the garden of Gethsemane are inseparable: the same three witnesses, the same Lord, the same divine nature contained in the same human flesh, in its glory and in its agony. The feast of 6 August gives the Church, in the middle of the long ordinary season, a glimpse of what it will see fully at the last: the King in his beauty, all creation transfigured in the light of his risen life, the whole of creation metamorphothe — transformed — into the form of the glory that shone on the mountain.
Almighty God, who on the holy Mount didst transfigure thy Son before his chosen witnesses and declare him to be thy beloved in whom thou art well pleased; Grant that we, who behold his glory veiled in the ordinary things of daily life, may have our eyes opened on the mount of prayer and our hearts prepared for the Gethsemane that follows every Tabor; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end.
Amen.