A homily at the Feast of the Transfiguration from St. John’s Church by Priest Paul Siewers

The Holy Transfiguration of Jesus Christ was His gift to His close disciples, and through them to us still today of His Church, for on this feast day we can glimpse it with and through them, Peter, James, and John. The Transfiguration is the Kingdom of God He promised His apostles they would see. Here the glory of Christ reassures them of His Resurrection before the trials leading to the Crucifixion begin, and indeed shows that such sufferings will be voluntary and only for a short mortal time, for they are not of the everlasting of God’s beyond time shown to them on the mountain.

Blessed Theophylact writes, “O Reader, learn that after six days, that is, after the six days in which the world was created, comes the vision of God. For if you do not transcend the world and are not raised up on the mountain top, you will not see glorious things: neither Jesus’ face, which is His divinity, nor His clothing, which is His flesh. May you then also see Moses and Elijah conversing with Jesus. For the law, the prophets, and Jesus speak harmoniously as one. But also, when you find someone brilliantly interpreting the meaning of Scripture, know that this man is beholding the brilliant face of Jesus; and if that man is rendering the words of Scripture clear and bright, know that he is beholding the white clothing of Jesus. Fr the words are the clothing of the thoughts. But do not say, as did Peter, ‘It is good for us to be here.’ For one must always be advancing and not standing still in the same level of virtue and vision, but moving on to another place.”

This reminded them that Jesus Christ had conversed with Moses and the Prophets in the Old Testament long humanly speaking before our Lord’s Incarnation in Bethlehem. More than that, it showed him in a bright cloud joyously expressing to them the uncreated shining light of God in His garments and around Him. This uncreated light shines on through His Body the Church and Her mysteries today, also through the ministry of the Holy Spirit to us through them since Pentecost, promised and sent also by our Lord.

St Gergory Palamas wrote,

“The light of the Lord’s transfiguration does not come into being or cease to be, nor is it circumscribed or perceptible to the senses, even though for a short time on the narrow mountain top it was seen by human eyes. Rather, at that moment the initiated disciples of the Lord ‘passed,’ as we have been taught, ‘from flesh to spirit’ by the transformation of their senses, which the Spirit wrought in them, and so they saw that ineffable light, when and as much as the Holy Spirit’s power granted them to do so. Those who are not aware of this light and who now blaspheme against it think that the chosen apostles saw the light of the Lord’s transfiguration with their created faculty of sight, and in this way they endeavour to bring down to the level of a created object not just that light – God’s power and kingdom – but even the power of the Holy Spirit, by which divine things are revealed to the worthy. They have not heard, or have not believed, Paul’s words, ‘Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God’ (1 Cor. 2:9–10)…. What do the words ‘and was transfigured’ mean? Chrysostom the theologian said that the Lord graciously willed to open up a little of His divinity, and revealed God within Him to the initiated disciples. ‘As he prayed,’ says Luke, ‘the fashion of his countenance was altered’ (Luke 9:29), and, as Matthew writes, ‘His face did shine as the sun’ (Matt. 17:2). He compares the light to the sun, not that anyone should imagine that that light was visible to bodily eyes – away with those whose minds are blind and capable of understanding nothing more exalted than visible phenomena! – but that we might know that Christ as God is for those who live by the Spirit and see with spiritual eyes what the sun is for those who live by their senses and see with natural vision. Those who behold God in divine contemplation need no other light, for He alone is the light of those who live forever.

“….that He might show us that it is prayer which procures this blessed vision, and we might learn that this brilliance comes about and shines forth when we draw near to God through the virtues, and our minds are united with Him. It is given to all who unceasingly reach up towards God by means of perfect good works and fervent prayer, and is visible to them. Everything about the blessed divine nature is truly beautiful and desirable, and is visible only to those whose minds have been purified. Anyone who gazes at its brilliant rays and its graces, partakes of it to some extent, as though his own face were touched by dazzling light. …. Our Lord Jesus Christ…. showed how God’s splendour would come to the saints and how they would appear. For the righteous shall shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father (Matt. 13:43), and when they have all become divine light, they will behold, as children of that light, Christ’s indescribable divine radiance. The glory that proceeds naturally from His divinity was shown on Tabor to be shared by His body as well, because of the unity of His person. Thus His face shone as the sun on account of this light…. He who shone with this light proved in advance that it was uncreated by referring to it as the kingdom of God. God’s kingdom is not subservient or created, but uniquely unsubduable and invincible. It is beyond the bounds of both time and aeon, and cannot be said to have had a beginning or to have been overtaken by time or age. We believe this kingdom to be the inheritance of those who are being saved. Given that when He was transfigured the Lord shone and displayed glory, splendour and light, and will come again as He was seen by His disciples on the mountain, does this mean He somehow took this light to Himself, and will have forever something He did not have before? Perish the blasphemous thought! Because anyone who says so imagines that Christ has three natures: the divine, the human, and the one belonging to this light. It follows that He did not manifest a radiance other than that which He already had invisibly. He possessed the splendour of the divine nature hidden under His flesh. This light, then, is the light of the Godhead, and it is uncreated. According to the theologians, when Christ was transfigured He neither received anything different, nor was changed into anything different, but was revealed to His disciples as He was, opening their eyes and giving sight to the blind….those who behold it do so not simply with their bodily eyes, but with eyes transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit.” (Translation by Christopher Veniamin)

This feast of the fruits marks this as the second Feast of the Savior in the Summer season of the Dormition of the Mother of God, when the Church calendar winds down to the evening of the year, when the next year will begin, the evening and the morning as the day. When I was new in Orthodoxy I, a sinner then as now, was guided by generous holy monks at the Monastery of the Holy Transfiguration outside of Chicago. My parish priest and community was a very helpful guide, but I was in such spiritual need, that it was the monastics of the little rural Holy Transfiguration Monastery who carried me across the spiritual battlefield to baptism, so to speak. I remember gratefully during the Transfiguration season of summer mowing the monastery lawn and preparations for the feast. Coincidentally but meaningfully, it was on the Feast of Transfiguration a quarter century later that unworthily and still the worst of sinners I was blessed to be ordained to the priesthood at Holy Trinity Monastery, today being my second anniversary as a priest.

Early on my journey to Orthodoxy, at this feast I with many others received a blessing at the Transfiguration Monastery from Gerond Ephraim, the founder of that Holy Transfiguration Monastery and 13 others in North America, considered a saint by many. Elder Ephraim from Mount Athos lived in the tradition of hesychasm taught him by his Elder, Joseph the Hesychast. That tradition of prayer connects with the same uncreated energy shown to the Apostles at the Transfiguration of Christ.

The Transfiguration can still be with us in our Lord’s Church, however unworthy we are, even in glimpses, every day. But such is the power of such glimpses of the Transfiguration that no power on earth, not even the most super of nuclear weaponry or a destructive meteor or tsunami or earthquake or hurricane or any element of the world, can match in the slightest the power of that uncreated light. And Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, the Holy Trinity as a whole, gives us that power in love always if we open our hearts.

Glory to God for all things!