The
church celebrates the feast of the TRANSFIGURATION on the 6th of August. This event, singular in
that it is the only time during His mortal life when Jesus permitted His divine
glory to shine through His humanity, is placed in the same sequence by three
Evangelists (Mt 17.1-8; Mk 9.1-7; Luke 9.28-36) who recorded it.
It took place about a week
(6 days in Mt 17.1; Mk 9.1; 8 days in Luke 9.28) after the promise of the
primacy to Peter. In parallel passages of the first three Evangelists, we are
told that ‘ Jesus took Peter, James and his brother John’ the three
disciples closest to Our Lord, who were later to be the witnesses of the
contrasting agony in the garden, to ‘ a high mountain off by themselves’.
The
high mountain is not identified in the texts, although a tradition dating back
to the 4th century places the Transfiguration
on Mount Tabor, where there is now a beautiful basilica commemorating
this event.
As
God appeared to Moses and to Elijah on a mountain (Ex 19.20-24; Dt 4.10-11;
Kings 19.8-18), so now God in the flesh ascends a mountain to be met by these
two representatives , Moses the law-giver, and Elijah the prophet.
During
the time of His prayer (Luke 9.29), Jesus was ‘transfigured before them’,
that is , the glory of His divinity of which He ‘ had
emptied himself’ (Phil 2.7) shone through his countenance and His
garments. This was soon to pass
away, for the permanent transfiguration and glorification could come only
through His sufferings. This is stressed by St Paul in Phil 2.5 -11: Jesus was
obedient unto death, and for this reason, God has exalted Him.
The
Climax of the Transfiguration is the voice of God the Father; as it was heard at
the time of the Baptism of Christ, so now it is heard: ‘ This is my beloved
Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear him’ The reaction of the three Apostles
is fear, the ordinary reaction so often recorded in the Bible when the Divinity
presents itself in one form or another.
The Transfiguration
feast has been celebrated in the East since the 4th or the 5th
century. It was later extended to the universal Church in 1457 and reached Rome
on August 6.
The theological aspect of
the Transfiguration is situated in the decisive moment when Jesus , recognized
by His disciples as the Messiah, reveals to them how He will accomplish his
work. His glorification will be a
Resurrection that necessitates a passage through sufferings and death.
In
the Salvation history of humanity, the Transfiguration is a prophetic
sign, an apocalyptic event, which points to the future transfiguration of all
Christians in Christ. Its mystery
is also the mystery of the Christian’s transfiguration – of the increasing
hold of the Holy Spirit upon men and through men , upon the entire universe. By the sacramental encounter with the Person of the Risen
Lord, the Christian participates in the mystery of the death-Resurrection of the
first born of every creature – the mystery prefigured by the Transfiguration.
A Christian is a person called in the present to be always and ever increasingly
transfigured by the action of the Spirit (2 Corinthians 3.18) in love-living expectation of the total
transfiguration, the glorious universal resurrection at the Lord’s Second
Coming. In what may be called the
sacrament of man’s second regeneration, just as Baptism was his first, the
transfiguration of the Church. `` Father, I will that where I am, they also whom
thou hast given me may be with me: in order that they may behold my glory``
(Jn17.24)
This total glory of final
resurrection will not, however, come magically. The Christian who recognizes the
deep signification of the transfiguration does not deny the final judgment.
But the Christian hopes, fully confident that the work of the Holy Spirit
will end in the triumphant glory of ultimate transfiguration.
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