TRANSFIGURATION 
 
 

Presentation

 

Transfiguration

 

 

 

 
 

TRANSFIGURATION

6 August, Transfiguration of Jesus
 

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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