The Feast of the Transfiguration

Aug 6, 2004

Dear Friends

See below our welcome post just beneath Rublev's Angel if you are visiting us the first time.

Regular 11am Holy Qurbana continues this Sunday, August 8, as we celebrate the Feast of the Transfiguration in the chapel of St. John's Church in Olympia.

The Transfiguration of the Lord brings us into the Mystery of the Lord as He is in Himself :
"Glorious, uncreated, self-existing; eternal, adorable, consubstantial~"
These "Divine Names" are the praises we sing just after the "Theh've" for the Holy Qurbana's 3rd 3-fold Blessing. Through this praise of the Divine Name, the faithful mystically enter "the Great Elevation" of the Holy Gifts for the Holy Ones.

Liturgically we are sharing the Mystery of the Revelation which Peter, James, and John shared on Mt. Tabor.
Jesus revealed Himself to them in order to prepare them to experience His Passion from the perspective of Christ Himself. Of course, until they later receive the Spirit of Pentecost, this divine perspective is within them only "in seed" and is thus consciously unrecognized as they first experience The Passion.
The evangelists Matthew, Mark, and Luke each give the transfiguration miracle a prominent pedagogical role in their gospels. John, the only evangelist actually at the miracle on Tabor, alone of the four evangelists does not include this miracle in his gospel -- if all we see are words.

But John's Gospel is, in a sense, a vision of one who has never ceased witnessing that light in Spirit and truth. The Gospel of John is filled with the very light and life of the Transfiguration on Tabor. We see in the opening lines of John the Eternal Word coming into the world as light and life for us, grace upon grace, and we have beheld His Glory ~

Through the mission of the icons in the liturgy of the Church,
The Transfiguration is especially manifest in our lives today
The Liturgy of the Church is, essentially, the communion of saints (communio sanctorum) in the Holy Gifts (communio in sacris).
Icons mystically and sacramentally share this "communion of love and light and life" through the Spirit's own communion in the saints.

Veneration given to the icon passes to the prototype, so any veneration to the icon is a greeting of the saints with a holy kiss, as St. Paul instructs the faithful. In venerating the icon we lay our prayers in the heart of the saints, their intercession, and their love. We offer our prayers within the Heavenly Liturgy of all the angels and saints. In effect, we embrace and share the communion of saints "on earth as it is in Heaven."

That is why the icon is called a Window into Heaven.
The icon unveils the joy of the Kingdom shining into our world. The icon reveals "The Transfiguration" of all those who have put on Christ, who clothe themselves in the brilliant radiance of the Lord of Glory. Thus "the theologian of Patmos" reveals to us the Gospel of the Alpha and the Omega.

Further study:
Paul Evdokimov, in his great work, The Icon: A Theology of Art and Beauty, speaks of Christ as the Divine Heart burning with love in the Wedding Feast of Holy Eucharist. This Divine Love is the soul of the Iconostasis, and at the heart of the Great Deisis. (p. 143 ff)
St. Andrei Rublev, who made known the light of Heaven through his humble and magnificent icon of the Holy Trinity, from 1409 (when he was commissioned to do the icon) until 1425 (when it was finished) would sit before the icons all day on feast days when he did not work. In the light of the icons he was elevated into the light of Heaven, and in that light he could see light, and "transmitted" -- or better, "translated" -- that same light into his icon of the Trinity.

Writes Evdokimov: He was thus able to become the amazing singer of love. . . . The three angels of the icon invisibly give flight: 'that all may be one . . . so that the love You have for Me may be in them and that I Myself may be in them.' (p. 243 ff)