Transfiguration: Taboric Light of the Word, Pentecost, and Liturgy

Aug 6, 2008

The Transfiguration of the Lord brings us into the Mystery of the Lord...
Through the liturgy's praise of the Divine Name, the faithful mystically enter "the Great Elevation" of the Holy Gifts for the Holy Ones...

We are participating in the Mystery of the Revelation which Peter, James, and John shared on Mt. Tabor...

The gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke each give the transfiguration miracle a prominent role.

John the Beloved, the only evangelist actually at the miracle on Tabor, alone of the four evangelists does not include this miracle in his gospel testament-- if all we see are words.

But the Gospel of John the Evangelist is, in a sense, a vision of one who has never ceased witnessing that Light of Tabor in Spirit and truth.
Read More on Taboric Light ~
Johannine Transfiguration on the Lucan Road to Emmaus.

Icon of St. John of Patmos
written by the hand of Heather Durka

Becoming light

excerpts from the nun Macrina at A Vow of Conversation,
quotes Malankara Orthodox Priest-Theologian Rev. K.M. George "The Silent Roots: Orthodox Perspectives on Christian Spirituality," and therein St. Gregory Nazianzus and St. Athanasius of Alexandria:

• The biblical image of the Deity as luminous is central to the patristic theological and spiritual vision.
• The highest aspiration in the Eastern view thus consists not only in walking in this light, which constitutes our ethical being, but in becoming light itself, participating fully in the divine glory. ...As one of the prayers of the Eastern church says:
• “O God, you started the work of creation with light in order that the whole creation may become light.” The patristic vision ... of beauty is not a metaphorical embellishment to theology, but it is theology at its best.
• and ... “it initiates us into the mystery of the future”.
  
• The light of Tabor, the mount of transfiguration, is ... the symbol par excellence of the beauty and goodness of created nature; and light signifies its final destiny as well.
• This aesthetic experience is ... true to the essential meaning of the Incarnation, which signifies the participation of created nature in the experience of divinisation, as formulated in the famous dictum of Athanasius: “God became a human being that human beings may become divine”.

And in that mystagogy of the Future -- so much a benedictine "conversatio morum" -- let us recollect Fr. Schmemann's insight on the epiphanic mysterion of the Assembly:
More on Transfiguration in the "Sacrament of the Assembly"

Which brings us to the Originating Mystery per se:

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.


Rublev's central angel: the communion of love
Read More

The feast "shows us how we see" the Holy Mysteries of our salvation
in the sacraments, in the liturgy, in the icons,
and in our journey of conversion.

The Transfiguration Feast
has everything to do with the Parousia,
the Coming of the Kingdom and the Victory of the Cross.

By the light of the transfiguration miracle and with the eyes of faith we see, from Glory to Glory, a "plethora in blessings" in the Divine Light of "The 8th Day."

Read More on Makarios the Great and Transfiguration

Our Lord preached to tens of thousands,
but took only three with Him to ascend the Holy Mount of Tabor.
And so those three, lifted into the Mysteries of Glory,
became vessels of light to illumine the Kingdom.

TODAY each of us partakes of that very same journey up the Mount
when we gather into "the chapel light"
of the very same Mysteries of the Kingdom,
singing
By Thy Light we see the Light, Jesus full of Light.

May your journey in Christ,
be radiant in the Light of Tabor.
Fr. Michael Durka +

Further Reflection --
Fr. Patrick Reardon on Scripture and Transfiguration:

Transfiguration in the Epistles of Peter

Transfiguration in the Gospel of John

Transfiguration in the Gospel of Matthew

Transfiguration in the Gospel of Mark

Transfiguration in Mark: The Cry of the Centurion

Armenian Orthodox theologian Vigen Guroian
and
Coptic Orthodox theologian Andrew Youssef
On Morality in the Light of the Transfiguration

Transfiguration: Liturgy and Eschatology re. Moral Action