Monastery of the Transfiguration
Ellwood City, Pennsylvania
August 6, 2023
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Today, Christ is transfigured. The one who kindled the sun at the beginning of time, who allotted radiance to the moon, who made the stars to blaze forth in the darkness of the void, who fashioned the colors from nothing when there were as yet no colors, who spoke the light into being with all its properties, all its mysteries: today this one stands as a man on a high mountaintop, his flesh shining with a brilliance matching that of the most splendid celestial bodies, his clothes an unearthly white, brighter than any color known to natural experience.
Today the one who, as God, said, ‘Let there be light,’ is, in his humanity, clothed with light as with a garment.
Appearing at one side is Moses, the Law-giver, who could not enter the Land of Promise but died on the ridge of Mount Nebo with its vision spread out before him. On the other side is Elijah, the prophet who entered paradise without death and who, as Christ’s second forerunner, will herald the time of the end, the end of time, the death of death. And they converse with the Creator of the world concerning his exodus, his death.
And it is of his death that the Lord speaks when the vision comes to an end. He tells Peter, James, and John: ‘Tell the vision to no one until the Son of Man is risen from the dead.’
Just as the holy prophet Daniel was told to seal up the words of his book until the end, when the dead should arise and the righteous shine like the stars, so are the apostles commanded to seal away their testimony concerning the transformation on Tabor until the Son of Man should rise again.
We can understand this mystery in at least two ways. First, the light that the apostles saw on the mountain was, as it were, the light of the Resurrection. As we sing at the Paschal service, ‘Now all is filled with light.’ Christ is everlasting light, shining forth from the tomb for all. The light that was hidden during the days of his flesh dawns upon the whole world at the time of his Rising. This light—which is perceptible not with physical eyes, but with spiritual senses—is the light of the divinity, reunited with a redeemed creation through the Passion and Resurrection.
So, in a sense, when the apostles saw Christ transfigured, they saw him risen ahead of time. Thus, the memory and report of their vision would only make sense after the Passion of the Son of Man was completed. As the kontakion for today’s feast proclaims, the apostles, having seen the Transfiguration, would thus understand that the Passion was voluntary. Christ did not become divine through his Passion; he is eternally God himself, Light from Light, consubstantial with the Father. The light revealed at the Resurrection was always there, and the three apostles providentially glimpsed that light on Tabor.
But there is a second way of understanding the Lord’s command. At the time of his Transfiguration, when he spoke with Moses and Elijah, in their person the Law and the Prophets testified concerning his decease and rising from the dead. But the apostles would not understand this testimony until later, after he had risen, as when the Risen Lord expounded the scriptures to Luke and Cleopas on the road to Emmaus.
Thus, when the Lord commanded Peter, James, and John to say nothing until he had risen, he was confirming that they would come to understand the testimony of the Law and the Prophets concerning his person and ministry only when he, the Son of Man, had accomplished his Passion.
Today, for our part, we witness the Transfiguration of Christ by means of the apostolic testimony; we view this event through the lens of the Resurrection, understanding it by means of the oracles found in the Law and the Prophets. As we heard last night during the vigil: ‘Arise and go up to the high slope of the divine ascent. Let us run to join Peter and the sons of Zebedee, and go with them to Mount Tabor…’ We join the apostles as companions, not in ignorance, but in knowledge of revelation. Through the Resurrection, what was hidden is now revealed: the light of Tabor now shines throughout the world, and it is invisibly visible to those who have the spiritual eyes to see.
More than this, the light lives and dwells in those who walk in the light, who work while it is light, who do the deeds of light that prove them to be sons of the light and of the day. This walking, this work, reaches its most perfect form in the monastic life, the life of devotion solely to God, Mary’s better portion, the life lived as one in the presence of the One. It is therefore most appropriate that this monastery is dedicated to the Transfiguration, and that its journal is called Life Transfigured.
For the light that burned on Tabor shines here, too, and throughout the world, wherever the teachings of the apostles, the Law, and the Prophets are received in truth and practiced with faith. Today, we are pilgrims at the Monastery of the Transfiguration in Pennsylvania; in a few days, I will go as a pilgrim to Alaska for the feast of St. Herman, to visit his relics and the places hallowed by his presence. But today, St. Herman’s relics visit us. The same light that St. Herman brought to Alaska he brings to all of us here; similarly, it is up to us, both the nuns dwelling here and the pilgrims and visitors to this holy place in Ellwood City, to take the light that shines in this monastery and share it, fashioning our lives into a lampstand where God’s light might shine and his glory be seen and celebrated.
The Resurrection light of Tabor takes the ordinary matter of life and suffuses it with the divine, the eternal. Fifty-five years ago, the altar on which we celebrate today was consecrated: ordinary materials, but by grace, the dread throne of God. This is our calling, too, as human beings: though we are dust and slime, clay and soil, we can become light-bearing, all flame, thrones of the holy glory, united now and forever with the one who is eternally the Fountain of light and a consuming Fire.
And to him, the transfigured Christ, our true Lord and God and Savior, the Source of light, in whose light we see light, celebrated in songs of glory, be all doxology and adoration, together with his Father and his Holy Spirit, in the radiance of the kingdom, unto the endless ages. Amen.