Showing posts with label Transfiguration. Show all posts

Vladimir Lossky (1903-1958) was one of the leading Orthodox theologians of the twentieth century.  For today's feast of the Transfiguration we offer an excerpt from his The Meaning of Icons (Co-author Leonid Ouspensky, St Vladimir's Seminary Press, Crestwood, New York, 1983).  The icon referred to and reproduced to the right is of the 15th century Novgorod school.

The quote is found on pp 209-212.

What is it that the three disciples were able to contemplate when they saw the face of Christ "shine as the sun" and His rainment "white as the light" when a  "bright cloud overshadowed them " (Matt 17:2, 5)?  According to St Gregory of Nazianzus this light was the Divinity manifested to the disciples on the mountain.  St John Damascene, speaking of this "splendor of the Divine nature", of this "a-temporal glory", observes that the comparison made by the Evangelists with the light of the sun remains quite inadequate, for uncreated reality cannot be expressed by a created image.  The matter in question, then, is the vision of God and it is evident why, from St Irenaeus of Lyon to Philaret of Moscow, the theme of the Transfiguration  of Christ has never ceased to feed the thought of the Fathers and theologians of the Church...St Gregory Palamas (died 1359), in defending the traditional teaching on the Lord's Transfiguration against the attacks of certain rationalist theologians, well understood how to give full value to the importance of this evangelical event for Christian dogma and spirituality.  "God is called Light", he said, "not according to His Essence, but according to His energy".  The light which illuminated the Apostles was not something sensible, but on the other hand it is equally false to see in it an intelligible reality, which would be called "light" only metaphorically.  The Divine Light is neither material nor spiritual, for it transcends the order of the created, it is "the ineffable splendor of the one nature in three hypostases"...

Christ appeared to the disciples, not in kenotic form, as  "servant", but in the "form of God", as an Hypostasis of the Trinity Who, in His Incarnation, remains inseparable from His Divine nature, which is common to the Father and the Holy Spirit...

Christ transfigured is represented standing on the summit of the mountain, speaking with Moses ans Elias.  His rainment is shining white.  The geometrical figure inscribed in the circle of the mandorla must represent the "bright cloud" which revealed the transcendant source of the Divine energies.  The three rays pointed down upon the apostles are an indication that the action of the Transfiguration is trinitarian...Moses (on the right) in our icon is holding a book; generally it is the tables of the Decalogue--Elias (on the left) is an old man with long hair...Moses represents the dead, whilst Elias, taken up to heaven on a chariot of fire, represents the living...This [interpretation] is comprehensible; it underlies  the eschatological  character of the Transfiguration.  Christ appears as the Lord of the quick and the dead, coming in the glory of the future age.  The Transfiguration was "an anticipation of His glorious Second Coming", says St Basil:  the moment which opened a perspective of eternity in time.

For today's Feast of the Transfiguration we turn to Norman Russell's Fellow Workers with God: Orthodox Thinking on Theosis (St Vladimir's Seminary Press 2009). What happened to Jesus on the mountain during the Transfiguration was a manifestation of the theosis of his human nature. However, theosis is not limited to Jesus; it is the destiny of us all. But it is not accomplished without suffering. The excerpt is found on pp 109-111.

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The Transfiguration...is a revelation of the true stature of our human nature, a stature which our first parents in the Garden of Eden failed to attain. They listened to the voice of temptation, which suggested to them that they had been forbidden to eat of the tree of knowledge because God jealously wanted to keep them in a state of immaturity...But knowledge in itself does not make us like God. Our twentieth-century history has taught us that only too painfully. "Adam", as St John Damascene says, "longed for deification before the proper time". Knowledge needs to be accompanied by humility, thanksgiving, purity of heart. The glory indicated by the Transfiguration is only to be attained through the self-emptying of the Passion. "It is only through this free kenosis [self-emptying]" says Metropolitan John Zizioulas, "that the ascetic is led to the light of the Resurrection. The light of Mount Tabor, the light of the Transfiguration, which the Hesychasts claimed to see, was given as a result of participation in the sufferings, the kenosis of Christ. " We arrive at our true human stature through sharing in the glory of Christ, having first shared in his Passion.

The Church Father who brings out this aspect of the Transfiguration most clearly is St Cyril of Alexandria. In his homily on the Transfiguration...he sets the narrative as Luke tells it within the broader pattern of the divine economy. The immediately proceeding discussion is of the greatest significance: "If anyone wishes to come after me let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever shall lose his life for my sake shall find it" (Lk 9:23). "This teaching" St Cyril comments, "is our salvation". It prepares us for heavenly glory through the acceptance of suffering for Christ's sake. The converse is also true: the vision of heavenly glory granted to Peter, James and John prepares them to accept the suffering that is shortly to come upon them...To see the Transfiguration is to see the kingdom of God. The radiant humanity of the Lord shows the apostles the destiny that awaits them. The Lord can now go to his suffering and death and the apostles can follow him, confident in the glory that can only be attained through sharing in the Cross.

Anthony Bloom (1914-2003, aka Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh) was born in Lausanne, Switzerland, of Russian parents (a maternal uncle was the composer Scriabin). He spent much of his early life in Paris, where he was educated as a physician. After successively serving as an army doctor and in the French resistance, he was ordained to the Russian Orthodox priesthood. Eventually he moved to England in order to serve the Orthodox community in that country. He wrote several books on prayer which became widely influential throughout the Christian world.

Today's feast of the Transfiguration is supremely important for Orthodox Christians, for they interpret it as pointing towards the eventual fate of us all. The light with which Jesus shone on Mt Tabor is the uncreated light of God himself, a manifestation of theosis or deification. Not only will all the just be deified at the end of time, but the entire physical cosmos will also be set free from corruption and decay.

The excerpt is from a sermon Anthony preached in 1973. A hat-tip to the Ora et Labora site.

Here, in a shrouded manner, is revealed to us all of the greatness, all the significance, not only of man, but of the material world itself, of its indescribable potential, not only earthly and transitory, but also eternal and Divine...

...And if we attentively and seriously accept what is revealed to us here, we must change as profoundly as we can our attitude toward everything visible, toward everything tangible; not only toward humanity, not only toward man, but toward his very flesh, and not only toward human flesh, but toward everything around him that is physically perceptible, tangible, and visible...Everything is called to become the place of indwelling of the Lord's grace; everything is called to be at some time, at the end of time, drawn into that glory and to shine forth with that glory.

And it is granted unto us people to know that; it is granted unto us people not only to know that, but to be co-workers with God in the illuminating of that Creation which the Lord created...We perform the blessing of the fruits, the blessing of the waters, the blessing of the grains, the bread, we perform the blessing of bread and wine, changing them into the Body and Blood of the Lord; the source of the miracles of Transfiguration and Theophany is within the confines of the Church. Through human faith, the matter of this world is separated out, matter which through man's lack of faith, through human perfidy, had been handed over to corruption, death and destruction, is set apart by the miracle of Transfiguration and Theophany. Through our faith, it is separated from this corruption and death, and is given over to God Himself, is accepted by God, and in God fundamentally becomes a new creation...

Let us think about this; we are not called to enslave nature, but rather to free it from the prison of corruption and death and sin, to free it and to bring it back into harmony with the Kingdom of God. Therefore let us begin to treat all created matter, all of the visible world, thoughtfully, with respect, and let us be in the world Christ's co-workers, so that the world might achieve its glory and so that, through us, all of creation might enter into the joy of the Lord.

Today being the last Sunday in Epiphanytide, we hear once again the story of Jesus' Transfiguration (Mark 9: 2-9). The Transfiguration has traditionally gotten more emphasis in the Eastern church, but below is a good quote from the Venerable Bede (672-735), the most prominent English theologian and historian of his day. It comes from Homilies on the Gospels, quoted in Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: New Testament II, Mark, eds Thomas C Oden and Christopher A Hall, Downer's Grove, IVP, 1998. A hat-tip to today's Episcopal Cafe.

If anyone asks what the Lord's garments, which became white as snow, represent typologically, we can properly understand them as pointing to the church of his saints, [who]...at the time of the resurrection will be purified from every blemish of iniquity and at the same time from all the darkness of mortality. Concerning the Lord's garments the evangelist Mark remarks that "they becomes as bright as snow, such as no bleacher on earth can make them white." It is evident to everyone that there is no one who can live on earth without corruption and sorrow. So it is evident to all that are wise, although heretics deny it, that there is no one who can live on earth without being touched by some sin. But what a cleansing agent (that is, a teacher of souls or some extraordinary purifier of his body) cannot do on earth, that the Lord will do in heaven. He will purify the church, which is his clothing, "from all defilement of flesh and spirit", renewing [her] besides with eternal blessedness and light of flesh and spirit.