(theological commentary on the Transfiguration of the Lord)
The Divine Transfiguration is one of the last and greatest miraculous events of Christ's presence on earth, during which part of His divine glory was revealed to His disciples, "as possible", as referred to in the euphoric asmatic sequence of the holiday. This event, as reported in the Holy Gospels, occurred shortly before the Lord's passion. It was imperative that it be done because the close group of His three disciples (Peter, James and John) had to become eyewitnesses and witnesses of the divine glory. To be convinced that their Master, whom they had followed and studied for the last three years, was not one of the ordinary rabbis, who often arose in Jewish society, but the expected Messiah. And not only that: To detach themselves from the mistaken Jewish concept of the Messiah, which was intertwined with some national restoration of the Jewish people.
Our Lord Jesus Christ is the incarnate Son and Word of God (John 1,14:XNUMX), the "He is the manifestation of the glory and character of his presence, bringing all things to the word of his power" (Heb. 1,3). For the sake of salvation today "He emptied himself of the form of a bondservant, being made in the likeness of men, and being found in the likeness of a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even the death of a cross" (Phil. 2,7), "cleansing of our sins" (Heb. 1,3). This emptying of inconceivable magnitude constitutes the expulsion of the divine glory, it is His self-renunciation of the divine majesty, in order to become accessible to man. He became a real man, «He became a partaker of flesh and blood, and he became a partaker of them (humans), so that through death he might abolish the kingdom of the possessor of death, that is the devil, and free those who, through fear of death, were guilty of slavery all their lives. (Hebrews 2,14). To make it happen, «It is the duty of all brothers to be alike" (Hebrews 2,17:XNUMX), that is, to become a true man, truly taking on human nature, the whole of humanity, so that our salvation is true and real.
The "in all things brothers are alike" it means the removal, or rather, the concealment of His divine glory from finite man, to be and appear man, because fallen man was incapable of the sight of God. As God assured the prophet Moses, it was not possible for His glory to be manifested to any man. When the "Moses entered the temple where God was" (Ex.20,22), on Mount Sinai, to receive the Law, he asked God to see His face: "show me yourself". But he answered him: "I come before you in my glory and call by my name... you shall not be able to see my face; for no man shall see my face and live" (Ex. 33,18-21). He explained to Him that it was impossible for Him to behold His glory because He would die immediately. All she allowed him was to face "behind" Of: "here is a place near me, stand on the rock; for if my glory passes away, I will put you in the hole of the stone and cover you with my hand until I pass away; and I will leave my hand, and then look back but my face is not within your reach" (Ex. 22,22-23). Even the people had the consciousness of God's inaccessibility, since "let the people hear the voice and the lamps and the sound of the trumpet and the smoking mountain;
but all the people, being afraid, stood afar off. And they said to Moses: sing with us, and God does not sing to us, let us not die" (Ex.20,18-19).
According to the Fathers of our Church, the One who conversed with Moses on Mount Sinai was Son and Word of God, as the Incorporeal Word in the Old Testament. He refused to reveal His glory to the greatest of the prophets and His faithful healer Moses, because man, with his fall, lost the highest possibility of having a direct relationship with his Creator. Heavily wounded by sin, he could not have direct contact with God. The rare appearances of God in the Old Testament are shadowy and shrouded in symbolism.
God healed this human weakness by sending His Son into the world, His image, because He "is a sign of the invisible God" (Col. 1,15), God is pictured in the theandrian face of Christ. With the incarnation of the Word, God is no longer invisible, but visible, since, as the Lord assured us: "he who blessed me blessed the Father" (John 14,9:XNUMX). This is also a sign of God's immeasurable love for the human race, giving us the possibility that he is now visible, in the divine face of his incarnate Son.
But as we mentioned above, people could only see the human nature of Christ. They were unable to see Him as the God-Man. They could not see His hidden divine glory. But it was necessary to reveal His divine glory, shortly before the end of His presence on earth, to the limited number of His three disciples. It was necessary for some of His followers and continuers of His saving work to gain a minimal experience of His divinity. To be the witnesses of His divine humanity. To assure, both to His other disciples, and to the rest of the world, that their Master was not one of many rabbis, even the most perfect, but God incarnate. After all, this is what the eyewitness apostle John assures: "we shall behold his glory, glory full of grace and truth" (John 1,14) and our apostle Peter knows that «supervises born to her that one majesty » (1,16 Peter XNUMX).
The sight of God's glory was not the privilege of the Lord's disciples alone, but enabled all of us to become overseers of that majesty. Henceforth, every person, as long as he is clothed with Christ, through holy Baptism, receives the seal and the gift of the Holy Spirit, is organically united with the Lord, through the Holy Mysteries and mainly through the Imbibing of His Body and Blood, and is formed in this Christ (Rom.8,29) through his personal struggle against evil and sin, can have the experience of divine light. The saints of our Church testify to this shocking experience as the highest stage of holiness. THE quiet tradition, which is the pinnacle of Orthodox spirituality, testifies to exactly this shocking experience of God's creative actions.
It is no coincidence that the heretical Western Christianity aimed against the single and indivisible Church, at the sight of the divine light, characterizing the taborian light as a meteorological phenomenon and the experience of the hesychasts as a demonic delusion! Of course this follows from the scholastic malice of knowing God's essence through human reason and identifying it with his uncreated energies. But, as Rev. Metropolitan of Nafpaktos and Agios Vlasios Mr. Ierotheos «While the Orthodox believe that God has uncreated substance and uncreated energy and that God
he comes into communion with creation and man with His uncreated energy, yet the Papists believe that in God the uncreated essence is identified with His uncreated energy (actus purus) and that God communicates with nature and man through creators of His actions, i.e. they claim that in God there are also constructive actions. So the Grace of God by which man is sanctified you consider as created energy. But thus it cannot be sanctified". This is undoubtedly a very serious malice, which has pernicious soteriological ramifications, which we cannot develop in the present sentence.
The transformation of Christ on Mount Tabor in front of His three leading disciples is a great event for the work of saving the world. It amply proves that Christ is not one of the many founders of the world's religions, a rare spiritual teacher, a great social reformer, a wise lawgiver, but God incarnate. This is why our salvation is certain. With the Divine Transfiguration, it is clearly demonstrated that our salvation is not simply a moral improvement, as again corrupted Western Christianity advocates, nor a certain euthanistic postmortem survival, but a share in the divine glory, i.e. deification by grace! The immeasurably loving God shares with him His divinity! After all, this is the quintessence of the great mystery of the Divine Incarnation, the deification of man. The apostle Paul is clear: «not all of us", those of us who accept the gift of our redemption in Christ, "I discover in person the glory of the Lord, reflecting this image we are transformed from glory to glory, because of the Lord's Spirit" (3,18 Corinthians XNUMX:XNUMX). All believers of Christ, as "conformed to the image of God" (Rom. 8,29), we too will be transformed and glorified with Him. So great is the magnitude of God's charity, Who loves us so much, that He wants to give us part of His own glory, to make us His co-kings in His endless kingdom, to share with us the throne of His greatness!
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