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Transfiguration In Our LivesMetropolitan Anthony (Bloom)August 23, 1981, 10th Sunday after PentecostThere are moments in the spiritual lives and even in the most ordinary lives of people which are so beautiful, so marvelous that it makes us wish that time, life, eternity, would stop there, and that nothing else should ever happen. This is what struck the Apostles whom Christ took with him onto the mount of the Transfiguration. This is what Peter was expressing when he said, Lord, it is good for us here, let us build three tents, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah, and let us remain here in the rays of this immaterial, divine light, wrapped in this wonderful peace. Neither Peter nor the other Apostles noticed at the time something that they themselves later conveyed to others, namely that Christ was transfigured - that is, he appeared in the radiance of eternal glory - at the very moment when Moses and Elijah were talking to him about his journey to Jerusalem and his Crucifixion. Here, as in so many passages of the New Testament, we see that the Apostles, just like us, were capable of discerning the bright and wonderful things, and so often, of missing the cost of it for Christ. St. Seraphim of Sarov, speaking to one of his visitors said, ask of God whatever you need in the name of Christ, but remember the price he paid in order to have the power to grant your request. By this he meant to say, do not ask for anything that is unworthy of God's sacrificial love, of the death and Crucifixion of the Saviour Christ. Just like the Apostles, in those best moments we wish that time would stand still and that we could remain forever - in what? - in oblivion; so that we could forever forget that dreadful things sometimes happen in our lives and in the lives of others, that there are such things as loneliness, illness and fear, that there exist horrors of all kinds. We wish we could enter the miraculous peace of the transfigured world, which we all expect, but which has not yet been made manifest, has not yet become a reality, in which we have to believe, and which occasionally we are able to experience with a great and transfiguring depth. But we must remember that such an experience is granted in order that we may bring this radiance of the transfiguration into the dark, cold, sorrowful world. When Moses stood before God on Mount Sinai, illumined by His glory, he was so absorbed into it that when he came down from the mountain the people could not bear the brightness of his face. That is how we ought to be when we have experienced a heavenly or earthly miracle of transfiguration; what happened to the Apostles and to Moses must happen to us. Moses did not remain on the mountain conversing with God as with a friend, in the contemplation of His glory, nor was it allowed to the Apostles to remain on the glorious mountain of the transfiguration: Christ said to them, Let us go hence. And they came down into the valley, into the plane of Palestine, and found there what today's Gospel reading describes: The inconsolable grief of the parents and friends of the boy who was struck down with an incurable disease, and even worse, perhaps, the sad realization that Christ's disciples, to whom the father turned, were unable to help. Only Christ could help and He healed the child. When the disciples asked Him why they were not able to do this, Christ said, This kind goeth not out save by prayer and fasting. It happens occasionally that we are granted the experience of a transfigured world, the experience of something wonderful, something divine having entered the world; and having experienced it, we must preserve it as a precious gift and go into the world and share it. But we can share it only if we undertake the effort of fasting and prayer; it must be not only physical fasting, but abstention from everything that has our own selves as the centre, from all self love, all egoism, all spiritual and emotional greed, from all desire of possession or desire of freedom from constraint. And this we can achieve only if we pray, and what is more, not merely by repeating the words of prayer, forcing ourselves to enter the spirit and thoughts of the saints, but by trying with our whole being in this dim, dark, orphaned world to remain in contact with the living God, Who is light, joy, and life! Let us think about the Transfiguration. Let us think about those moments or periods of our lives when we experienced a transfigured world, when everything within and around us was truly illumined by divine light; and with this light let us approach every person, all the circumstances of life, and bring them the light of Christ. Amen.
I am a member of the Holy Orthodox Church. There is a considerable web presence of the church on the web. My first web site, Nilus's Orthodox Pages has a link page to all sorts of information on the Church. Another of my sites is Orthodox Prayer, there I talk about the prayer life of an Orthodox Christian. Prayer along with The Holy Mysteries is the life blood of an Orthodox Christian.
This is a view of the Royal Doors, inside Holy Trinity Orthodox Chapel in Wilkeson, Washington.
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