COMMENT:
6 August
The
Transfiguration of the Lord
Feast
THE
TRANSFIGURATION OF THE LORD 131
Third Reading
Gospel (Year B)
From the gospel of
Mark (9:2-10)
From a homily by Saint John of
Damascus (Horn. in transfigurationem Domini, 17- 18: PG 96, 572-573)
A bright cloud
overshadowed them, and seeing within it Jesus the Saviour with Moses and
Elijah, the disciples were filled with great fear.
Of old when Moses
saw God he experienced the divine darkness, indicating the symbolic nature of
the law; for as Paul has written, the law contained only a shadow of the things
to come, not the reality itself. In the past Israel could not look
at the transient glory on the face of Moses; but we, beholding the glory of the
Lord with unveiled faces, are being transformed from one degree of glory to
another by the Lord who is the Spirit. The cloud, therefore, that overshadowed the
disciples was not one of threatening darkness but of light; for the mystery
hidden from past ages has been revealed to show us perpetual and eternal glory.
Moses and
Elijah, representing
the law and the prophets, stood by the Saviour because he whom the law and the
prophets proclaimed was present in Jesus, the giver of life.
And a voice from the
cloud said: This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased; listen to him. The voice of the
Father came from the cloud of the Spirit: This is my beloved Son. He who is seen in
human form, who became man only yesterday, who lives humbly in the midst of us,
and whose face is now shining, is he who is. This is my beloved Son, the eternal, the
only begotten of the only God, he who proceeds timelessly and eternally from
me, his Father; who did not begin to exist after me, but is from me and with me
and in me from all eternity.
It was by the
Father's good pleasure that his only begotten Son and Word became incarnate; it
was by the Father's good pleasure that the salvation of the world was achieved
through his only begotten Son; it was the Father's good pleasure which brought
about the union of the whole universe in his only begotten Son. For humanity is
a microcosm linking in itself all visible and invisible being, sharing as it
does in the nature of both, and so it must surely have pleased the Lord, the
creator and ruler of the universe, for divinity and humanity and thus all
creation to be united in his only begotten and consubstantial Son, so that God might be all
in all.
This is my Son, the radiance of my
glory, who bears the stamp of my own nature, through whom I created the angels,
through whom the vault of heaven was made firm and the earth established. He
upholds the universe by his powerful word, and by the Spirit which proceeds
from his mouth, that is the life-giving and guiding Spirit. Listen to him. Whoever receives
him, receives me who sent him by the authority not of a stern master but of a
father. As a man he is sent, but as God he abides in me and I in him. Whoever
refuses to honour my only begotten Son refuses to honor me, his Father who sent
him. Listen
to him, for he has the words of eternal life.
Responsory
St. John of Damascene on Holy Images (Followed by Three ...
www.ccel.org/ccel/damascus/icons.html
St. John of Damascus was an Arab Christian monk and priest who lived from late 600 to late 700 C.E. He was a man of many talents, and did work in the fields of ...
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