Transfiguration by Giovanni Gerolamo Savoldo, 16th century
Each year on August 6
th the Church recalls and celebrates
the Feast of the Transfiguration of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we
recall Christ's divinity showing forth on Mount Tabor. This event
foreshadowed the glorious Resurrection and Ascension of Christ that
would occur after His death on the Cross.
The Transfiguration wasn’t in and of itself the greatest part of this
mystery, but what is even greater is that Christ humbled Himself and hid
His immense glory while on earth.
As Our Blessed Lord ascends Mount Tabor and is transfigured before His
closest disciples, there appears to Him both Moses and Elijah --
symbolizes the Law and the Prophet, surrounding the Son of Man. The
radiance of Jesus in the presence of Moses refers to Moses' radiance in
the presence of the Lord. St. James the Greater, along with Peter and
John, was one of the few that witnessed Our Lord's Transfiguration on
Mt. Tabor, the raising of the daughter of Jairus, and Our Lord’s
suffering in the Garden of Gethsemane before His passion.
As the beginning of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen’s section on the
Transfiguration states: “Three important scenes of Our Lord’s life took
place on mountains. On one, He preached the Beatitudes, the practice of
which would bring a Cross from the world; on the second, He showed the
glory that lay beyond the Cross; and on the third, He offered Himself in
death as a prelude to His glory and that of all who would believe in
His name” (
Life of Christ by Fulton J. Sheen, p. 158, © 1970)
The following commentary is excerpted from the Navarre Bible Commentary:
2-10. We contemplate in awe this manifestation of the glory of the Son
of God to three of His disciples. Ever since the Incarnation, the
divinity of our Lord has usually been hidden behind His humanity. But
Christ wishes to show, to these favorite disciples, who will later be
pillars of the Church, the splendor of His divine glory, in order to
encourage them to follow the difficult way that lies ahead, fixing their
gaze on the happy goal which is awaiting them at the end. This is why,
as St. Thomas comments (cf. "Summa Theologia", III, q. 45, a. 1), it was
appropriate for Him to give them an insight into His glory. The fact
that the Transfiguration comes immediately after the first announcement
of His passion, and His prophetic words about how His followers would
also have to carry His cross, shows us that "through many tribulations
we must enter the kingdom of God" (Acts 14:22).
What happened at the Transfiguration? To understand this miraculous
event in Christ's life, we must remember that in order to redeem us by
His passion and death our Lord freely renounced divine glory and became
man, assuming flesh which was capable of suffering and which was not
glorious, becoming like us in every way except sin (cf. Hebrew 4:15). In
the Transfiguration, Jesus Christ willed that the glory which was His
as God and which His soul had from the moment of the Incarnation, should
miraculously become present in His body. "We should learn from Jesus'
attitude in these trials. During His life on earth He did not even want
the glory that belong to Him. Though He had the right to be treated as
God, He took the form of a servant, a slave (cf. Philippians 2:6)" (St.
J. Escriva, "Christ Is Passing By", 62). Bearing in mind WHO became man
(the divinity of the person and the glory of His soul), it was
appropriate for His body to be glorious; given the PURPOSE of His
Incarnation, it was not appropriate, usually, for His glory to be
evident. Christ shows His glory in the Transfiguration in order to move
us to desire the divine glory which will be given us so that, having
this hope, we too can understand "that the sufferings of this present
time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to
us" (Romans 8:18).
To continue reading, please see my
prior post on the Transfiguration and consider the
online course through CatechismClass.com on the Life of Christ, using Fulton Sheen's text as one of its many resources.
Read more >>
