Transfigured in Christ

Atop Mount Tabor, in the Holy Land, stands the Church of the Transfiguration – built on the traditional site of the mystery the Church celebrates each year on Aug. 6. It was designed by Twentieth-Century Italian architect Antonio Barluzzi in 1924. Barluzzi designed the church in the traditional style of churches built at the time. He creatively drew upon the imagery and themes of the mystery in the life of Christ that it commemorates.

From the nave, stairs lead down in the center to a large crypt chapel where many pilgrim groups celebrate Mass today. There are also stairs on each side leading up to three altars. Above the central high altar, the eye is drawn to the beautiful mosaic of our Lord being transfigured in the presence of Moses and Elijah. The church is arranged so that every year, on Aug. 6, the light from the clerestory windows reflects off a glass panel in the floor and illuminates the beautiful mosaic. For a brief moment, an architectural homage to the biblical event where Jesus’ “face shone like the sun and his clothes became white as light” (Mt. 17:2).

The Transfiguration is celebrated annually by the whole church, and even though it is not a Holy Day of Obligation, it is a central event in the life of Jesus. Therefore, when Aug. 6 occurs on a Sunday, as it did this year, we skip the Sunday in Ordinary Time and celebrate the Transfiguration instead.

What makes this event, numbered as one of the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary by Saint John Paul II, so important?

If we place ourselves in the scene, Peter, James and John stand with us in awe as we behold this amazing event. It is not merely another miracle of Jesus. It is, in the fullest sense of the word, a “theophany,” a manifestation of the presence of God, like the theophany on Mount Sinai (Ex. 19:16-19). Jesus shines bright in the presence of the great figures of the Old Testament who have seen God: Moses and Elijah. Jesus is God incarnate, the word made flesh, and his divine glory is revealed to his chosen witnesses to the extent that they could bear it. He manifests his divinity for the sake of his apostles, and for our sakes as those who follow them in faith.

The fourth-century bishop and Father of the Church, Saint John Chrysostom, says it best: Jesus was transfigured “to show the glory of the cross, to console Peter and the others in their dread of the passion, and to raise up their minds” (Hom. 56 on Matthew).

Because his glory was revealed on Tabor, Jesus’ followers could see in the cross a path to glory. Perhaps this only made sense in hindsight, as Jesus conquered death by his Resurrection, but for us, it need not be so. We too may be comforted by the glory of God when confronted by any trial or tribulation in life. Because we have seen his power manifested in our lives, we can be assured that any difficulty suffered with him will bring us with him to the glory of resurrection.

In fact, our assurance is greater than that. To see Jesus transfigured on the mountain is not simply a guarantee that “everything will turn out ok,” it means something more, as it always has. Saint Irenaeus of Lyons once said, “The glory of God is man fully alive.” If we believe that God’s glory is revealed on the mountain of the transfiguration, then we can be certain his glory can be revealed in us too as we become fully alive!

But what does it mean to be “fully alive?” Saint Augustine, in one of his sermons, said, “We carry mortality about with us, we endure infirmity, we look forward to divinity. For God wishes not only to vivify but also to deify us. We mustn’t find it incredible, brothers and sisters, that human beings become gods, that is, that those who were human beings become gods,” (Sermo 23B).

Fully alive means divinization. We become like God! The promise of the Transfiguration is a promise that we may share in the divine life of Jesus Christ. This divinization, or “theosis,” is a core tenet of our faith, as the first words of the Catechism relate: “God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life,” (CCC 1). We believe that when we gather in faith to celebrate the mysteries handed on to us by Jesus himself, we are transfigured and divinized so that we might be the light for the world set on a mountain. We the Church in its members are on this path of divinization because of our participation in the work of God. The path of divinization begins with our baptism into Jesus’ death and resurrection.

To find this divinization, we must descend the mountain like Peter, James, John and Jesus and journey to Calvary. We must be like the pilgrim in Barluzzi’s church who descends the steps to the crypt as he approaches the altar of the sacrifice. We must descend to give ourselves over to the love of God in the liturgy of the Church and the love of neighbor in our works of mercy. We cannot remain aloof on the mountain of our piety, rather we must descend into the work of the Church with the memory of the transfiguration as our hope.