There are moments in the spiritual life—and even in the most ordinary moments of human life—that are so beautiful, so wondrous, that one wishes time, life, eternity would stop there and nothing else would ever happen.
This is what happened to the Apostles whom Christ took with Him to the Mount of Transfiguration, and it was expressed by Peter when he said: Lord, it is good for us to be here! Let us make three tents—one for You, one for Moses, and one for Elijah—and let us remain here, bathed in this immaterial, divine light, wrapped in this wondrous peace… Neither Peter nor the other Apostles noticed what they later recounted to others: that Christ was transfigured—that is, He appeared in the radiance of eternal glory—at the very moment when Moses and Elijah were speaking with Him about His impending journey to Jerusalem and His crucifixion.
Here, as in so many places in the New Testament, we see that the Apostles—just like us—are capable of grasping the radiant and wondrous, yet so often miss what it costs Christ. St. Seraphim of Sarov, speaking to one of his visitors, told him: Ask of God in Christ’s name what you need—but remember at what price Christ obtained the power to grant it to you… With this, he meant: Do not ask for anything unworthy of God’s crucified love, of the death and crucifixion of our Savior Christ…
Like the Apostles, in our brightest moments, we too wish time would stand still—that we might remain forever in what? In oblivion! To forever forget that in our lives and the lives of others, terrible things sometimes happen: that there is loneliness, sickness, fear, horrors of every kind. We long to enter that wondrous peace of the transfigured world we all await—but which is not yet revealed, not yet a reality. We must believe in it, and at times we are granted the chance to experience it with profound, transformative depth. Yet we must remember that this experience is given to us so that we may carry the radiance of the Transfiguration into a world shrouded in darkness, sorrow, and cold.
When Moses stood before God on Mount Sinai, illumined by divine glory, he became so united with it that when he descended, people could not bear the radiance of his face. This is how we ought to be when we experience an earthly or heavenly miracle—the miracle of transfiguration. And what happened to the Apostles, what happened to Moses, must also happen to us: Moses did not remain on Mount Sinai in the vision of God, speaking with Him as a friend speaks with a friend; nor were the Apostles allowed to stay on the wondrous Mount of Transfiguration. Christ said to them: Let us go from here…
And they came down into the valley, onto the plains of Palestine, and there they encountered what we heard today: the inconsolable grief of a father, of parents and friends, over a child stricken by an incurable illness—and perhaps an even more sorrowful horror that even Christ’s disciples, whom the father had approached, could do nothing to help. Only Christ brought healing. But when His disciples asked Him—Why could we not cast it out?—He answered them: This kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting.
And so, at times, we are granted this experience of the transfigured world—an encounter with something wondrous, divine, breaking into our lives. And having lived it, we must cherish it as the most precious treasure and then go forth into the world to share it. But we can only share it if we take upon ourselves the labor of prayer and fasting—not just physical fasting, but abstaining from everything that centers on ourselves: from all self-love, all egoism, all greed—whether of soul or spirit, not just of the body—from every desire for possession… And this we can achieve only through prayer—again, not merely by reciting prayers, not by forcing ourselves into the thoughts and spirit of the saints, but by striving with all our strength to remain, in this dim, dark, orphaned world, in communion with the Living God, Who is light, and joy, and life…
Let us reflect on the Transfiguration; let us remember our own experiences of the transfigured world—those moments or seasons when everything within and around us was truly illumined by divine light. And with that light, let us go to every person, into every circumstance of life, and bring there the light of Christ. Amen.
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