The Transfiguration

On 6 August the Church celebrates the Transfiguration of Christ on Mount Tabor, where Peter, James, and John beheld his face shining like the sun and his garments white as light, with Moses and Elijah beside him and the Father’s voice from the cloud. The feast is the great witness to the uncreated Light — the divine glory shining through the flesh — and stands at the center of the Orthodox theology of deification defended by St Gregory Palamas.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

The Gospel event

The Transfiguration (Greek Metamorphōsis) is recorded in all three Synoptic Gospels (Matthew 17:1–9; Mark 9:2–10; Luke 9:28–36) and remembered in 2 Peter 1:16–18. Six days after Peter’s confession, Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up a high mountain — identified by tradition as Tabor — and is transfigured before them: “his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light” (Matthew 17:2). Moses and Elijah appear, speaking with him of his coming “exodus” at Jerusalem (Luke 9:31); Peter, not knowing what to say, offers to build three tabernacles; a bright cloud overshadows them, and the Father’s voice declares, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him” (Matthew 17:5) — the same testimony as at the Jordan, now joined to the command to heed him. The disciples fall on their faces in fear until Jesus touches them and bids them rise (Ware, in The Festal Menaion, trans. Mother Mary and Ware, Faber, 1969, propers of the feast, pp. 469–487).

The uncreated Light

The theological heart of the feast is the nature of the light the disciples saw. Orthodox theology, following the hesychast tradition and its great fourteenth-century defender St Gregory Palamas, confesses that the light of Tabor was not a created radiance nor a mere symbol, but the very uncreated glory and energy of God — the light of the Godhead itself, truly seen by the bodily eyes of the apostles, whose eyes were for that moment enabled by grace to perceive it (Palamas, Triads in Defence of the Holy Hesychasts 1.3; 3.1; trans. Nicholas Gendle, Paulist Press, 1983; John Meyendorff, A Study of Gregory Palamas, London: Faith Press, 1964, pt. 3, on the Taboric light). The distinction is the crux of the Palamite theology: God is utterly unknowable in his essence, yet truly participable in his uncreated energies, of which the Taboric Light is the supreme manifestation — so that in seeing the Light the apostles saw God, not the divine essence (which no creature can see) but the divine energy, God as he gives himself to be seen (Palamas, Triads 3.1; Meyendorff, Study of Gregory Palamas, pt. 3; and see St. Gregory Palamas). The Councils of Constantinople of 1341, 1347, and 1351 vindicated this teaching against Barlaam of Calabria, who held the Light to be created; the feast is thus, in its dogmatic weight, the liturgical counterpart of the hesychast councils (Meyendorff, Study of Gregory Palamas, pt. 1–2).

The kontakion of the feast states the doctrine exactly: “On the mountain wast Thou transfigured, O Christ God, and Thy disciples beheld Thy glory as far as they could bear it, so that when they should see Thee crucified they might know that Thy suffering was voluntary” (kontakion, Tone 7; The Festal Menaion, p. 483). Two things are packed into that line. First, the Light is unchanging in Christ: it was not that Christ became luminous, but that the disciples were for a moment enabled to see the glory that was always his — “as far as they could bear it.” The change is in the seers, not the seen. Second, the vision is given in view of the Cross: they are shown the glory beforehand so that, seeing him crucified, they may know his death was freely chosen by the Lord of glory (kontakion; the feast’s canons, The Festal Menaion, pp. 469–487).

The feast and theosis

The Transfiguration is the key feast for the Orthodox doctrine of deification (theosis). For the Light of Tabor is not shown as a prodigy reserved to Christ alone but as the destiny promised to redeemed human nature: the glory that shone through Christ’s transfigured humanity is the glory in which the saints will shine, the “sun” the righteous will become in the Kingdom (Matthew 13:43). What the apostles saw on Tabor is a foretaste of the deified state of the whole human person — body included, for it was Christ’s face and garments, his human flesh and even his clothing, that shone (Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, London: James Clarke, 1957, ch. 10, on the Transfiguration and deified nature; and see Orthodoxy: Theosis). This is why the hesychast fathers held that the same uncreated Light could be granted, by grace, to those far advanced in prayer — the Light of Tabor and the Light seen by the saints being one and the same (Palamas, Triads 1.3; 2.3; and see St. Gregory Palamas). The feast therefore proclaims not only who Christ is but what humanity is called to become: partakers of the divine glory, transfigured from within.

Date, forefeast, and the blessing of fruits

The feast is fixed on 6 August. Its date has often been connected to a reckoning of forty days before the Exaltation of the Cross (14 September) — the interval between the manifestation of glory and the mystery of the Cross toward which the kontakion says the vision points (ODB = The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, ed. Kazhdan, Oxford, 1991, s.v. “Transfiguration”). The feast falls within the Dormition Fast (1–14 August), and, by long custom, the fast is relaxed on this day to permit fish, wine, and oil (Bulgakov, Nastolnaya Kniga, 1900; and see Fasting and Feasting). The characteristic rite is the blessing of the first fruits — grapes above all, whence in Greek lands the feast’s association with the new vintage, and in Russia the folk-name Yablochnyi Spas, “the Apple Saviour,” from the blessing of apples (Bulgakov, Nastolnaya Kniga; and see The Feasts across the Orthodox World). The blessing of fruits carries its own theology: the created world, offered and blessed, is itself caught up in the transfiguring light.

The icon

The icon shows Christ at the summit of the mountain within a mandorla — an almond-shaped aureole, often of concentric circles growing darker toward the center, the darkness of the unapproachable divine essence at the heart of the blinding energy — his garments radiant white, rays of light streaming out and striking the disciples below. Moses (holding the tablets) and Elijah stand on either side in converse with him; below, the three apostles are cast to the ground in disarray, shielding their eyes or overturned by the glory (Ouspensky and Lossky, The Meaning of Icons, SVS Press, 1982, on the Transfiguration icon; and see The Icon of the Feast). The icon renders precisely the Palamite theology: the rays are uncreated Light going out from Christ to the world, and the dark center of the mandorla confesses that the essence from which the energy streams remains beyond all seeing.

See Also

References

  • The Festal Menaion. Trans. Mother Mary and Kallistos Ware. London: Faber & Faber, 1969. (The propers of the Transfiguration, pp. 469–487; the kontakion.)
  • Gregory Palamas. The Triads in Defence of the Holy Hesychasts. Trans. Nicholas Gendle. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1983.
  • John Meyendorff. A Study of Gregory Palamas. Trans. George Lawrence. London: Faith Press, 1964.
  • Vladimir Lossky. The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church. London: James Clarke, 1957.
  • The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. Ed. A. Kazhdan et al. Oxford, 1991 (s.v. “Transfiguration”).
  • Ouspensky, Leonid, and Vladimir Lossky. The Meaning of Icons. Rev. ed. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1982.
  • Bulgakov, Sergei V. Nastolnaya Kniga. 2nd ed., 1900.
  • Scripture: Matthew 17:1–9; Mark 9:2–10; Luke 9:28–36; 2 Peter 1:16–18; Matthew 13:43.