“You were transfigured on the Mount, Christ God,

revealing Your glory to Your disciples, insofar as they could comprehend.”

On Mount Tabor the Savior revealed His divine glory to three of His disciples. Shortly before that, Christ had questioned His disciples regarding what was being said about Him among the people. The response was, “Some say [You are] John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets” (Matt. 16:14). Then He questions them regarding their own faith in His person. Peter, the spokesman, responds for the apostles, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt. 16:16).

Christ took this Peter, together with James and John, up on the mountain and revealed Himself to them as God. The troparion says that He revealed His glory “insofar as they could comprehend”. It was granted to these three Apostles to behold the glory of God as much as they were humanly able. They had begun to understand something of the mystery of this Teacher, from His words and the miracles He performed. In a moment of divine inspiration, Peter had recognized Christ as “the Son of God”. But only on Mount Tabor did the Apostles understand what these words meant. Only when they saw His face shining like the sun and heard the words, “This is My beloved Son in Whom I am well-pleased; listen to Him” (Matt. 17:5), only then did the disciples understand the mystery of the “Son of God”: that the Kingdom of the Father had come, that they were participating in it, and that they desired to remain in it through communion with the Son of God. “Lord, it is good for us to be here.” It is good for man to remain in the light of God, we can paraphrase it.

God thus reveals His Light in order to embrace man in it. The man Christ allowed His Divine Light to be seen in order that He might offer man the chance to regain the light, to re-illumine his likeness which had been darkened through sin. The troparion goes on to pray, “illumine us sinners also with Your everlasting light”. This shows our longing for the Light of Christ, that we may regain the luminous image of the first creation. The light of God shone on the face of Adam. The light of God, brought back, shone on the transfigured face of the new Adam, Christ. The light of God can shine again on our face and show us to be His renewed creation.

Let us use the Fast of the Dormition of the Theotokos to pray that God will send us the Divine Light and that Christ the Lord may show us also worthy to see the Light, like the three Apostles on Mount Tabor.

† Metropolitan Nicolae