Homily on the Transfiguration of the Lord
By Archimandrite Kirill Pavlov
(Delivered in 1964)
By Archimandrite Kirill Pavlov
(Delivered in 1964)
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit!
Brothers and sisters beloved of God, today Christians throughout the world celebrate with great joy the most glorious Transfiguration of our Lord Jesus Christ. Christians rejoice and are glad in celebrating this feast, because the glorious Transfiguration of the Lord gives great consolation to the Christian heart. Our faith in Christ and our hope in Christ for eternal blessedness become firm and unshakable when we are transported in spirit to Tabor and become spectators of the Transfiguration of the Savior.
Here, on Tabor, the Divinity of Christ is confirmed by His very Transfiguration, and by the appearance from the afterlife and the conversation with Him of the two Old Testament prophets – Moses and Elijah, and, finally, by the testimony from Heaven of the Father's voice: "This is My Beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased; listen to Him" (Matt. 17:5). For we know, dear ones, that our Lord Jesus Christ humbly and in a humiliated manner performed His great service to the human race. Taking the form of a servant, the Son of God everywhere revealed Himself to be the Son of Man, and everyone looked upon Him as a simple man. The Lord hid His Divinity under the veil of His flesh, only from time to time revealing His Divine dignity in performing miracles, signs, and healings of the sick. Preparing for the great feat of suffering on the Cross, the Savior most clearly revealed His Divine majesty to His disciples on this holy mountain, so that, as the Church sings, "when they would behold You crucified, they would understand that Your suffering was voluntary, and would proclaim to the world, that You are truly the radiance of the Father." The Lord saw that the faith of the disciples in His Divine mission and in His Divine dignity was still very weak, and He wanted to strengthen this uncertain faith, a faith that was facing a great trial — the danger of being shaken. After all, seeing how evil enemies would mock Christ, torture and crucify Him, and He, like a silent Lamb, would endure everything unquestioningly and remain silent, could they not doubt and think that, apparently, He is not God, not the Son of God, not the promised Savior of the world, but a flatterer from whom one must leave behind and cling to His enemies?
But now the disciples on Mount Tabor see such a glorious Transfiguration of the Lord, which people have not yet seen since the very creation of the world, and in this Transfiguration they contemplate with their own eyes the glory of the Divinity of their Teacher and the heavenly witnesses, feeling at the same time the inexpressible joy of communion with the Lord.
And we, dear ones, joyfully celebrate this feast, believing that the Lord, Who was transfigured on the mountain, will one day transform our humble bodies, so that they will be conformed to His glorious body, and will transform them by the power by which He acts and subdues all things to Himself.
By celebrating the most glorious Transfiguration of the Lord, we thereby celebrate our future transfiguration, which will certainly take place in eternity. And how desirable this future general transfiguration should be for each person, how necessary it is that a person should think about it more often and use all his efforts to be worthy of it!
In our noble striving to achieve this glorious transfiguration, it is necessary, dear ones, to remember the following: man consists of body and soul, and therefore our bodily, external transfiguration must be preceded by an internal transfiguration, a transfiguration of the soul. It is precisely the inner transformation that is usually followed by an external transformation. Gloomy as a cloud is a person in a state of anger, hatred, envy, who spends his life in evil, who is given over to vice or who has given himself over to despair. But as soon as a person tries to acquire meekness, benevolence, peace, love, to leave his lecherous life, his soul becomes clear and calm, and he is completely transformed. Therefore, if a Christian desires to be transfigured externally, then he must first be transfigured internally.
In addition, it should be noted that the most glorious Transfiguration of our Lord Jesus Christ took place at a time when His soul was occupied with the thought of the impending feat of the Cross and death. Obviously, the thought of the Cross was the dominant thought of the God-man before this great event and during His very Transfiguration on Tabor, and had a very important influence on it. Thus, the thought of the Cross contributed to the Transfiguration. As a bright lightning emanates from a gloomy cloud, so the Lord's thought about the Cross, the determination to bear it on His shoulders, was naturally followed by His Transfiguration.
Our Transfiguration is in the same close connection with our cross as the Transfiguration of Christ was with the Cross of Christ. Only with constant remembrance of our cross and with constant uncomplaining bearing of it can our grace-filled transfiguration be accomplished here and the future glorious transfiguration in Heaven is prepared.
How is the transformation of a mental man into a spiritual man accomplished? Through the cross, which consists of the hard work of self-correction and self-improvement, when a Christian forces himself, putting aside the old man with his sinful passions and habits, to strive for virtue and cleave only to what is true, good, pure, kind, just, praiseworthy, which constitutes only virtue and praise.
The Gospel tells that the Lord, for His Transfiguration, ascended a high mountain and prayed, thereby teaching us to renounce earthly bonds and more often ascend mentally to the Mountain, to the Heavenly, thereby cleansing our feelings and mind from everyday vanity and attachments.
Draw your reverent attention, dear ones, to the fact that the Apostles of Christ felt the highest blessedness only when they were vouchsafed to contemplate the glory of their Divine Teacher. This circumstance convinces us that only in Christ can a person have true and highest happiness, and this happiness is the only one that no one can ever take away from us. All other happiness, happiness without Christ, is illusory, deceptive, changeable, and the pleasures it promises plunge man into the abyss of innumerable and grievous sufferings.
And so, dear brothers and sisters, let us make every effort to cleanse ourselves inwardly from all vice, so that sin does not reign in our hearts, but Christ reigns. Then we too will be vouchsafed a grace-filled transfiguration here on earth, and a glorious transfiguration in the age to come, which may the Lord Jesus Christ vouchsafe us, to Whom, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.