The Icon of the Transfiguration as a Symbol of Cultural Transformation

In this essay, I explore how beauty and culture led me to Catholic faith well over thirty years ago, using an icon of the Transfiguration as a metaphor. I was drawn to the Church not primarily through theological arguments, but indirectly. I was drawn to Christ by the light of Catholic culture – its art, music, and the graceful lives of believers – which served as heralds pointing toward something greater. The icon’s mandorla, with its bands that darken toward Christ at the center, illustrates my journey: initially I could perceive only the outer rings of divine light reflected in the beauty of Creation and Christian culture. Only after taking my “leap into the blinding Light” by entering the Church’s sacramental life could I encounter Christ more directly. Now, as part of His mystical body, I too contribute to the cultural beauty that draws others toward God in some small way, along with all other Catholics – revealing how Christian cultural transformation is both an effect and a cause of faith.

Mosaic of the Transfiguration in the apse of the katholikon (main church) off St Catherine’s Monastery on Mt Sinai, 6th century.

I am a convert to Catholicism. Becoming Catholic was a decision as important as any I have ever made, and one I have never regretted. I became Catholic because I believed that if I did so, I would be happier in this life and have the possibility of perfect happiness in the next. Being Catholic has more than fulfilled my hopes and expectations for this life and so increased my conviction that it will deliver in the next!

People often ask me why I made the decision. How could I know what the future would hold for me as a Catholic? How did I come to the conviction that being a Catholic was a route to happiness? For all the good reasons one might present for being Catholic to persuade me of its truth and goodness, and there were many, I could never really know whether the proposition was true until I tried it. And I can’t fully experience the life of faith until I am received into the Church. At some point, I have to decide that I am ready to put aside my doubts, take the plunge, and give it a go.

One might liken that final decision to one that is, at least partially, a leap into the unknown, or into the dark. I prefer to think of it as a leap into the Light, albeit a Light so bright and dazzling that it temporarily blinds and appears dark.

Until I was Catholic and participating in the Church’s sacramental life, that Light – the Light of the World, Jesus Christ – was too bright for me to grasp directly. But once I was part of the Church, my eyes of faith could by degrees focus more clearly on and perceive its source, and be transformed by it supernaturally.

However, before I became Catholic, there were ways I could perceive the Light, but only indirectly and dimly. I interpreted these glimmers as promises of what I might receive. Some powerful signs of the Light were the grace, love, beauty and happiness in the lives of Catholics. Another sign was the beauty of Catholic culture. A third was the beauty of Creation, which spoke to me of the One who had created it, the Creator.

Within Catholic culture, it was the art and the music in particular that drew me in. Each person is unique and will likely respond to different aspects of that culture differently, but the wonderful thing is that Catholic culture is so rich; there is something there for just about everyone.

St John the Evangelist tells us in his gospel (chapter 1, 6-8) of the emergence of St John the Baptist, also known as John the Forerunner, acting as a herald of that Light:

“There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that Light so that through him all might believe. He himself was not the Light; he came only as a witness to the light.”

In many ways, the beauty of Catholic culture acted for me just as John the Baptist, the Forerunner of the light, did for the Jews of the 1st century AD. Like John the Forerunner, the beauty was not the Light, but it bore witness to it, powerfully and irresistibly. The beauty of Catholic works of art, music and architecture, for example, was a sign of what inspired their creation by the Christian artists, composers and architects of the past.

Those who contributed to that culture were participating in God’s governance, I now realize, by creating beautiful manifestations of the Light. Their beauty, the creation of which I now know was inspired by the Faith and by God, stimulated my desire for the source, Beauty itself. I was aware that beauty was creating in me a yearning for something more early on, but I didn’t immediately realize that it was God I was yearning for. I have heard this yearning described as a ‘wound’ of beauty because it creates in us an awareness that what we have is not enough, for, of its beauty, we are missing out on something even greater, and we yearn for whatever that might be.

Initially, I responded by seeking greater beauty, which began as a deep interest in Western culture. As I was to discover, traditional Western culture is, at root, a Christian culture, and all Christian culture is, at root, Catholic culture. All the beauty that I found was a reflection, a sign, of a whole new worldview —the Faith.

Consider now this painting of the Transfiguration, an icon of the 16th-century.

In the portrayal of this event, which took place just before His passion, we see Christ on the mountain flanked by the two prophets and with the three disciples stunned by the sight of the transfigured Christ. Their vision was a glimpse given to the disciples of His heavenly glory, which had hitherto been unseen. Jesus revealed to Peter, James, and John who He is—God and man—and what all Christians will become in Him. All of us are invited to embrace that joyful path that He has prepared for us.

This icon is also a good illustration of how a Christian culture is simultaneously the effect and a cause of Christian faith.

The nimbus that surrounds Christ in this picture is called a mandorla. It is called a mandorla because it is often depicted in an elliptical, almond shape, and mandorla is the Italian word for almond. The mandorla surrounding Christ usually shows concentric bands of shading, which get darker toward the center rather than lighter. It is painted in this way to communicate to us, pictorially, that we must pass through stages of what seems like increasing mystery to encounter the person of Jesus Christ. This encounter, which takes place most profoundly in the Mass with the Eucharist at its heart, transforms us supernaturally, so that we can now begin to grasp the glory of Christ both directly and indirectly.

This encounter with Christ present in the Eucharist in the liturgy is made possible by the sacraments of baptism and confirmation, by which we have ‘put on Christ’ as St Paul calls it in Galatians (Gal 3, 2;7). God’s actions are not in any way restricted by the sacraments, of course, but as a general rule, until we become Catholic, we are dazzled into blindness. We are blind to the transfigured Christ, so to speak, so that the mandorla prior to our being in the Church is perceived as a jet-black envelope with a heart of darkness. Only when we take that leap into the blinding Light and are received into the Church are we able to participate in the sacramental and supernatural life of the Church. As a result, we can, in a new way, see Christ directly with our eyes of faith. Only then does his person become visible to us as he was suddenly, to the three disciples.

To ‘see Christ’ in this context does not mean, for most people in this life, literally seeing with their eyes a human figure, but rather to be able to know Him deeply, as one does when one loves someone. To love Christ is to accept His love and return that love to Him. We return that love to Him most profoundly in our acts of worship in the Church, and we glorify Him by leading a life of virtue and beauty and loving Him through our interactions with our neighbors. In the next life, we will see God as the angels and saints in heaven see Him now and as the disciples saw him in glory on Mt Tabor.

Theophan the Greek, 15th century

Returning to consideration of the icon, before being fully part of the body of Christ and the Church, although we cannot see Christ we can perceive the outer rings of the mandorla. These represent the Light of Christ reflected in the cosmos, in Christian culture, and art, and in the loving and graceful lives of good Christians. This is what I was seeing in the beauty of the world and culture before I became Catholic. It is the beauty and grace of the effects of the Christian life in a beautiful Christian culture, and in the work of God in Creation, that tell us there is always more to know and love. If we allow this message to touch our hearts, we yearn for the source of all beauty, grace, and love, who is God and who is portrayed at the heart of this image.

Beauty is, in this sense, a perceptible sign of the source of all good things, Almighty God. It calls us to itself and then beyond to Him who inspired it, who is Beauty itself. Creation is beautiful because it bears the thumbprint of the Creator, and the culture or any aspect of it, whether mundane or sacred, high or simple art or even everyday Christian activity, any of this is beautiful – graceful – if God inspires it. The rings of the mandorla represent the Light reflected in the beauty of the world, of Christian culture, and in the lives of Christians.

The Christian life well lived is one in which potentially every action contributes to the increasing brightness of those outer rings of the mandorla, and which in turn draw people, just like me, into the Church. We contribute to the intensification of that brightness by creating beautiful things and living graceful lives as best we can.

As Christians, we are part of the Church, the mystical body of Christ. Each of us, therefore, is mystically a pixel of supernatural light in the person of Christ depicted in the heart of darkness in the mandorla! To the degree that we lead the life of a good Christian, we become part of the source of Light as much as the reflections in the cultural Light. This is the paradox of Christianity. Both the artefacts we create and the lives we lead that enable us to create them, participate deeply in the beauty of the Light. The Christian painter is called to create beautiful art and to lead a virtuous life. But it is also true that every Christian, through just about every human activity, can create beauty if he cares to, which gives glory to God and joy to our fellow man.

The icon of the Transfiguration speaks of the whole mission of the Christian life. It reminds us that if we want to transform the culture, our lives must begin and end with Christ himself. He is both the end and the means by which we attain that end. By keeping our sights firmly on Him, we become icons of Christ and draw people to Him through our lives of grace and virtue, participating in God’s governance. We are part of the mystical body of Christ, and we contribute to the creation of the concentric rings of the mandorla that draw others to Him also.

Aidan Hart, England, 21st century

The Feast of the Transfiguration 2025

Truly it is worthy and just, right and profitable to salvation that we should give Thee thanks always, here and everywhere, o Lord, holy Father, almighty and eternal God, through Christ, our Lord. Who on this day of great solemnity was transfigured upon the high mountain, appearing to the disciples whom He had taken up (with Him), shining with the bright splendor of the sun, that He might draw our weak human minds, caught up in slumber, to contemplate, desire and obtain with all their efforts that true enjoyment of the everlasting light. For indeed the disciples, even though they were bound in the human body, beheld such great splendor and light that Peter already desired to be there, and build three tabernacles in that place; and from such wonderful brightness, they were drawn with intense desires to long all the more for the glory on high, which eye hath not seen, nor hath entered into the heart of man. Therefore with worthy praises let us celebrate, devoutly contemplating our Redeemer on high, as He shone forth with such great splendor of light upon the top of the mountain, that we may be delivered from the prison of the present life, and be transferred forever to Thee, the true light and unfailing brightness, and lifting up our eyes, see none other but Jesus the only Redeemer. Whom together with Thee, almighty Father, and the Holy Spirit, the Angels praise, the Archangels venerate, the Thrones, Dominations, Virtues, Principalities and Powers adore; whom the Cherubim and Seraphim with shared rejoicing praise. And we pray that Thou may command our voices to be brought in among them, saying with humble confession: Holy, Holy, Holy… (The extremely long and rhetorically effusive Ambrosian preface for the feast of the Transfiguration.)

The Transfiguration, by Perugino, in the Collegio del Cambio in Perugia, 1497-1500

Vere quia dignum et justum est, aequum et salutare, nos tibi semper hic et ubique gratias agere, Domine, sancte Pater, omnipotens aeterne Deus, per Christum Dominum nostrum. Qui hac magnae solemnitatis die in monte transfiguratus est excelso, apparens discipulis quos assumpserat, lucido solis splendore coruscans: ut infirmitatis humanae mentes, torpore involutas, ad veram illam lucis perpetuae amoenitatem alliceret contemplandam, desiderandam, et totis nixibus consequendam. Discipuli namque in humanitatis corpore obvoluti, tantum splendorem tantamque lucem conspexerunt, ut Petrus ibi jam et desideraret esse, triaque tabernacula facere. Allecti enim fuerant discipuli ex tam mirabili claritate amplius supernam gloriam intensis desideriis peroptare, quam nec oculus vidit, nec in cor hominis ascendit. Celebremus igitur dignis laudibus, piis obtutibus speculantes supernum Redemptorem nostrum in montis cacumine tantae lucis splendore rutilasse: ut praesentis vitae ergastulo liberati, ad te verum lumen, et indeficientem claritatem in perpetuum transferamur: levantesque oculos nostros neminem videamus, nisi solum Jesum Redemptorem. Quem una tecum, omnipotens Pater, et cum Spiritu Sancto laudant Angeli, venerantur Archangeli; Throni, Dominationes, Virtutes, Principatus et Potestates adorant. Quem Cherubim et Seraphim socia exsultatione concelebrant. Cum quibus et nostras voces, ut admitti jubeas, deprecamur, supplici confessione dicentes: Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus…

The Byzantine Canons of the Transfiguration

The number of proper texts which the Byzantine Rite has for any given liturgical day is far larger than those of the Roman Rite. When I write something that highlights them, I usually choose the ones which are most frequently used: the tropar and kontak, which are said at most Hours of the Office as well as at the Divine Liturgy, or the proper hymn to the Virgin Mary sung during the anaphora. Today, I thought I would focus on something different, namely the Canon, a set of compositions based on a series of nine Biblical canticles, eight from the Old Testament and one from the New. (These canticles are called “ᾠδαί – odes” in Greek, “пѣсни – songs” in Church Slavonic.) The feast of the Transfiguration, which originated in the Byzantine Rite, has two Canons, with a total of over 70 texts, so obviously, this will be just a selection.

A Greek icon of the Transfiguration from the second half of the 15th century. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

The presence of Old Testament canticles in the various rites of the Divine Office, both Eastern and Western, is one of the things which is so ancient that we cannot tell its precise origin. The Byzantine ones already appear as a group in the 5th century, in a Bible known as the Codex Alexandrinus, the provenance of which is unknown; they subsequently appear in almost every Greek Psalter and Bible. In their current order of use, they are:

   1. The canticle of Moses in Exodus, 15, 1-19

   2. The canticle of Moses in Deuteronomy, 32, 1-43

   3. The canticle of Anna, the mother of Samuel, in 1 Samuel 2, 1-10

   4. The canticle of the prophet Habakkuk, 3, 2-19

These four are also used in the Roman Rite, at Lauds of Thursday, Saturday, Wednesday and Friday respectively. The next two are not used in the Roman Rite, but are sung at Matins in the Ambrosian Rite on Sundays and feasts of the Lord, the first (Isa. 26) all year round, the second (Jonah 2) from Easter to mid-October.

   5. The canticle of Isaiah, 26, 9-20

   6. The canticle of Jonah, 2, 3-10

   7. The Prayer of the Three Children in Daniel 3, 26-56 (The largest part of this deuterocanonical section of the book of Daniel is more properly known as the Prayer of Azariah, and is not used in the Roman Office. A version of the last part, verses 47-56, is sung at the Masses of the Ember Saturdays of Advent, Lent and September, with the addition of several verses not in the original Biblical text.)

   8. The Song of the Three Children, Daniel 3, 57-88, known in the West from its first word as the Benedicite. (This is sung at Lauds of Sunday in the Roman Rite, and prior to the 1911 reform of the Office, on all feast days. The Byzantine version, unsurprisingly, does not omit the many repetitions of the words “praise Him and exalt Him above all forever” as the Roman one does.)

   9. The canticles of the Virgin Mary and Zechariah, the Magnificat and Benedictus, both in Luke 1 (46-55 and 68-79), sung as a single canticle.

In theory, these canticles are appointed to be said every day at the longest and most complicated of the Hours, known as Orthros, from the Greek word for “morning.” This service corresponds in some ways to Roman Matins, and in some ways to Lauds, but the majority of its features have no real analog in the West. The second ode, which is by far the longest, Moses’ reproof to the children of Israel for their infidelity to the Lord, is only said in penitential seasons. I will explain further down why I write that the odes are said “in theory.”

One of the greatest and most important composers of liturgical texts for the Byzantine Rite is a Saint named Andrew, who was born in Damascus around 650 AD, and died in 740. After becoming a monk in one of the most famous monasteries of the East, the Lavra of St Sabbas, he served as the archdeacon of Patriarch Theodore of Jerusalem, and represented him at the Sixth Ecumenical Council in Constantinople. He went on to become first archdeacon of Hagia Sophia, and then archbishop of Gortyna, the metropolitan see of the island of Crete, whence he is generally known as St Andrew of Crete.

St Andrew is traditionally credited with the invention of the liturgical form known as the Canon, a series of compositions designed to be sung between the verses of the odes, commenting on their text in reference to the liturgical day. To give a simple example, the first words of the Canon of Christmas are as follows: “Christ is born, glorify Him; Christ comes from the heavens, go to meet Him; Christ upon earth, be ye exalted. Sing to the Lord, all the earth, and in gladness, lift up the hymn, ye peoples, for He is glorified.” The words “Sing to the Lord” and “glorify” (in two forms) here come from the opening words of the canticle of Moses in Exodus with which this was written to be sung, “Sing to the Lord, for He is greatly glorified.”

The crossing of the Red Sea, depicted in a Psalter made in Constantinople in the mid-10th century. The upper register shows the personifications of Night and of the Desert, out of which Moses leads the Israelites as he strikes the water with his rod, led by the column of fire. In the lower register, the nude personification of the Deep (here a male, since the Greek word ‘Bythos’ is masculine), looking very much like a classical statue, drags Pharaoh down into the water, as the personification of the Red Sea looks on from the lower right-hand corner. (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des manuscrits, Grec 139)

The composers of canons exercised much ingenuity to draw a connection between the liturgical day and the text of the odes, with varying degrees of success. Some of the results are magnificently beautiful, and as beloved in the churches of the Byzantine Rite as things like Tenebrae or Midnight Mass are in the Roman Rite. The Paschal Canon of St John of Damascene is a deservedly famous example. Others can seem rhetorically rather tortured, and employ a lot of odd vocabulary that makes them very difficult to read. The entry for St Andrew in the revised Butler’s Lives of the Saints (July 4) includes the statement that “the canon is a form that lends itself to empty verbosity”; and lest this seem too intrusive a criticism from outsiders, no less a figure than Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann, one of the most respected figures in Orthodoxy in the 20th century, said something very similar about the “meaningless rhetoric” of many Byzantine liturgical texts.

Whatever the literary merits of any individual canon, or lack thereof, as a liturgical form it became extremely popular in the Byzantine church; so much so, in fact, that over time, it displaced the odes themselves, and the various chants of the Canon are now almost always done without them. (The exception is the Magnificat, which is generally not omitted.) Of course, the odes have never been removed from the liturgical books, and are still occasionally sung in the larger and more liturgically energetic monasteries. In their place, brief interjections such as “Glory to thee, o our God, glory to thee,” or “Have mercy on me, o God, have mercy on me” are usually said. Many days have two or even three canons assigned to them, and these in turn are also often shortened by singing only a selection of the texts.

Here then are the first texts for each ode from the two Canons of the Transfiguration. The first canon is attributed to St Cosmas of Maiuma, and the second to his foster-brother, St John Damascene, both of whom were prolific hymnographers. (Many of the authorial attributions given in Byzantine liturgical books are considered dubious.)

First canon, first ode The choirs of Israel, having crossed the watery deep of the Red Sea with dry feet, on seeing the enemy riders and captains under the waves, sang in rejoicing, ‘Let us sing to our God, for He is glorified.’

This text obviously makes no reference to the Transfiguration, so the one that follows develops the connection with the feast:

Openly speaking the words of life to His friends, concerning the kingdom, Christ said, ‘As I shine forth with inapproachable light, in me ye shall know the Father, sang in rejoicing, “Let us sing to our God, for He is glorified.” ’

Second canon, first ode Of old, Moses at the sea prophetically saw in the cloud and in the column of fire the glory of the Lord, and cried out, “Let us sing to our Redeemer and God.”

First canon, third ode The bow of the mighty grew weak, and the weak were clothed in might; wherefore my heart is strengthened in the Lord. (referring to the first words of the canticle of Anna, “My heart is strengthened in the Lord.”)

Here again, the first canon makes no reference to the Transfiguration, and the connection to the feast is supplied by the second one.

Second canon, third ode The overshadowing glory that in the former tabernacle did converse with Moses, thy servant, has become a type of Thy Transfiguration that ineffably shined forth on Tabor, o Lord.

Anna, the mother of the Prophet Samuel, from the same manuscript as the previous image.

After the Third Ode, the canon is interrupted by a chant called the “kathisma – sessional hymn”, because the two choirs would sit while it was sung by a group of cantors.

Kathisma On Mount Tabor Thou wast transfigured, o God, between the wise Elijah and Moses, with James and Peter and John, and Peter, being there, said to Thee, “It is good here to make three booths, one for Moses, and one for Elijah, and one for Thee, Lord Christ.” Thou who didst then shine Thy light upon them, enlighten our souls.

First canon, fourth ode I heard of Thy glorious dispensation, Christ God, for Thou wast born of the Virgin, so that Thou might deliver from deception, those who cry out, ‘Glory to Thy might, o Lord.’

Second canon, fourth ode The sun which is felt by the senses was hidden by the rays of the divinity when it saw Thee transfigured on Mount Tabor, o my Jesus. Glory to Thy might, o Lord.’

First canon, fifth ode Thou who didst divide the first-begotten chaos of the light, as Thy works sing of Thee, their maker, in light, o Christ, straighten Thou our ways in Thy light.

Second canon, fifth ode The tongue of the orator cannot proclaim Thy great deeds, for Thou who holdest life, and hast rule over death, brought Moses and Elijah to stand beside Thee on Mt Tabor, and bear witness to Thy divinity.

First canon, sixth ode In my tribulation, I cried out to the Lord, and he heard me, the God of my salvation. (This repeats the opening words of the canticle of Jonah, “In my tribulation, I cried out to the Lord, and he heard me.” The Byzantine Rite focuses very much on the fact that in the Transfiguration, Christ is revealed as the Savior, which is here emphasized by the words, “The God of my salvation.”)

Second canon, sixth ode How great and fearful a sight has been seen today! The sun of justice, made known from heaven, incomparable upon the earth, has shone forth, and is known upon Mt Tabor.

Here the canon is again interrupted by two chants of older genres, the kontakion and the ikos, the latter of which was created as a rhetorical commentary on the former, and almost always ends with the same words.

Kontak Thou was transfigured upon the mountain, and Thy disciples beheld Thy glory as much as they could, o Christ God, so that when they saw Thee crucified, they might know that Thy suffering was voluntary, and proclaim to the world that Thou art truly the radiance of the Father.

Ikos Rise up, ye slothful thoughts, that bend my soul down towards the earth, do not crawl forever on the ground. Be lifted up and raised to the height of divine ascent! Let us run to Peter and the sons of Zebedee, and together with them go forth to Mount Tabor, that we may see with them the glory of our God, and hear the voice which they heard from on high; and they preached the radiance of the Father.

There follows the Synaxarion, the equivalent of the Martyrology. As with so many things Byzantine, the official text of it is very long, and it is often reduced to just a notice of the day’s feast, and a few lines of poetry that comment on it.

The Synaxarion On the sixth day of the same month, the commemoration of the divine Transfiguration of Our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ.

Verses Thabor was glorified above every part of the world, / on seeing God’s nature shining in glory; / Christ changed the form of man at the sixth Hour, / to Him be glory and power unto the ages. Amen.

First canon, seventh ode The children of Abraham did once trod upon the flame of the furnace in Babylon, and with a hymn they sang, Blessed art Thou, god of our fathers.

Surrounded on all sides by the light of unapproachable glory, on Mt Tabor the Apostles, o Christ, cried out, Blessed art Thou, God of our fathers.

Second canon, seventh ode Now things unseen have been seen by the Apostles; in the flesh, the divinity shining forth upon Mt Tabor to those that cry out, “Blessed art Thou, o Lord, God unto all ages.”

A Greek icon from the second half of the 18th century, signed by the painter, Konstantinos Adrianoupolitis, now in the Benaki Museum in Athens. The whole lower part of the image shows the episodes of the third chapter of the book of Daniel: the adoration of the Emperor Nebuchadnezzar’s golden statue, and the Three Children in the Furnace. In the upper right, the representation of the Three Children follows the opening words of Psalm 136, “Upon the rivers of Babylon, there we sat and wept, when we remembered Sion: on the willows in the midst thereof we hung up our instruments.” To the left of them, and further back within the image, is the episode of Daniel in the Lion’s Den, with the Prophet Habakkuk bringing him food.

First canon, eighth ode The children in Babylon, burning with divine zeal, manfully trod down the threats of the tyrant and the fire, and being seen covered in dew in the midst of the flames, sand, “Bless the Lord, all ye works of the Lord.”

Second canon, eighth ode Having heard Thee, o master, witnessed by the Father, and not bearing to the brightness of Thy face, as something mightier than the sight of men, Thy disciples fell down upon the ground, singing in fear, “Bless Christ, ye priest, exalt him, o people, forever.”

First canon, ninth ode Thy incorruptible birthing was shown forth, God came forth bearing the flesh from Thy womb, and appeared upon the earth, and dwelt among men; where we all magnify Thee, o Mother of God.

Second canon, ninth ode Every hearing shuddered at God’s unspeakable condescension, since the Most High willingly came down, even unto the body, and from the virginal womb, became a man; wherefore we faithful magnify the immaculate Mother of God.

At the Divine Liturgy, there are several places where the priest sings a part of the anaphora out loud, and the choir makes a response, while he continues the anaphora silently. In the liturgy of St John Chrysostom, the priest commemorates the Saints after the consecration and epiclesis, praying in silence “Again we offer unto Thee this rational service for them that in faith have gone to their rest before us: the Forefathers, Fathers, Patriarchs, Prophets, Apostles, Preachers, Evangelists, Martyrs, Confessors, Ascetics, and for every righteous spirit in faith made perfect.” He then sings out loud, “Especially for our most holy, immaculate, blessed-above-all and glorious Lady, the Mother of God, and ever-Virgin Mary:” The choir then sings a hymn to the Virgin; on the major feasts, the daily hymn is replaced by the ninth Ode of the canon (in this case, the first one, “Thy incorruptible birthing...”)

The Second Sunday of Lent 2024

Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good, for His mercy endureth forever. V. Who shall tell the mighty deeds of the Lord, or make known all His praises? V. Blessed are they who keep judgment and do justice at all times. V. Remember us, O Lord, in the favor of Thy people; visit us in Thy salvation. (The Tract of the Second Sunday of Lent, Ps. 105, 1-4)

Tractus Confitémini Dómino, quoniam bonus: quoniam in sǽculum misericordia ejus. V. Quis loquétur potentias Dómini: audítas faciet omnes laudes ejus? V. Beáti, qui custodiunt judicium et faciunt justitiam in omni témpore. V. Memento nostri, Dómine, in beneplácito pópuli tui: vísita nos in salutári tuo.

✠ At that time, after six days, Jesus taketh unto him Peter and James, and John his brother, and bringeth them up into a high mountain apart, and he was transfigured before them, and his face did shine as the sun, and his garments became white as snow. And behold there appeared to them Moses and Elias talking with him, and Peter answering, said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here: if thou wilt, let us make here three tabernacles, one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias.” And as he was yet speaking, behold a bright cloud overshadowed them. And lo, a voice out of the cloud, saying, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased: hear ye him.” And the disciples hearing, fell upon their face, and were very much afraid. And Jesus came and touched them, and said to them, “Arise, and fear not.” And they lifting up their eyes saw no one but only Jesus. And as they came down from the mountain, Jesus charged them, saying, “Tell the vision to no man, till the Son of man be risen from the dead.” (The Gospel, Matthew 17, 1-9.)

The Transfiguration, by Duccio di Buoninsegna, one of the panels of the dismembered altarpiece of Siena Cathedral known as the Maestà, 1311; this one is now located in the National Gallery in London. (Image from Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0)

Showing the Tree to the Acorn: Feasts About the Resurrection of the Body

The Risen Christ Appearing to the Virgin, ca. 1640, by the French painter Jacques Stella (1596-1657) 

Liturgical seasons are sometimes like natural seasons, with a season within a season. Summer is a season, but depending on where you are, there are rainy seasons, hurricane seasons, and so forth. One of the stranger mini-seasons found within the traditional Time after Pentecost (combined with the Sanctoral Cycle) is about belief in the resurrection of the dead. In an age where victories over sin, ignorance, and doubt seem to be increasingly rare, it is easy for Catholics to forget that their ultimate hope is not simply in avoiding Hell and reaching Heaven, but in enjoying God with their souls reunited to their bodies. Spiritual masters such as Saint Augustine have even gone so far as to suggest that until that reunion takes place, the blessed in Heaven experience a restlessness or “patient longing.” [1] The Beatific Vision just won’t be the same without new bodies in a new Heaven and a new earth.

Our Glorified Bodies

Belief in bodily resurrection is no easy matter. The difficulty begins with answering a seemingly simple question, “what is the body?” Shakespeare plays upon this when Prince Hamlet describes how a king may go “through the guts of a beggar.” A king dies, his body is eaten by worms, a beggar goes fishing with one of the worms, and then he eats the fish that ate the worm. [2] Whose body is whose?

And yet this ambiguity also belies a great potential. If we can’t pin down the nature of the body, then who can naysay what it is capable of becoming? Saint Paul chides doubters who ask, “How do the dead rise again?” by comparing the body to a seed that must die before it truly lives. [3] It is a metaphor worth dwelling on. The human body, which is a magnificent creation, is a mere acorn in comparison to the oak tree it is destined to become. Acorns retain their substance when they grow into trees (they don’t become butterflies), yet the difference between an acorn and an oak could not be more profound; the former is virtually nothing in comparison to the latter. If our bodies, impressive as they are, are mere acorns now, imagine what they will be as trees on the Last Day.

To give an example of what may await us, consider the four properties of a glorified body as singled out in Catholic theology: agility, subtlety, impassibility, and clarity. Agility is the perfect responsiveness of the body to the soul, which will allow it to move at the speed of thought. Subtlety is the power of penetrating solid matter, while impassibility is the impossibility of suffering or dying. Lastly, clarity is the total absence of bodily deformity and a “resplendent radiance and beauty.” [4]

The astonishing excellence of a resurrected body was cleverly expressed by a young colonial printer named Benjamin Franklin, who at the age of 22 wrote his own epitaph:

The body of

B. Franklin, Printer

(Like the Cover of an Old Book

Its Contents torn Out

And Stript of its Lettering and Gilding)

Lies Here, Food for Worms.

But the Work shall not be Lost;

For it will (as he Believ’d) Appear once More

In a New and More Elegant Edition

Revised and Corrected

By the Author. [5]

God’s Path to Being All in All

The general resurrection of the body is also a most fitting consummation of Christ’s Paschal victory over death. The Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension of Our Lord open the gates of Heaven to our souls but do not immediately end our vulnerability to the effects of original sin. Those effects include a degradation of the body: every bodily deformity or disease, every violent injury or accident, every misuse or abuse, is a sad reminder that we still live east of Eden. And death remains what it always was, a literal humiliation for one and all, a return of the body to the ground (humus).

As excellent as the Beatific Vision is, the human soul is naturally designed to rule a body, and thus there remains some unfinished business even for a saint in Heaven. This body of ours, this temple of the Holy Spirit that is mocked and exploited by the world, the flesh, and the devil, is also in need of redemption. How splendid, then, that the Elect are not only promised eternal life in Heaven but a “reform” of “the body of our lowness” into a body like that of our risen Lord, [6] a body that Saint Paul refers to as “glorified” and even “spiritual.” [7] The body, which this side of the grave can be a handful to deal with, will become a luminous reflection of the soul’s divinely-given excellence once it is glorified. In Saint Augustine’s words, “what was once [the soul’s] burden will be its glory.” [8] And how fitting that this glory is part of God’s ongoing transformation of creation until He becomes “all in all.” [9]

The Resurrection, by Raphael, 1499-1502

Easter Sunday

The traditional form of the Roman rite excels in the re-presentation of these eschatological realities, and it does so gradually. Easter, for instance, celebrates not only Christ’s victory over the grave but the first full-fledged instance of a glorified body. The New Testament makes it clear that Jesus’ body on that first Easter morning was not a resuscitated corpse like that of Lazarus, for although it was indeed the selfsame body that was born of the Virgin Mary, it had undergone a significant transformation. That is why His closest friends did and did not recognize Him, [10] and it is why the risen Lord was able to pass through locked doors [11] as well as appear and disappear. [12] In other words, His body now possessed the properties of glorification. The implication for the rest of us is clear. As Saint Paul explains, our Savior will take “the body of our lowness” and make it like “the body of His glory.” [13] Consequently, during the Easter Octave we pray that we may be transformed into a “new creature” [14] and pass on to “heavenly glory.” [15]

Ascension

As a whole, however, the theme of our bodily glorification remains rather muted during the Easter season. This is true for the feast of the Ascension as well, since the Church understandably focuses more on Christ’s completion of His earthly ministry and His promise to send the Holy Spirit. Indeed, the Collect for the Ascension prays that we learn to “dwell in mind amidst heavenly things,” not in body. Still, there are hints about the future of God’s Elect. To paraphrase Saint Gregory Nazianzus, “What is not assumed is not saved.” [16] Our Lord assumed a human body in the Virgin’s womb, and the Feast of the Ascension celebrates the fact that that same body now sits at the right of the Father; therefore, our human bodies are included in the divine plan of salvation. For the first time in history, there is a human body in Heaven!

The Ascension, depicted in a 6th century Syriac Gospel book known from the name of the scribe as the Rabbula Gospels. 

In fact, by the end of the first Ascension Day, there may have been three bodies: Our Lord’s, Elijah’s—who was finally allowed into the Empyrean Heaven (see below)—and Enoch, the figure in the Old Testament who was mysteriously “taken” by God after his death, but who could not have been allowed to experience the Beatific Vision prior to the resurrection of Our Lord. [17] What we do know is that our Lord did not enter into the true Holy of Holies empty-handed: besides His own glorified body and body, he brought the souls He had rescued from limbo on Good Friday, when “He descended into Hell.” The Breviary hymn for the Divine Office speaks of our ascended Lord at the head of a “triumph,” a Roman parade in which a victorious general showcased all of the slaves he had captured in battle. [18] The hymn artfully inverts this image, showing Christ as the liberator of souls from limbo now parading them into Heaven after having completed his earthy campaign, as it were.

Corpus Christi

Shortly after Paschaltide, the Church celebrates the feast of Corpus Christi. Again the main focus is on the meaning of the feast at hand (in this case, the miracle of transubstantiation), but not without reference to our promised glorification. In the Divine Office for Corpus Christi, the Eucharist is called the “pledge of our future glory.” [19] Jesus Himself says as much when He links Holy Communion to the Four Last Things: “He that eateth My flesh, and drinketh My blood, hath everlasting life: and I will raise him up on the last day.” [20] The Eucharist is not only essential to our earthly pilgrimage as spiritual food and medicine, it is preparing us, by what it is and what it does, for our final transformation into a glorified creature of God. For the Eucharist is not just the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ, but His glorified body and blood. [21] When we receive Holy Communion, we are therefore receiving a token of what we, God willing, will one day become.

And it is not just our bodies that are being glorified by the Eucharist. Pope Benedict XVI writes eloquently of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass transforming the entire landscape of being:

The substantial conversion of bread and wine into his body and blood introduces within creation the principle of a radical change, a sort of “nuclear fission,” to use an image familiar to us today, which penetrates to the heart of all being, a change meant to set off a process which transforms reality, a process leading ultimately to the transfiguration of the entire world, to the point where God will be all in all (cf. 1 Cor 15, 28). [22]

Transfiguration, 14th century icon

The Transfiguration (August 6)

The Pope’s reference to the transfiguration of the world brings us to our next feast. On the Second Sunday of Lent, the Transfiguration of our Lord is commemorated in order to arouse the faithfuls’ desire for the glory of Easter; and on August 6, we celebrate the Feast of the Transfiguration to reflect more properly on the significance of this event. Part of that reflection involves meditating on the refulgence and majesty that our own glorified bodies will one day have. [23] The Breviary hymn for the feast speaks of the event in terms similar to the praise of the Eucharist we have just seen, as a “sign of perennial glory.” [24] Moreover, the little chapter used during the Divine Office is Philippians 3, 20-21, the passage about reforming our body of lowness. Just as the historical Transfiguration prefigured the Resurrection of Our Lord, so too does the liturgical celebration of the Transfiguration prefigure the general resurrection of the body.

How interesting that both of Jesus’ spiritual companions on Mount Tabor that day had bodies missing in action. Elijah was taken up into heaven in a fiery chariot, while according to Jude 1:9, Saint Michael the Archangel and the devil fought over Moses’ body after he died. Some have interpreted Saint Jude’s cryptic statement to refer to the struggle between Michael and Satan through their earthly agents in Egypt, Moses being an emissary of God and the angels while Pharaoh and his magicians being minions of the devil. Others interpret the verse in reference to a fight over Moses’ remains, with Satan wanting the body buried in such a way that would seduce the Hebrews into idolatrizing it. [25] But Saint Michael prevailed, and to this day the location of Moses’ grave is unknown.

A third interpretation is that both Moses and Elijah represent different states of the afterlife, Moses’ soul having come from limbo to witness the Transfiguration and Elijah’s body and soul (for they were never separated by death) coming from Heaven—albeit not the “Empyrean Heaven,” according to Saint Thomas Aquinas, for that is only accessible to man through Christ’s Paschal mystery. [26] The Transfiguration on Mount Tabor thus discloses a fascinating spectrum of human existence: the living “acorn” bodies of Saints Peter, James, and John; the disembodied soul of Moses; the departed yet unglorified body of Elijah, and the transfigured body of Jesus as the foreshadowing of total glorification on the Last Day. In particular, our Lord’s Transfiguration foreshadows the gift of clarity, when “His face did shine as the sun, and His garments became white as snow.” [27]

The Assumption (August 15)

If bodily resurrection is promised to every faithful Christian disciple, then it is eminently fitting that Christ’s first and most faithful disciple should receive this gift before anyone else save Christ Himself. The assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, body and soul, is therefore a beautiful thing not only in its own right (for who was more worthy than she of such an honor?) but with respect to all of the Elect, as it brings to the fore the doctrine of the resurrection of the body.

The Assumption of the Virgin, by Guido Reni, 1638-9

The Mass of the Assumption makes this connection explicit. The Collect prays that we “may deserve to be partakers of her glory,” while the Postcommunion beseeches God that through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin, “we may be brought to the glory of the resurrection.” This teaching emanates outward from the Mass to various private devotions. A novena to the Blessed Virgin on the occasion of the Assumption prays: “Teach me how small earth becomes when viewed from Heaven. Make me realize that death is the triumphant gate through which I shall pass to your Son, and that someday my body shall rejoin my soul in the unending bliss of Heaven.”

Even the timing of the proclamation of the dogma on the Assumption seems attuned to highlight God’s regard for our bodily existence, now and in the future. I once heard an outstanding sermon from an FSSP priest who speculated that Pope Pius XII’s infallible definition of the doctrine in 1950 was in part (intentionally or not) a corrective to World War II, the bloodiest war in human history. Specifically, the Third Reich, which the Pope so valiantly resisted, harbored an unprecedented hatred of not simply the Jewish religion but Jewish “embodiment,” the DNA of Abraham and his descendents, which is why they tried to exterminate that DNA entirely in their death camps. By defining the Assumption only five years after the close of WWII, it was as if the Pope were saying: Yet again, the Nazis and all such racists and eugenicists are wrong. Mary’s body, Mary’s Semitic body, is in Heaven, loved by God.

Time After Pentecost

These festal reminders of the resurrection from the dead elide nicely with the Time after Pentecost, that portion of the liturgical year which commemorates the pilgrimage of the Church from its birthday to the end of days—in other words, the period in which we are currently living. Because the Time after Pentecost symbolizes the time of the Church on earth, it is also a profoundly eschatological season, a season that looks ahead to the “Eschaton,” the Last Day, just as Christians facing east when they pray or assist at Mass do so as a sign of their anticipation of the Second Coming, when Christ shall come in glory from the East.

The eschatological note of the Time after Pentecost becomes noticeable around the Eighteenth Sunday, at which point the readings and prayers grow increasingly apocalyptic in tone. Verses from the prophets become much more common and references to the final manifestation of Christ more insistent. This sense of anticipation grows each week until it crescendos with the last Sunday after Pentecost (the last Sunday of the liturgical year), when the Gospel recalls Christ’s ominous double prophecy concerning the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. and the terrifying end of the world.

But the eschatological theme is present earlier as well, and it includes a meditation on the future of our bodies. On the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, for example, the Gospel reading is of our Lord’s raising from the dead the only son of the widow of Naim (Luke 7:11-16), while the Postcommunion prays: “In soul and in body, O Lord, may we be ruled by the operation of this heavenly gift; that its effect, and not our own impulses, may ever prevail over us.” And the bodily theme is central on the Twenty Third Sunday, when the Epistle lesson returns to Philippians 3:21 and the Gospel reading proclaims the resurrection of the daughter of Jairus, a prominent official of the Capharnaum synagogue (Matt. 9, 18-26).

The Temporal and Sanctoral cycles of the Church calendar thus reinforce each other in marvelously conveying to us the meaning of the article in the Creed we pray every Sunday: “I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.”

Conclusion

The Lord’s Bride escorts us through a patchwork of feasts and seasons that teach us bit by bit about the immutable beauty that, God willing, will not only be ours but will render us, in the twinkling of an eye and at the sound of the trumpet, perfect icons of His brilliant glory.

An earlier version of this article appeared as “Showing the Tree to the Acorn: Feasts About the Resurrection of the Body,” The Latin Mass magazine 20:3 (Summer 2011), pp. 38-42. Many thanks to the editors of TLM for allowing its publication here.

Notes

[1] City of God 13.20.

[2] Hamlet IV.iii.27-31.

[3] I Cor. 15:35ff.

[4] John A. Hardon, S.J. Pocket Catholic Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1985), 79.

[5] The epitaph was not used when Franklin died at the age of 84.

[6] Phil. 3:21.

[7] See Phil. 3:21; I Cor. 15:44.

[8] Literal Meaning of Genesis 12.35.68.

[9] I Cor. 15:28.

[10] See Lk. 24:13-32; Jn. 20:1-16, 21:1-7.

[11] See Jn. 20:19, 26.

[12] See Lk. 24:36, 24:31.

[13] Phil. 3:21.

[14] Postcommunion for Easter Wednesday.

[15] Secret for Easter Tuesday.

[16] Gregory of Nazianzus, Letter (101) to Cledonius the Priest Against Apollinarius.

[17] See Genesis 5:24.

[18] See the hymn Jeus nostra redemptio: “Breaking through the gates of Hell/ Redeeming Those of yours held captive/ A Victor in a noble triumph/ You now reside at the Father’s right hand.”

[19] Magnificat antiphon for II Vespers.

[20] John 6:55.

[21] In fact, this is one of the reasons that Holy Communion is not act of cannibalism, even though it involves consuming the flesh and drinking the blood of our Lord. No cannibal has ever come close to receiving a living and glorified body.

[22] Sacramentum Caritatis, 11; see also 71.

[23] For more on this topic, see Michael P. Foley, “Divine Do-Overs: The Secret of Recapitulation in the Traditional Calendar,” The Latin Mass 19:2 (Spring 2010), pp. 46-49.

[24] The hymn is Quicumque Christum quaeritis, and the verse is Signum perennis gloriae.

[25] A divergent theory posits that Satan argued that Moses was unworthy of burial at all since he had murdered an Egyptian as a young man.

[26] See Summa Theologiae III.45.3.ad 2.

[27] Mt. 17:2; see Mk. 9:1; Lk. 9:29. 

The Psalms of the Transfiguration

The feast of the Transfiguration was adopted into the Roman Rite from the Byzantine in the reign of Pope Callixtus III (1455-58), in thanksgiving for the Christian victory against the Turks at the siege of Belgrade on August 6th, 1456. Coming only three years after the fall of Constantinople, this victory signaled an important halt to the Turkish invasion of Europe; in fact, the common custom of ringing church bells at noon began as a reminder to pray for the defense of this bulwark of Christendom.

A Greek icon of the Transfiguration, painted in the second half of the 15th century, now in the Benaki Museum in Athens. Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

The nature of the Byzantine Divine Office is such that it would be impossible to construct an Office in the traditional Roman form by merely translating the Byzantine texts. Offices and Masses for new feasts could either be composed ex novo, or reused from older sources, or both. In the pre-Tridentine period, there was no uniformity in this regard, and a variety of liturgical texts were used on the Transfiguration. At Augsburg in Germany, the Office was simply that of the Holy Trinity, with different Matins lessons and a different collect, while the Mass propers were borrowed from the season of Christmas and Epiphany, again with proper prayers and lessons. There were also various proper Offices in circulation; the one found in the Roman Breviary of St Pius V was used by the Franciscans before Trent, but changed in several respects for the Tridentine edition.

One such change was the addition of the doxology for the feast of the Epiphany: “Glory to Thee, o Lord, who didst appear today, etc.” (A new doxology was created in Pope Urban VIII’s reform of the hymns, but the older one was retained by the Benedictines, Dominicans and others.) This is noteworthy because at the Mass of the Transfiguration, the preface is that of Christmas, not Epiphany. But the connection between the “new” feast and the manifestations of the Lord celebrated by older liturgical feasts is expressed most clearly in the third nocturn of Matins, where the psalms and their antiphons were clearly not chosen merely for accidental references to “glory” and “light”, but as a deliberate echo of these same older feasts.

The first psalm (seventh of Matins as a whole) is Psalm 88, which is used at Matins on only one other feast day, namely Christmas. The antiphon reflects the common tradition, not stated in the Gospels themselves or in the Second Epistle of St Peter, that Mt Tabor in Galilee was the “high mountain” on which the Transfiguration took place. “Tabor and Hermon shall rejoice in thy name: Thy arm is with might.” This reflects the fact that at Christmas we celebrate the manifestation of God’s humanity, whereas at the Transfiguration, we celebrate the manifestation of Christ’s divinity.

Mt Tabor (Image from Wikimedia by Eliot from the Negev.)

The second psalm, 96, is said with the same antiphon as on the feasts of Apostles, “Light is risen to the just, and joy to the right of heart,” but with two “alleluias” removed. This refers to the fact that in addition to Moses and Elijah, who represent the Law and the Prophets of the Old Testament, three preeminent Apostles, Peter, James and John, were chosen as witnesses of the Transfiguration. This psalm is also sung on the Epiphany, and it is certainly not a coincidence that each of the three nocturns of the Transfiguration has a psalm from the Epiphany: 28 in the first, 86 in the second, and 96 in the third.

The third psalm, 103, is also sung on only one other feast day, Pentecost. As a group, together, therefore, these psalms indicate that the mystery of God’s Incarnation, which is revealed privately at Christmas and Epiphany, to Israel in the shepherds, and to the gentiles in the Magi, is now revealed privately to the Apostles, who will preach it publicly to the world once the Holy Spirit comes at Pentecost.

The Church traditionally marks the public manifestation of Christ with the feast of His Baptism, which in the Roman Rite is celebrated as the Octave of the Epiphany, and in the Byzantine is the main object of Epiphany itself. The Apostles, however, were chosen after the Baptism. We must note therefore, that the same words of the Father at the Baptism, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased,” (Matt. 3, 17) are repeated at the Transfiguration, with the addition of a special commission to the Apostles “Hear ye him!”

Just as the Creeds of the Apostles and Nicaea focus on the events of the beginning and end of Christ’s earthly life, (“born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate”), so does the liturgical year. We do not keep feasts as such to mark events of Christ’s public ministry like the many miraculous healings or the multiplications of the loaves and fishes, although many of these stories are read in the Sunday Gospels. The Transfiguration is uniquely chosen among these events to be celebrated with a particular feast, because it marks the point at which both the Incarnation and its purpose, the Passion and Resurrection, are revealed to the Apostles, who in the fullness of time will reveal them to the rest of the world.

The Church of the Transfiguration on Mt Tabor (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Zairon.)

The Orations of the Feast of the Transfiguration

Transfiguration of Christ, Lebanon, 14th c.

Lost in Translation #81

Like all mysteries of the Faith, the Transfiguration of Jesus Christ (Matt, 17, 1-9) contains an inexhaustible treasury of meaning. Its immediate purpose was to fortify the Apostles (Peter, James, and John) who were to witness the demoralizing Agony in the Garden, which is why the Gospel is assigned to the Second Sunday of Lent as well. But the Transfiguration is much more than a morale booster, which is why it is meet that we celebrate it as a feast unto its own on August 6.

The Collect for today’s feast refers to other meanings in the mystery:

Deus, qui fídei sacramenta in Unigéniti tui gloriósa Transfiguratióne patrum testimonio roborasti, et adoptiónem filiórum perfectam voce delapsa in nube lúcida mirabíliter praesignasti: concéde propítius; ut ipsíus Regis gloriae nos coherédes efficias, et ejusdem gloriae tríbuas esse consortes. Per eundem Dóminum...

Which I translate as:

O God, who in the glorious Transfiguration of Thine only-begotten Son didst confirm the divine signs of the Faith by the testimony of the Fathers, and who by Thy voice flowing down from the shining cloud didst wonderfully foreshadow the perfect adoption of sons: kindly concede that Thou wouldst make us coheirs with Him who is the King of glory, and grant that we may become partakers of that same glory. Through the same our Lord.

There are at least two things about the Transfiguration that are causes for rejoicing.

First, “the Fathers” – that is, Moses and Elijah – confirmed the authenticity of Jesus’ Transfiguration and indeed of His entire mission. The word I have translated as “divine signs” is sacramenta, which is, it seems to me, its primary meaning in this context: when Jesus was transfigured, it was a divine indication of His hidden identity as the Son of God. But sacramenta can also be translated as “mysteries” or “sacraments,” and these meanings should be kept in mind as well. The “divine signs” of the Faith also pair nicely with the use of “foreshadowing” later on, for the word there is “praesignasti – pre-signified.”

As for the Fathers, Moses represents the Law and Elijah the Prophets, the two most important parts of the Old Testament. Representatives of the Old Covenant are appearing in order to confirm the validity of the New Covenant in the person of Jesus Christ.

Second, when a voice from the cloud declares, “This is My beloved Son: Hear ye Him,” it is not only a confirmation that Jesus Christ is consubstantial with the Father, but it is also an anticipation of our divine adoptions as sons of God. As we have discussed elsewhere, the doctrine of divine adoption is key to understanding our salvation; it is, so to speak, the Latin way of speaking about the Greek concept of theosis or the divinization of the believer. And if the adoption is “perfect,” it will grant the main petition of the prayer: it will make us coheirs with Jesus Christ, and we will participate in His glory – which, among other things, means that we too will have transfigured bodies after the Resurrection of the Dead, bodies with impassibility, agility, subtlety, and clarity. [1]

The Transfiguration, by Maestro Bartolome and Workshop, 1480-88

The Secret is:

Obláta, quǽsumus, Dómine, múnera, gloriósa Unigéniti tui Transfiguratióne sanctífica: nosque a peccatórum máculis, splendóribus ipsíus illustratiónis emunda. Per eundem 

Dóminum...

Which I translate as:

Sanctify, we beseech Thee, O Lord, the gifts we have offered in [memory of] the glorious Transfiguration of Thine only-begotten Son; and by the splendors of His shining, cleanse us from the stains of sin. Through the same our Lord.

Splendoribus ipsius illustrationis, which I have translated as “By the splendors of His shining,” is difficult to capture. Illustratio is an illumination or shining, which certainly characterizes the Transfiguration, and it was obviously splendid. But it is curious that splendor is in the plural. The prayer presupposes that there were many splendid things about Christ’s illumination, not just one.

There is also a neat contrast between the dark spots on our souls (“the stains of sin”) and the shining of our transfigured Lord. We are essentially asking for a spiritual version of sun bleaching in order to participate worthily in the Sacrifice of the Lamb moments away.

The Postcommunion is:

Praesta, quǽsumus, omnípotens Deus: ut sacrosancta Filii tui Transfiguratiónis mysteria, quae solemni celebrámus officio, purificátae mentis intelligentia consequámur. Per eundem Dóminum...

Which I translate as:

Grant, we beseech Thee, almighty God, that with the intelligence of a purified mind, we may reach the sacrosanct mysteries of the Transfiguration of Thy Son, which we celebrate with with solemn liturgy. Through the same our Lord.

We hope that the petition of the Secret was answered and that our sinful stains were bleached away; and we certainly hope that our participation in Holy Communion has had a similar effect. And so, with this “purified mind,” we now ask that it be put to good use, namely, to understand the many “sacrosanct mysteries” of the Transfiguration. We thus return full circle to the petition of the Collect and its reference to the “divine signs” or mysteries of the Faith. And in seeking to understand the mysteries of the Transfiguration, we are essentially asking for what we are doing now: studying the Orations of our liturgical patrimony in order to be enlightened. [2]

Notes

[1] A final note on the language of the Collect. Voce delapsa in nube lucida, which I have translated as “by Thy voice flowing down from the shining cloud,” gives the impression of rain gently falling down to the earth. The verb, for example, can be used for flowing downstream.

[2] Speaking of our liturgical patrimony, I have translated officium as “liturgy,” whereas most translate it as “worship” (which is also valid). Officium is the Latin equivalent of the Greek leitourgia, a public service done on behalf of the community by a duly appointed official. (The Divine Office, for instance, is the Church’s equivalent of the Greek polis’ solemn festivities).

The Christian Mission to Evangelize American Culture

Beauty is the mark of a loving God. A Christian culture, therefore, is a beautiful culture that melts the hearts of non-believers, and tells believers that that they are at home in the world.

As a convert to Christianity, I am often asked why I converted. The short answer is that I thought I would be happier if I did so. 

I have not been disappointed. Even now, nearly 30 years after I was confirmed at Farm Street Catholic Church in Mayfair, London, my life experience has strengthened the conviction that not only was this a good decision for me, but also that the Church offers the way to the greatest happiness for all people. 

When I give this answer - that I would be happier - it usually does not satisfy the questioner. Why, they push me, did I think I would be happier? What led me to believe that the Faith might truly offer me that “pearl of great price”?

That is a reasonable question. 

It is a big step for anyone to submit willingly to an authority that reaches so deeply into our hearts and minds as the Catholic Church. And while I can be convinced by the intellectual arguments that make claims to truth, I couldn’t be sure until I was confirmed as a member of the Catholic Church and lived the life of a practicing Christian. The proof of the pudding is in the eating!

This dive into the unknown - into mystery - was one of faith. This was not so much a leap into the dark, as a leap into the Light, albeit a blinding, dazzling Light. 

It is true for each of us who converts, I believe. Until we are participating in sacramental life of the Church, the Light is too bright for any of us to grasp directly. But once we are in the Church, then our eyes can start to focus and, by degrees in this life, perceive it as we encounter Christ directly in the Eucharist and begin to know Him.

However, even before I became Catholic, even though I couldn't see the Light directly so well, I could perceive that there was a Light, for I could see its glow indirectly, as reflected, glistening and shimmering, in the beauty of the cosmos and in Christian culture (and, for me especially, its art). Christian culture and the way that Christians behaved and interacted with others spoke to me in some way of Christ and of the joy it brings. In so many different ways and on many different occasions, the beauty of Christian art, music, architecture, and the memorable good grace with which some Christians engaged with me combined to form a pattern that gave an overall picture of what it was to be a Christian. It was this picture, which is Christian culture, that beckoned to me in such a way that I wanted more than to be simply an observer of it. I wanted to be part of it. Christian culture convinced me to make that leap of faith.

Consider this painting of the Transfiguration. It is a 16th century Russian icon. 

In this painting we see Christ on the mountain flanked by the two prophets and with the three disciples stunned by the sight of the transfigured Christ. This is a glimpse of his heavenly glory, hitherto unseen by the disciples. The nimbus that surrounds Christ in this picture is called a mandorla. It is called this because it is often used to be depicted in an elliptical, almond shape and mandorla is the Italian word for almond. The mandorla surrounding Christ usually shows concentric bands of shading which get darker toward the center, rather than lighter. It is painted in this way so as to communicate to us, pictorially, the fact that we must pass through stages of what seem like increasing mystery in order to encounter the person of Jesus Christ. For Catholics this encounter takes place most directly and powerfully in the Mass. It is an encounter that transforms us supernaturally by degrees in this life so that we can begin to grasp the glory of Christ ever more directly. 

This encounter is only made possible for each of us by baptism and confirmation by which we have "put on Christ" as St Paul calls it in Galatians. God’s actions are not in any way restricted by the sacraments, of course, but as a general rule, until we are baptised and confirmed we are likely going to be dazzled into a blindness, so to speak, that renders the transfigured Christ less visible to us. This would be symbolized by a mandorla that is a jet-black envelope, with a heart of darkness. 

Prior to being fully part of the body of Christ as members of the Church, we are nevertheless able to perceive those outer rings of the mandorla. These symbolize the Light of Christ reflected in the cosmos, and manifested as the loving interactions of Christians, and as Christian culture and art.  These are the things that indicate to us that there is more to know and love and we yearn for what is as yet only partially known. When we see such beauty we are grasping that reflected Light, even if we don’t recognize it as such, and its tendency is to draw us into the Church. 

Beauty, therefore, not only tells us something about what we do see, is also a perceptible sign of something we cannot see: Almighty God. It calls us to itself and then beyond to Him who inspired it, who is Beauty itself. Creation is beautiful because it bears the thumbprint of the Creator. A culture,  or any aspect of it, whether mundane or sacred, high art, low art or even everyday Christian activity, is beautiful to the degree that it is inspired by God.

The Christian life well lived is one in which potentially every aspect of our lives contributes to the brightness of the outer rings of the mandorla through what we do and what we create. As Catholics we do so as part of the mystical body of Christ, the Church. Each of us is a pixel of supernatural light that collectively created the body of Christ! We participate in the Light by fulfilling in our own way our unique calling in life, which touches on every aspect of our lives. The artist contributes to that light by every beautiful painting he creates. And Christian culture is a pattern of all Christian activity that manifests Christ.

The habitual worship of God every Sunday and if we can, daily worship in the Liturgy of the Hours, is the most powerful formation for as creative Christians. We enter mystically into the pattern of Christ and the cosmos. One might say that the Mass is a jewel in its setting, which is the Liturgy of the Hours, and the Liturgy of the Hours is a jewel in its setting, which is the cosmos. Christian culture permeates the life of the Church and of the world and reflects the beauty of the cosmos. It is a sign of life in Christ and of the world to come. 

A beautiful Christian culture draws people to Christ. It opens up the minds of those who are not believers to be receptive to the Word, and it reinforces the truth of the Word to those who are already believers. The culture is most explicitly Christian in the church and is connected to the liturgy. Historically it was always the case that the wider culture was Christian too, even if not explicitly, for the forms of civic buildings, colleges, hospitals and homes were all derived from and in some way pointed to their consummation in the church. It is the cultural forms that are connected directly to our worship that become the driving force for the transformation of contemporary culture into a beautiful Christian culture.

We live in an age in which American culture is no longer Christian. It used to be. But now, the driving force of contemporary culture is an atheist-materialist worldview that dictates both the style and content of American art, music and architecture, even displacing Christian forms inside the church. This dynamic is running in the wrong direction. Instead of flowing out from the still center at the heart of Christian worship into the world, and so Christianising the culture, we see the forms of an atheist, secular culture that are flowing into our churches from outside, exerting influence to secularizing the beliefs of those who worship.

We must, therefore reverse that flow and evangelize the culture by creating first a culture of faith in our churches that reflects and harmonizes with authentic Christian worship. We need creativity today that re-presents traditional Christian forms in a way that retains what is essentially Christian but in a way that is appropriate today.

This strong and vibrant Christian religious culture will then become the driving force of a wider beautiful culture that permeates all of American culture. This will not always be obviously explicitly Christian - very often this is not appropriate - but it will be beautiful and it is this saving beauty itself is a sign of Christ. When people see it, they will embrace it precisely because it will be beautiful.

Our mission, therefore, is two fold. First, we must help form creative artists in all disciplines who have the skills and knowledge to contribute to a Christian culture at every level. Second, we must stimulate the demand for good art by forming people to appreciate what is authentically Christian and good, true and beautiful.

This is a mission of Christian education and inculturation and all that I write has this mission in mind, so that all may know the joy that is offered to them.

Beauty will save the world!