Feast of Transfiguration

(Icon by Solomon Raj, Indian Christian).

Today is the Feast of the Transfiguration. In the Church Calendar it is the Final Week of Epiphany--Wise Men representing Gentiles coming to recognize the Christ in the child Jesus.

Epiphany is marked by the theme of Light and that theme of illumination reaches its culmination in the Feast celebrated today. The readings in the Revised Common Lectionary--the cycle of Bible readings for Sunday church used by Roman Catholics & most mainline Protestants--can be found here.

Today's version is from Gospel of Luke 9:28-36. On the mountaintop Jesus' face shines and Moses and Elijah appear on his right and left. Jesus Christ is the Epiphany, he himself is the conduit for God's Light to shine in this world.

Lent begins this Wednesday with Ashes. The voice of God from the Cloud--as in the Exodus--says that this is my beloved. He is given one last gracious moment with his Father before he will head to the Cross. He is given in the grace of the Transfiguration the strength needed to finish the task appointed him.

The Light is headed to the Darkest points of our universe--the contracted selves of our sin.

The Transfiguration mystically represents the Subtle phase of Illumination--the dream-like intermediate state of heavenly visions, bliss, and God under a form (saguna Brahma). [Read the reading for St.Paul's Letter to the Corinthians where he discusses our own mini-transfiguration--this is the basis for the Eastern Orthodox mystical tradition of Hesychasm, where the Orthodox saints faces literally glow].

This subtle phase heads to the darkness (Causal) of the Cross and the empty mystery of the Universe (nirguna Brahma). The temptation is to live in the voice of Beloved-ness, to remain in the Cloud separated from the world, to like Peter want to build altars to the experience and entrap it, create a religion out of it, and domesticate the free wheeling Father of the Universes.