The Transfiguration

"The Transfiguration of Our Lord" by Giovanni Antonio Pordenone (1529)

I missed posting something here for the feast of the Transfiguration this year as it was a sort of fragmented week. Unlike the 1662 Prayer Book, the 1928 observes it as a Red Letter Day - that's Anglican speak for 'a major holy-day.' The feast has a rather winding path in Church history. Because it is a theophany - a "showing-forth of God" - it has always been widely observed in the East, but in the West, it received patchy attention not being added to the Universal Calendar of the Roman Church until the reign of Callixtus III (Borgia) who reigned 1455-58. He assigned it to August 6th, as that was the day news of the lifting of the siege of Belgrade reached Rome in 1456. Because the feast was instituted as a universal observance so close to the Reformation it did not settle down on a single day among the Lutheran and Anglican Churches. Northern Germany and Denmark-Norway observed it on the Sunday before Septuagesima, in the early spring; the Swedes and Finns on Trinity 7, and the Anglicans - as a minor commemoration ["Black Letter Day"] on August 6th. It was not promoted to the first rank until 1892.

The 1928 BCP uses the Lukan account of the Transfiguration in which the major significance of the Transfiguration lies in the manifestation of the glory of Christ; His converse with Moses and Elijah as the archetypes of the Law and the Prophets; and the heavenly voice declaring. "This is my beloved Son. Hear Him." These three events point to first of all His divinity - that He is both God and Man; secondly to His fulfilment of the Law and the Prophets; and thirdly to the fact that He is the repository of the Divine Word whose teaching is eternal relevant to mankind as the way of reconciliation with God, and of salvation.

The Markan account adds one other detail, which has a deep spiritual significant, which is, when Moses and Elijah have withdrawn, and Jesus is left with Peter, James and John, Mark pointedly says, "they saw no man anymore, but Jesus only with themselves." These words should serve as a reminder that 'Jesus only' is our salvation. There has always been a tendency among humanity to look for shortcuts, but no matter how hard we try to be righteous, the only true righteousness and salvation we can have is in 'Jesus only.' When Moses and Elijah appear with Jesus it enforces the idea that He is the Christ, the fulfilment of all things, our only hope in life and death.

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