“ARISE AND BE NOT AFRAID”
Saint Matthew 17: 1-9
The Feast of The Transfiguration of our Lord: 2 February Anno Domini 2020
Father Jay Watson SSP
One is the loneliest number that you’ll ever see, or rather ever be. At creation, the Blessed Trinity—not monad but TRINITY—knew that it was not good for the man to be alone. And on the sixth day, after making Adam, He also created Mother Eve from Adam’s own rib. So, as the Godhead is in fact a Holy and Mysterious family within itself: 3 in 1, so too God’s creatures are meant to be community not a solitary cell. King David writes: “God setteth the solitary in families; He bringeth out those which are bound with chains” [Ps. 68.6]. And while the greatest of the hermit Desert Fathers, the Monk St. Antony of Egypt lived a productive and salutary life, Antony was even more blessed when he interacted with and had visits from his brothers; even from the great Athanasius.
“After six days Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John his brother, and bringeth them up into an high mountain apart.” The God/Man Christ is accompanied by three. Yes, they were His first called Disciples and His closest students and friends, but still, do not let the imagery be missed: 1 and 3, 3 and 1…bespeaking the Mystery. Hearkening back to the earlier time when God was with Moses on the mountain…Moses along with Aaron and Hur.
But now He Who is rightly named Jesus, “Saving One” is getting ready to set His Face towards Jerusalem…actually, towards Calvary. It will be His lest entrance into the City of God’s earthly Temple.
On The 40th Day, (which the Church Catholic celebrates every year on February 2nd) the same Jesus first entered Jerusalem. He was brought to the same Temple by the Virgin and the Guardian. He was joined, picked up in the hands, by Saint Simeon. And there too, The God/Man in the company of three Holy Christians. Through the veil of God’s humility, not perceivable by sight but only faith, Simeon confessed the babe to be God: “The Salvation…prepared before the face of all people.”
That Salvation came to it summit on a Friday called Good. The sharp point that pierced His hands, feet, and side, would also pierce the blessed heart of His Mother. He was born to obey, to suffer, to die, and to rise again.
The Transfiguration, probably on Mount Tabor, is one of the truly miraculous and glorious events in Christ’s earthly visible ministry and the Church’s Life—a High Feast Day indeed. Both Luther and Aquinas concur with this truth!
Yes, it shows Mary’s Son to be The Son of The Heavenly Father. It animates and sources the Fathers of Nicaea and Constantinople who wrote what you all just confessed: “God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, Begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, By Whom all things were made.” Saint Irenaeus wrote: “the glory of God is a live human being and a truly human life is the vision of God.”
So, again yes, this miracle shows The Nazarene to be The Christ of God, not just in His wisdom, teaching, feedings, and proclamations, but also in His essence, His being. He is The Glory, the fullness of the Godhead bodily. This God/Man shows Himself to be an awesome and omnipotent God.
But the event is not about power and might. The event though in an ancillary, secondary, way, helped and fortified the three future Apostles for what they would experience and see in Gethsemane and Golgotha.
The vicarious satisfaction of Jesus suffering and dying is center stage to be sure. Here The Fulfillment of all the Law and The Prophets stands with The Law and The Prophets: Moses and Elias. God with The Old Testament Saints of Law and Gospel, Gospel and Law, and they are talking about the final Exodus…Christ’s journey down from the heights of power and glory, Christ’s journey from the mount to the 40 day desert of Lent, Christ’s final journey up the smallish mount of Calvary to be Transfigured in blood, gore, and grime, between two different witnesses to/of His true exalted glory: The Lamb of God Who taketh away the sin of the world. This is what Saint Peter writes about in his Epistle heard earlier. This is what Saint John writes about in the prologue of His own Evangel: “…The Word was God…The Life was The Light of men…The true Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world…gave He power (to them that receive Him) to become the sons of God” [Jn 1. 1ff].
This is by Messias, God in the Flesh, keeping the Torah and dying for you not keeping it. This is by His bloody agony and sweat on the Tree…soaking it so thoroughly with His precious blood that the dry sinful wood of your trespasses is transformed, Transfigured, into the Tree of Life. A mystical (sacramental) tree bearing Life itself in His corpus: The Crucifix. The nectar, meat, and juice of that Holy Fruit has been washed into you at + Baptism and will be consumed by you at Eucharist. You are transfigured by Having The Transfigured One, given for you, and eaten and drunk by you. Or, again, as Peter writes: “that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature” [2 Pet. 1.4].
Your sin and your sins do keep you, at times, from truly recognizing, or acting appropriately (especially when cavalier and overly relaxed here in this nave) in His abiding Presence, and fully confessing His Divinity in word AND DEED. But so too, your sins often look only for visual stimuli and physical manifestations of His God presence. You rely on your eyes and feelings when you should trust in His promises; His Word; His revelations in Holy Scriptures by the Prophets, Evangelists, and the Church Fathers. “For man does not see God by his own powers; but when He pleases He is seen by men, by whom He wills, and when He wills, and as He wills…He, although beyond comprehension, and boundless and invisible, rendered Himself visible, and comprehensible, and within the capacity of those who believe, that He might vivify those who receive and behold Him through faith” [St. Irenaeus, AH IV.XX.5].
The terror of your sins; the terror of a perfect Holy and Blindingly Shining Pure White (as the Sun, white as The Light) God, Who is Judge, knocks you down to the ground with James, John, and Peter. The dark cloud of your trespasses keeps your body prone and your faces in dirt, but that cloud is bright…even it cannot veil the Glory of God in The Face of Jesus. The Son is “beloved.” “Hear ye Him.” They were on the ground as if dead…in the ground…in the grave. You also will be in the grave…BUT…BUT
This is about the Resurrection. Not just Christ’s Resurrection on the 3rd Day, but your resurrection; the bodily resurrection of all flesh. The flesh will be yours; you will be you, but you will be glorified: transfigured. “Behold, I shew you a mystery…we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed” [1 Cor. 15.52]. How so? By the Body and Blood of God. “Jesus came and touched them, and said, Arise, and be not afraid.” How so? “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth” [Jn. 1.14]. Come forward and receive God. “And when [you] lift up [your] eyes, [you see] no man, save Jesus only.”
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of The Holy Ghost
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