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Fr Robin Gibbons on the Transfiguration


This is one of the best loved feasts of the Eastern Church calendar, for at the heart of the gospel account lies a deep and very rich spiritual theology of what we one day will be! If you know anything about eastern theology you will understand that for them the encounter with God is often about the indwelling light of the Holy Spirit the same brilliant light that Jesus shone with on the mountain, a light beyond all light. This isn’t abstract stuff either, all of us can comprehend the words ‘enlightened’, ‘lit up’ in reference to a person. That indicates a deep inner change, something just shines out of them.

What does the feast of the Transfiguration mean for you? Perhaps I can help by making a bold suggestion, that first of all it could mean learning a little more about that huge and rich spiritual tradition of churches that have suffered much down the ages. For them the mystical light of the transfigured Christ is a symbol of what will become when we are transfigured with Christ in glory, a glory beyond compare, but it is the glory of a love deeply refined by persecution, suffering and captivity. It is love where pretense and arrogance are stripped away and all we have left is the gaze of God, the light of love itself.

I once heard a recording of Fr Bede Griffiths preaching a sermon on the Transfiguration at the monastery of my profession , his words have never left me. What he said was simple and eloquent, based eastern christen teaching. The mountain where the three disciples went with Jesus to encounter him in brilliance was one of those moments we all have , but often disregard, when the direct loving touch of God lightens us up, explodes like a sun into our life, but only for a moment! Then like Peter, James and John we return to the valley of life, but often lift our heads to look beyond the cloud of unknowing.

You see, having felt the touch of Gods’ love we long, yearn for it again! Is this fanciful imagining? No, the best spiritual teachers remind us that God does reach out to us, only like Peter we haven’t the experience or wisdom to understand, but we are left with the touch of transfiguration, we somehow know we are loved!

 Fr Robin Gibbons is an Eastern Rite Chaplain for the Melkite Greek Catholics in Britain.

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