The Transfiguration – Father Gavril Galev
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Today is the Transfiguration, the Transfiguration of the Lord, not only of the Lord, but also the Transfiguration of the Apostles. Man’ Transfiguration. Why? Because God is always the same with His divinity. He took a human body for us and our salvation and became similar to us.
With the body, He somehow hid His divinity (Deity) from us, but He never changed, He was (is) always God in all His glory. And what can we say about man? Man has changed. He was created in the image of God and intended to acquire the likeness of God. To grow in community with God and see the glory of God. However, he did not achieve that. He obeyed satan’s advice, and instead of looking to heaven, he looked to the earth and fell away from the communion with God, and his nature was darkened. Then the heavens were darkened for him, as well as the glory of God was “darkened” for him.
On Mount Tabor, God restored hope in man again. He was transfigured, or more precisely, He transfigured human nature and enabled man to see the glory of God again. At this moment God honoured these three chosen Apostles: Peter, James, and John, their hearts to be transfigured, their minds to be transfigured, and their corporal eyes to be transfigured, so that they could see the glory of God,…as much as they could. This glory, light, is seen above all in our heart, with the spiritual eye, the mind.
This is how the whole person is transfigured. In the same way, as in our recent past, when the face of Saint Seraphim of Sarov was transfigured. Even to this day, those who have purified their hearts of the passions and activated the baptismal grace that each of us receives at the Holy Mystery of Baptism, are transfigured and are worthy to contemplate and see the glory of God.
This is achieved only with the continuous ascetic-hesychastic endeavour. With constant vigilance over our hearts and attention, not only to our deeds and words, but even more to the thoughts, because from the thoughts sin is born.
Let us strive to do the will of God and remove everything that separates us from God, that is, to live in repentance. Pride, vanity, high opinion of ourselves are our biggest obstacles.
When the man thinks (cares) for himself only, thinks highly of himself, when he is conceited in his mind, then there is no enlightenment, there is no room for the light of God, for the grace of God, and that is a darkened mind. That is why our whole life should be an endeavour (struggle), our whole life should be an ascent, liberation from our old man (our old self), and transfiguration. May our love never cool down and let us not stop the prayer.
The transfiguration of Christ is in fact an impetus. To push us towards the things that God has promised and wants to give us. However, it is up to us. The more we ask and live according to that, the more we receive.
The Transfiguration on Mount Tabor is not just an ordinary event, a theatre or drama that God wanted to perform in front of us and to delight us. Transfiguration is indispensable essence. This event took place before the Resurrection of Christ and these two events are connected between themselves. The Transfiguration and the Resurrection are given to us, but only through the crucifixion. That is why the Holy Fathers of the Church say that there is no Tabor without Golgotha. We know the goal and we know the way, the choice is ours whether will we walk on that path and reach the goal or not.
The Holy Prophets Moses and Elijah appeared at this event and spoke with the Lord Jesus Christ. They appeared as representatives of the Old Testament, of the living and of the dead – their appearance means that everything which was written, prophesied in the Old Testament, is true and fulfilled in Christ. Peter, James, and John are representatives of the New Testament and they represent the three greatest Christian virtues: faith, hope, and love. Christ is in the middle and Christ should be the centre of our lives.
Fr. Gavril Galev
Abbot of the monastery “St. Clement of Ohrid”,
Kinglake, Melbourne, Australia
19.08.2021
