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Saint Sophrony of Essex speaks to us
And now, if we have somewhat directed our minds to consider the common things of our faith, those that must form the unshakeable foundation of our spirit's life, I will allow myself to move on to the subject I have chosen.
The Transfiguration of the Lord is a magnificent accomplishment that holds an enduring significance not only for each of us, but also for the entire history of our world. In their writings, the Fathers observed it with great attention, both in the preceding events, as the Lord's preparation of the disciples; and in what was accomplished precisely at the time of God's manifestation on Tabor; and in what followed it, in the deeds of the Lord Jesus, as well as in the thoughts of the apostles who witnessed the Transfiguration. The knowledge of these things helps us ourselves to walk with understanding on the same path, in the footsteps of Christ. At the present moment, however, let us turn the gaze of our spirit with attention to what happened especially at this moment, according to the Gospel narrative.
“Behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them; and behold, a voice from the cloud said, ‘This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Hear Him!’”(Matthew 17:5).
What did this enlightened cloud that overshadowed Holy Tabor that night represent? Behold, not many years ago, on the day of the Transfiguration, I asked about this to an ascetic who, as I have no doubt, had often been vouchsafed to see this Light. To my impertinent request to tell me something about the mystery of the Light of Tabor, about how it can be seen and how it is possible to acquire this gift, he, condescending to my ignorance, explained these things to me with great patience, and today I will share with you what I heard from his truthful mouth.
That man confessed to me that, at first, when he was still young, this Light appeared to him indistinctly and for brief moments, sometimes as some uncontainable flame of fire that encompassed his heart with love, other times as a kind of radiance that penetrated his mind with its light. It appeared to him during prayer, especially in church. One time, however, after many months of fervent prayer with repentance for his own abominableness, the Light gently descended upon him and remained with him for three days. In those days, he clearly felt himself to be outside of death. The joy of the resurrection from the dead then filled his soul. Internally, he called this Light “the morning of the resurrection,” for it was peaceful like a spring morning. At that time, he led an ordinary life in the world, with daily work. After several years passed since this event, when he was already a monk and a server at the Altar, his prayer often transformed into the vision of the Light, so much so that he no longer felt his body nor the material world around him.
This Light appears as a pure benevolence from above. At first it comes unexpectedly, that is, when neither the soul nor the mind have any sensation of its coming, nor even of its existence. Unknown until then, its arrival brings upon the soul a sweet perplexity, and the soul, as if out of its mind, does not yet know who or what it is that has appeared to it; at that moment it feels like a convict taken from a dark prison into sunny and fragrant expanses.”
Man himself becomes like the Light
That man also said:
“Although the divine Light, by its nature, always remains unchangeable, its working—that is, what it gives birth to in man—is very diverse: sometimes it is experienced as the gentle, serene love of Christ, other times as a divine power surrounding you; sometimes as an indistinct movement of eternal life within man; other times as a light of understanding or as a vision of the mind, beyond thought, of God. But the Lord’s goodness is boundless, and it happens that His love overflows even more abundantly. Then the Divine Light fills the entire man, so that man himself becomes like the Light; and what he sees then cannot be called anything else but Light, although this Light, by its nature, is altogether different from the light of the visible sun.”
In response to my initial question about the manifestation of Divinity on Tabor, that man continued his discourse, clearly striving to speak in a way I could understand, even if only to a small degree:
“By no means should we forget our infirmity, and if we allow ourselves to touch upon this lofty matter, then only as a timid attempt to approach its meaning, if only a little, without any audacious pretension of being able to unravel it completely. And thus, if we base ourselves on what has been said about the working of the Divine Light, then the evangelists' account, which may seem childishly simple, could be somewhat completed as follows:”
If the Apostles began to understand the superhuman perfection of their Master, and through Peter's lips confessed Him to be “Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16), the Lord desired even more to strengthen them in this knowledge through the testimony of the Father; a matter all the more necessary, as He was now preparing for His departure, which “He was about to accomplish in Jerusalem” (Luke 9:31), that is, for the accomplishment of the sacrifice on Golgotha. Behind Peter’s words, “You are the Christ” (Mark 8:29), a knowledge, still far from perfect, of who that Christ was, lay hidden at that moment; but, despite the incompleteness of this confession, a growing love and devotion of the Apostles was now emerging in it, which enabled them to grasp a greater light of divine revelation, and therefore the Lord said: “There are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in His Kingdom” (Matthew 16:28).
After these words, Christ made the silent journey with His disciples from the borders of Caesarea Philippi to Holy Tabor, and there, taking the chosen Peter, James, and John, He led them up to the high mountain of beholding His divine glory, “which He had with the Father before the world existed” (John 17:5).
“Rabbi, it is good for us to be here”
The Lord Himself, at all times, bore the Light unchangeably within Himself, being, by His Divinity, the unoriginated Light, yet He remained, in this earthly realm, unseen by those who had not yet received the Light. On Tabor, the Lord prayed. Nothing prevents us from assuming that, in its content, His prayer was similar to that in Gethsemane (cf. John 17), for “His hour had come” (John 13:1). Embracing everything in His prayer, “from the foundation of the world until the end of this age”, the Lord also prayed for the Apostles, that “the Father’s name might be revealed to them”, and that “the love with which the Father loved the Son might be in them” (cf. John 17:26).
The “three chosen witnesses” and co-participants in this supernatural prayer of Christ were overcome by weakness within it. Striving in the struggle against the weakness of their bodies, for a short while “they became heavy with sleep” (Luke 9:32), but by virtue of their uninterrupted inner prayer, they quickly returned to a state of sobriety, and then, these spiritually awake ones, conquerors of bodily infirmity, saw Christ in Light, as well as Elijah and Moses speaking with Him. However, if they could see these things, it was only because they too, at that hour, had been filled with Light.
The unusualness and grandeur of the manifestation immersed the Apostles in unspeakable wonder and a blessed bewilderment. We see this from the words of the Gospel about Peter: that “he did not know what he was saying” (Mark 9:6), and from Peter’s own words: “Master, it is good for us to be here” (Mark 9:5).
At that moment, the Apostles' vision of the spiritual world and divine light was still mingled with their perception of the world of senses around them. But then, as the light increased, it raised them above “the seen and temporal to the unseen and eternal” (cf. 2 Corinthians 4:18). The Gospel accounts are incredibly simple: “Behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them…”. Similar to a person climbing a mountain who, upon entering a dense cloud, has their view of the rest of the world cut off, so too this “bright cloud”, being nothing other than the light and breath of the Holy Spirit, Who, with His divine and irresistible coming, raptured the Apostles into the world of uncreated, imperishable, unsetting, unchangeable, boundless Light, that which is above the heavens, cutting off from them the perception of “the passing forms of this world” to such an extent that they no longer saw Christ Himself according to the flesh (cf. 2 Corinthians 5:16). Thus, led by the Holy Spirit into the vision of the unspeakable Divinity of Jesus Christ, at the same hour they heard the immaterial and inaccessible voice of the Father: “This is My beloved Son” (Matthew 17:5).
This was the highest moment of what happened on Tabor.”
(to be continued)
From “Birth into the Unshakeable Kingdom”
Reîntregirea Publishing House, 2003