The Transfiguration in the Byzantine Liturgy

Extract

The Feast of the Transfiguration on 6th August is one of the major feasts of the Byzantine rite. It is the feast of light and has a significant position in the cycle of the mysteries of Christ. Ontologically speaking it lies between the mystery of the Incarnation, celebrated at Christmas, and the redemptive suffering followed by the Resurrection of Easter Sunday. At Christmas the Eternal Light shone forth in human shape ‘from a virginal cloud'. At Easter he breaks the chains of death and reveals his risen glory. On Thabor he empowers his disciples to recognize him through the veils of flesh.

The Transfiguration comprises all the mysteries of the divine economy, and is an inexhaustible treasure of spiritual wisdom. Already in the first vespers of the ante-feast on 5th August we find the following prayer:

Come let us mount with Jesus in his ascent to the holy mountain, and there hear the voice of the Eternal Father (lit.: who has no beginning), bearing witness by a light cloud and the Holy Ghost to the nature of his Eternal Sonship: illumined in the spirit we shall, in the light, behold the Light.