In the third year of His ministry, the Lord Jesus spoke more frequently
to His disciples of His coming Passion, but linked it always with His glory
after His suffering on the Cross. That His coming suffering should not utterly
shatter His disciples, so that they fall away from Him, He, the all-Wise, decided
to show them, before His Passion, something of His divine glory.
He therefore, taking with Him Peter, James and John, went by night onto Mount
Tabor and was there transfigured before them. "And His face shone as the
sun, and His raiment became white as snow", and there appeared beside Him
Moses and Elias, the great prophets of the Old Testament. And the disciples
saw and were amazed, and Peter said: "Lord, it is good for us to be here;
if Thou wilt, let us make here three tabernacles: one for Thee, one for Moses
and one for Elias." While Peter was still speaking, Moses and Elias disappeared
and a bright cloud came and overshadowed the Lord and the disciples, and a voice
came out of the cloud:
"This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased;
hear ye Him."
Hearing this voice, the disciples fell prostrate on the ground as though dead,
and remained thus lying in fear until the Lord came to them and said: "Arise,
and be not afraid" (Matt. 17). Why did the Lord take only three disciples
with Him onto Tabor, and not all of them? Because Judas was not worthy to behold
the divine glory of the Master whom he was to betray, and the Lord did not want
to leave him alone at the foot of the mountain, that the betrayer should not
thus work his betrayal.
Why was He transfigured on the mountain and not in the valley? That He might
teach us two virtues: love of toil and pondering on God.
To climb to the heights involves toil, and the heights represent the heights
of our thoughts: pondering on God. Why was He transfigured at night? Because
the night is more fitted to prayer and meditation than the day, and because
the night covers all earthly beauty with darkness and reveals the beauty of
the starry heavens. Why did Moses and Elias appear? To shatter the Jewish fallacy
that Christ was one of the prophets - Elias, Jeremiah or one of the others.
This was why He revealed Himself as King over the prophets, and why Moses and
Elias appeared as His servants. Up to this moment, the Lord had many times shown
His divine power to His disciples, but on Tabor He showed them His divine nature.
This vision of His divinity and the hearing of the heavenly witness to Him as
the Son of God must have been of support to the disciples in the days of the
Lord's suffering,
for the strengthening of a steadfast faith in Him and
His final victory.
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