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| A Homily delivered on the Saturday before the Second Sunday in Lent--on the Transfiguration, S. Matt. xvii. 1-13.
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Sermon LI.
A Homily delivered on the Saturday
before the Second Sunday in Lent—on the Transfiguration,
S. Matt. xvii. 1–13
I. Peter’s confession shown to lead
up to the Transfiguration.
The Gospel lesson, dearly-beloved, which has
reached the inner hearing of our minds through our bodily ears, calls
us to the understanding of a great mystery, to which we shall by the
help of God’s grace the better attain,
if we turn our attention to what is narrated just before.
The Saviour of mankind, Jesus Christ, in founding
that faith, which recalls the wicked to righteousness and the dead to
life, used to instruct His disciples by admonitory teaching and by
miraculous acts to the end that He, the Christ, might be believed to be
at once the Only-begotten of God and the Son
of Man. For the one without the other was of no avail to
salvation, and it was equally dangerous to have believed the
Lord Jesus Christ to be either only
God without manhood, or only man without
Godhead956
| 956 The same words are
used in Lett. XXVIII. (Tome), chap. 5. | , since both had equally to be confessed,
because just as true manhood existed in His Godhead, so true Godhead
existed in His Manhood. To strengthen, therefore, their most
wholesome knowledge of this belief, the Lord
had asked His disciples, among the various opinions of others, what
they themselves believed, or thought about Him: whereat the
Apostle Peter, by the revelation of the most High Father passing beyond
things corporeal and surmounting things human by the eyes of his mind,
saw Him to be Son of the living God, and
acknowledged the glory of the Godhead, because he looked not at the
substance of His flesh and blood alone; and with this lofty faith
Christ was so well pleased that he received the fulness of blessing,
and was endued with the holy firmness of the inviolable Rock on which
the Church should be built and conquer the gates of hell and the laws
of death, so that, in loosing or binding the petitions of any
whatsoever, only that should be ratified in heaven which had been
settled by the judgment of Peter.
II. The same continued.
But this exalted and highly-praised understanding,
dearly-beloved, had also to be instructed on the mystery of
Christ’s lower substance, lest the Apostle’s faith, being
raised to the glory of confessing the Deity in Christ, should deem the
reception of our weakness unworthy of the impassible God, and incongruous, and should believe the human nature
to be so glorified in Him as to be incapable of suffering punishment,
or being dissolved in death. And, therefore, when the
Lord said that He must go to Jerusalem, and
suffer many things from the elders and scribes and chief of the
priests, and the third day rise
again, the blessed Peter who, being
illumined with light from above, was burning with the heat of his
confession, rejected their mocking insults and the disgrace of the most
cruel death, with, as he thought, a loyal and outspoken contempt, but
was checked by a kindly rebuke from Jesus and animated with the desire
to share His suffering. For the Saviour’s exhortation that
followed, instilled and taught this, that they who wished to follow Him
should deny themselves, and count the loss of temporal things as light
in the hope of things eternal; because he alone could save his soul
that did not fear to lose it for Christ. In order, therefore,
that the Apostles might entertain this happy, constant courage with
their whole heart, and have no tremblings about the harshness of taking
up the cross, and that they might not be ashamed of the punishment of
Christ, nor think what He endured disgraceful for themselves (for the
bitterness of suffering was to be displayed without despite to His
glorious power), Jesus took Peter and James and his brother John, and
ascending a very high957
| 957 Præcelso
(Vulg. excelso): possibly the form of the adjective
supports Codex Bezæ (D) in adding λίαν after ὑψηλόν. | mountain with them
apart, showed them the brightness of His glory; because, although they
had recognised the majesty of God in Him, yet
the power of His body, wherein His Deity was contained, they did not
know. And, therefore, rightly and significantly, had He promised
that certain of the disciples standing by should not taste death till
they saw “the Son of Man coming in His Kingdom958
| 958 S. Matt. xvi. 28. Leo’s application of the
prophesy is almost too fanciful to be the true one, though he stands by
no means alone among commentaters (ancient and modern) in so applying
it. | ,” that is, in the kingly brilliance
which, as specially belonging to the nature of His assumed Manhood, He
wished to be conspicuous to these three men. For the unspeakable
and unapproachable vision of the Godhead Itself which is reserved till
eternal life for the pure in heart, they could in no wise look upon and
see while still surrounded with mortal flesh. The Lord displays His glory, therefore, before chosen
witnesses, and invests that bodily shape which He shared with others
with such splendour, that His face was like the sun’s brightness
and His garments equalled the whiteness of snow.
III. The object and the meaning of the
Transfiguration.
And in this Transfiguration the foremost object
was to remove the offence of the cross from the disciple’s heart,
and to prevent their faith being disturbed by the humiliation of His
voluntary Passion by revealing to them the excellence of His hidden
dignity. But with no less foresight, the foundation was laid of
the Holy Church’s hope, that the whole body of Christ might
realize the character of the change which it would have to receive, and
that the members might promise themselves a share in that honour which
had already shone forth in their Head. About which the
Lord had Himself said, when He spoke of the
majesty of His coming, “Then shall the righteous shine as the sun
in their Father’s Kingdom959
,” whilst the
blessed Apostle Paul bears witness to the self-same thing, and
says: “for I reckon that the sufferings of this time are
not worthy to be compared with the future glory which shall be revealed
in us960
:” and again, “for ye are
dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. For when Christ our life shall appear, then
shall ye also appear with Him in glory961
.” But to confirm the Apostles
and assist them to all knowledge, still further instruction was
conveyed by that miracle.
IV. The significance of the appearance of
Moses and Elias.
For Moses and Elias, that is the Law and the
Prophets, appeared talking with the Lord; that
in the presence of those five men might most truly be fulfilled what
was said: “In two or three witnesses stands every
word962
.” What more stable, what more
steadfast than this word, in the proclamation of which the trumpet of
the Old and of the New Testament joins, and the documentary evidence of
the ancient witnesses963
| 963 Antiquarum
protestationum instrumenta. | combine with the
teaching of the Gospel? For the pages of both covenants964
| 964 Utriusque
fœderis paginæ (instead of the more usual
Testamenti). | corroborate each other, and He Whom under
the veil of mysteries the types that went before had promised, is
displayed clearly and conspicuously by the splendour of the present
glory. Because, as says the blessed John, “the law was
given through Moses: but grace and truth came through Jesus
Christ965
,” in Whom is fulfilled both the
promise of prophetic figures and the purpose of the legal
ordinances: for He both teaches the truth of prophecy by His
presence, and renders the commands possible through grace.
V. S. Peter’s suggestion contrary
to the Divine order.
The Apostle Peter, therefore, being excited by the
revelation of these mysteries, despising
things mundane and scorning things
earthly, was seized with a sort of frenzied craving for the things
eternal, and being filled with rapture at the whole vision, desired to
make his abode with Jesus in the place where he had been blessed with
the manifestation of His glory. Whence also he says,
“Lord, it is good for us to be
here: if thou wilt let us make three tabernacles966
, one for Thee, one for Moses, and one for
Elias.” But to this proposal the Lord made no answer, signifying that what he wanted was
not indeed wicked, but contrary to the Divine order: since the
world could not be saved, except by Christ’s death, and by the
Lord’s example the faithful were called
upon to believe that, although there ought not to be any doubt about
the promises of happiness, yet we should understand that amidst the
trials of this life we must ask for the power of endurance rather than
the glory, because the joyousness of reigning cannot precede the times
of suffering.
VI. The import of the Father’s
voice from the cloud.
And so while He was yet speaking, behold a bright
cloud overshadowed them, and behold a voice out of the cloud, saying,
“This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye
Him.” The Father was indeed present in the Son, and in the
Lord’s brightness, which He had tempered
to the disciples’ sight, the Father’s Essence was not
separated from the Only-begotten: but, in order to emphasize the
two-fold personality, as the effulgence of the Son’s body
displayed the Son to their sight, so the Father’s voice from out
the cloud announced the Father to their hearing. And when this
voice was heard, “the disciples fell upon their faces, and were
sore afraid,” trembling at the majesty, not only of the Father,
but also of the Son: for they now had a deeper insight into the
undivided Deity of Both: and in their fear they did not separate
the One from the Other, because they doubted not in their
faith967
| 967 Quia in fide non
fuit hæsitatio, non fuit in timore discretio. | . That was a wide and manifold
testimony, therefore, and contained a fuller meaning than struck the
ear. For when the Father said, “This is My beloved Son, in
Whom, &c.,” was it not clearly meant, “This is My
Son,” Whose it is to be eternally from Me and with Me? because
the Begetter is not anterior to the Begotten, nor the Begotten
posterior to the Begetter. “This is My Son,” Who is
separated from Me, neither by Godhead, nor by power, nor by
eternity. “This is My Son,” not adopted, but
true-born, not created from another source, but begotten of Me:
nor yet made like Me from another nature, but born equal to Me of My
nature. “This is My Son,” “through Whom all
things were made, and without Whom was nothing made968
| 968 S. John i. 3: and below, cf. x. 38:
and again Phil. ii. 6. | ” because all things that I do He
doth in like manner: and whatever I perform, He performs with Me
inseparably and without difference: for the Son is in the Father
and the Father in the Son969
| 969 S. John i. 3: and below, cf. x. 38:
and again Phil. ii. 6. | , and Our Unity is
never divided: and though I am One Who begot, and He the Other
Whom I begot, yet is it wrong for you to think anything of Him which is
not possible of Me. “This is My Son,” Who sought not
by grasping, and seized not in greediness970
| 970 S. John i. 3: and below, cf. x. 38:
and again Phil. ii. 6. | ,
that equality with Me which He has, but remaining in the form of My
glory, that He might carry out Our common plan for the restoration of
mankind, He lowered the unchangeable Godhead even to the form of a
slave.
VII. Who it is we have to
hear.
“Hear ye Him,” therefore,
unhesitatingly, in Whom I am throughout well pleased, and by Whose
preaching I am manifested, by Whose humiliation I am glorified; because
He is “the Truth and the Life971
,” He is
My “Power and Wisdom972
.”
“Hear ye Him,” Whom the mysteries of the Law have foretold,
Whom the mouths of prophets have sung. “Hear ye Him,”
Who redeems the world by His blood, Who binds the devil, and carries
off his chattels, Who destroys the bond of sin, and the compact of the
transgression. Hear ye Him, Who opens the way to heaven, and by
the punishment of the cross prepares for you the steps of ascent to the
Kingdom? Why tremble ye at being redeemed? why fear ye to be
healed of your wounds? Let that happen which Christ wills and I
will. Cast away all fleshly fear, and arm yourselves with
faithful constancy; for it is unworthy that ye should fear in the
Saviour’s Passion what by His good gift ye shall not have to fear
even at your own end.
VIII. The Father’s words have a
universal application to the whole Church.
These things, dearly-beloved, were said not for their
profit only, who heard them with their own ears, but in these three
Apostles the whole Church has learnt all that their eyes saw and their
ears heard. Let all men’s faith then be established,
according to the preaching of the most holy Gospel, and let no one
be ashamed of Christ’s cross,
through which the world was redeemed. And let not any one fear to
suffer for righteousness’ sake, or doubt of the fulfilment of the
promises, for this reason, that through toil we pass to rest and
through death to life; since all the weakness of our humility was
assumed by Him, in Whom, if we abide in the acknowledgment and love of
Him, we conquer as He conquered, and receive what he promised, because,
whether to the performance of His commands or to the endurance of
adversities, the Father’s fore-announcing voice should always be
sounding in our ears, saying, “This is My beloved Son, in Whom I
am well pleased; hear ye Him:” Who liveth and reigneth,
with the Father and the Holy Ghost, for ever and ever.
Amen. E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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