The Spiritual and Political Lessons of the Transfiguration of Jesus

AMAC Exclusive – By David P. Deavel

In our society afflicted with cultural amnesia, it’s imperative that we bring to consciousness our memory of things that still float on the surface but are not recognized or understood. We do this not out of antiquarian interest, but because hope for the future and light to act in that future are found in the blessings and examples of the past. For Christians this is even truer: calling to mind God’s action in the past is the means to strengthen faith, persevere, and guide faithful behavior. Thus, it is right and just to take a moment to learn from a feast officially important to Christians but practically ignored.  I refer to the Transfiguration of Jesus, which many Christians observed this weekend.

I say “many Christians” because though Roman Catholics, Eastern Rite Catholics, Anglicans, and many Eastern Orthodox believers marked this feast yesterday, August 6, Eastern Orthodox believers who use the old Julian calendar find August 6 falling on the Gregorian calendar’s August 19. Many Protestant groups dedicate the Sunday before Ash Wednesday to this biblical event, recorded in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. For Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholics in the Byzantine tradition, this feast is one of the Twelve Great Feasts of the Church year. As well it should be, for it is a kind of summation of supernatural and natural lessons.

The story is told in Matthew 17:1-8; Mark 9:2-8; and Luke 9:28-36.  The story is this. Jesus and three disciples—Peter, James, and John—go up onto a mountain to pray. While there Jesus suddenly shines with a blazing white light and is seen by the disciples in the middle of Moses and Elijah, who speak with him. When Peter suggests building three booths for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah, they are immediately enveloped in a cloud and hear a voice saying, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” (Luke 9:35; quotations from the Revised Standard Version). After these words the disciples see Jesus alone.

It is a powerful story with its echoes of the Old Testament and its hints of what is to come. The name of the high mountain is not given in any of the Gospels, but an old tradition going back to the third-century Egyptian theologian Origen interprets this as Mount Tabor, a fitting place since in the Old Testament book of Judges, chapter four, this is where Israel defeats a number of Canaanite tribes—a precursor to Jesus’ own defeat of death and evil. Other scholars have proposed other mountains as the true site. One of the most intriguing suggestions is that it was Mount Nebo, the place where Moses viewed the Promised Land—and died. In any case, it is a mountain—and a mountain was the site of the giving of the Law in the Old Testament, the site of the Temple in Jerusalem, and the site of the fulfillment of Israel’s hopes in the Prophets—Mount Zion.

In short, wherever this particular mountain was, the very fact of the presence of Moses and Elijah surrounding Christ in light tells us what is important. Moses represents the Law or Torah while Elijah represents the Prophets. Luke tells us that these two “appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was to accomplish at Jerusalem” (Luke 9:31). This tells us that the Law and the Prophets were ultimately about what Jesus was to accomplish with his Passion, Death, and Resurrection—a new “going out” or Exodus that would bring freedom from slavery, sin, and death.

There’s more, however. Moses, whose life ended on Mount Nebo, represents the dead while Elijah, who was taken into Heaven in a fiery chariot, represents the living. The message this gives us is clear. Jesus fulfills the Law and Prophets and is Lord of the living and the dead. If the symbolism doesn’t do it for the reader, the voice of God saying to listen to Christ ought to do it.

Peter has gotten a lot of grief over the millennia for his suggestion of building three tents or booths upon seeing the vision. Yet the twentieth-century theologian Jean Daniélou observed that because the Transfiguration of Jesus occurred at the end of the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles, Peter’s suggestion was not so uncomprehending. “The manifestation of the glory of Jesus appears to Peter to be the sign that the times of the Messiah have arrived. And one of the qualities of these messianic times was to be the dwelling of the just in the tents signified by the huts of the Feast of Tabernacles.”

Peter was on to the truth—but he hadn’t put it all together yet. This gets to the heart of the lessons for us. Peter, like the rest of the disciples—and everybody else—was under the impression that glory was available instantly. Yet it is not so easy. Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) wrote in the first volume of his classic trilogy Jesus of Nazareth that the lesson Peter had to learn again in this episode is “that the messianic age is first and foremost the age of the Cross and that the Transfiguration—the experience of becoming light from and with the Lord—requires us to be burned by the light of the Passion and so transformed.”

The very vision of the Transfiguration is a vision of what is to be—Christ in dazzling white, the disciples participating in that very brightness, the coming together of the pieces of the past in a future bright with promise. But it is a vision that is only accomplished through suffering and perseverance. All Christians should know this truth about their Christian walk. Becoming conformed to the image of Christ is not complicated; neither is it easy. It requires being forged in that burning light of the Passion and surrendering to God’s will in all aspects of life. It is no coincidence that the late Pope Saint John Paul II issued his encyclical on moral life, Veritatis splendor, or “On the Splendor of Truth,” on the Feast of the Transfiguration in 1993.   

This spiritual lesson is one that should echo in political and social life. “No pain, no gain” is a lesson accessible even in our natural lives. Success in ordinary tasks is bought at the price of difficulty. How much more so the common life of citizens and friends. Never mind the life of the just in the age to come—the good society demands sacrifice and indeed, in a fallen world, suffering, because there is opposition to the good both in our society and in our very selves. Solzhenitsyn famously wrote that “the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and all human hearts.”

Christians and Americans have seen some tough times lately. It can be tempting to lose hope and even faith, especially if we believe (consciously or subconsciously) that glory is purchased on the cheap. The Transfiguration reminds us that we must keep our focus on the Truth and the Light,  following closely and sacrificing ourselves if we wish to enter the heavenly city or be an earthly city on a hill.   

David P. Deavel is an Associate Professor of Theology at the University of St. Thomas (Texas). A senior contributor at The Imaginative Conservative, he is a winner of the Acton Institute’s Novak Award and a former Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute. With Jessica Hooten Wilson, he edited Solzhenitsyn and American Culture: The Russian Soul in the West (Notre Dame, 2020). Besides his academic publications, his writing has appeared in many journals, including Catholic World Report, City Journal, First Things, Law & Liberty, and The Wall Street Journal. Follow him on Gettr @davidpdeavel.