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In the Heart of the Church |
On
the Transfiguration
Homily of Pope Leo the Great
Pontificate 440-461 AD
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 Godhead, 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 flyings 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 high'
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 Kingdom," 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 tilt 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 bad Himself said, when He
spoke of the majesty of His coming, "Then shall the righteous shine
as the sun in their Father's Kingdom," whilst the blessed Apostle
Paul bears witness to the self-same thing, and says: "for I reckon
that the sufferings of this thee are not worthy to be compared with
the future glory which shall be revealed in us:" 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 glory."
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 word." 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
witnesses combine with the teaching of the Gospel? For the pages of
both covenants corroborate each other, and He Whom under the veil of
mysteries the types that went before had promised, is displayed
clearly and conspicously 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 Christ," 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
tabernacles, 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 faith. 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 made[2a]" 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 Son[2a], 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 greediness[2a], 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.
"Here 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
Life[2b]," He is My "Power and Wisdom[2b].' "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, I 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.
Sermon LI: S. Mat.[1] . XVII. 1—13
Translated by
Charles Lett Feltoe, M.A
Taken from "The Early Church Fathers and Other Works" originally
published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co. in English in Edinburgh,
Scotland, beginning in 1867. (LNPF II/XII, Schaff and Wace). The
digital version is by The Electronic Bible Society, P.O. Box 701356,
Dallas, TX 75370, 214-407-WORD.
This page is the work of the Servants of the Pierced Hearts of Jesus and
Mary
