ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY Orthodox Calendar
Orthodox Calendar 2016
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9th Week after Pentecost. Tone 7.
Успенский пост. Fish, wine and oil allowed.
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Совершается служба великому праздникуThe Holy Transfiguration of Our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ.

St. Theoctistus, bishop of Chernigov (1123).

New Martyr Abbacum of Thessalonica (1628).

Repose of Hieroschemamonk Nikon the Cave-dweller, of Valaam (1822), Priest Basil Shoustin, disciple of Optina Elders (1968), and Elder Tryphon of Kapsala, Mt. Athos (1978).

Thoughts for Each Day of the Year
According to the Daily Church Readings from the Word of God
By St. Theophan the Recluse

St. Theophan the Recluse

Friday. [II Cor. 7:10-16; Mark 2:18-22]

   On the Transfiguration a voice from heaven uttered only hear ye Him (Matt. 17:5). Why is this so? Because the fruit of obedience was being shown to them. It was as if the Heavenly Father were saying: Do you want to attain this? Hear what He will suggest and command you. If you go on His path, you will undoubtedly enter into the realm of light, which will embrace you not from without, but will come forth from within, and always keep you in a state in which all of your bones will utter: it is good for us to be this way. You will be filled with the light of joy, the light of good will, the light of knowledge; all sorrows will pass by, the dissonance of the passions will disappear, falsehood and delusion will disperse. On the earth you will become heavenly; from among the earthly-born, you will become Godly-born; from amidst the perishable you will become eternally blessed. Then all will be yours, because you yourselves will become Christ’s. He who loves Christ the Lord is beloved of the heavenly Father, and Both come to him and make their abode with him. This is the light of the Transfiguration!

Articles

The Transfiguration of the Lord

Hieromonk Seraphim (Rose)

Orthodox theology sees in the Transfiguration a prefigurement of our Lord’s Resurrection and His Second Coming, and more than this—since every event of the Church calendar has an application to the individual spiritual life—of the transformed state in which Christians shall appear at the end of the world, and in some measure even before then.

St Gregory Palamas’s Homily on the Transfiguration

St. Gregory Palamas

Thus, this Light is not a light of the senses, and those contemplating it do not simply see with sensual eyes, but rather they are changed by the power of the Divine Spirit. They were transformed, and only in this way did they see the transformation taking place amidst the very assumption of our perishability, with the deification through union with the Word of God in place of this.

“Savior of the Apples”

Ivan Shmelev

(From Year of the Lord.) It all seems to me that everyone is only thinking about apples. The Lord is also here with all of us, and He is also thinking about apples; after all, we’ve brought them to Him—look, Lord, how good they are! And He looks at them and says to all, “Well, good, and eat them to your health, children!” And they will be eating completely different apples—not store-bought, but church apples, holy ones. This is the very Transfiguration.

Sermon on the Feast of the Transfiguration

St. John of Shanghai

When He created the world, God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness(Gen. 1:26). God’s image manifests in man’s mental capabilities, in his authority over nature, his power, and his ability to create. God’s likeness in man consists in his moral perfection, his spiritual strivings, and in his possibility of attaining sanctity. God’s image and likeness, in which our fore-parents were created, was fully reflected in them before the fall. Sin disrupted both the former and the latter, although it did not entirely deprive man of them.

On The Feast Of Transfiguration

St. Anastasius the Sinaite

Upon Mount Tabor, Jesus revealed to his disciples a heavenly mystery. While living among them he had spoken of the kingdom and of his second coming in glory, but to banish from their hearts any possible doubt concerning the kingdom and to confirm their faith in what lay in the future by its prefiguration in the present, he gave them on Mount Tabor a wonderful vision of his glory, a foreshadowing of the kingdom of heaven. It was as if he said to them:“As time goes by you may be in danger of losing your faith.

Transfiguration

The transfiguration of Christ is one of the central events recorded in the gospels. Immediately after the Lord was recognized by his apostles as “the Christ [Messiah], the Son of the Living God,” he told them that “he must go up to Jerusalem and suffer many things ... and be killed and on the third day be raised” (Mt 16). The announcement of Christ’s approaching passion and death was met with indignation by the disciples. And then, after rebuking them, the Lord took Peter, James, and John “up to a high mountain”—by traditionMount Tabor—and was “transfigured before them.”

Feast of the Transfiguration of Our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ

In the icon of the Feast of the Transfiguration, Christ is the central figure, appearing in a dominant position within a circular mandorla. He is clearly at the visual and theological center of the icon. His right hand is raised in blessing, and his left hand contains a scroll.

The Transfiguration (Metamorphoses) of our Saviour

Metropolitan Joseph of Proikonessos

From the 6th to the 15th of August, for eight consecutive days, the Church celebrates the Transfiguration of our Lord Jesus Christ. This event constitutes a triple divine revelation, when the identity of Jesus is revealed to the Apostles. That is not only the strange change in His appearance and the inundation of light which emanated from His face, but the witnessing of the voice of the Father and the presence of the two most holy people from the "other side", that is, Moses and Elijah are confirming without a margin of doubt that Jesus is not just a simple person, or a wise teacher, a virtuous reformer of some new-wave of life-style, a charismatic miracle-worker, or even, a Prophet or a Saint, but He is the Son and the Word of the Living God!

On the Transfiguration

Archpriest Andrew Phillips

Today, however, I would like to point out an aspect of this Feast which is often overlooked: Mt Tabor, the 'mountain' where the Transfiguration occurred. This Mt Tabor is for us a figure of repentance. We note that, like the disciples, in order for us to see the transfiguration or to hope to be transfigured ourselves, we will first have to climb up, to mount, from our present condition. Otherwise any transfiguration or change for the better in our lives is impossible.

The Transfiguration of Christ

Archbishop Dmitri (Royster)

The disciples fell on their faces, for they could not bear, as created beings, the vision of glory. Only when Jesus touched them and told them to arise and not be afraid, were they able to return to the reality they knew. Our own credal statement, "Light of Light," with reference to the Son is testimony to our faith that God is light and that the Son is also light, and is related to this vision as the eternal, uncreated light on Mt. Tabor.

Ripe for Metamorphosis

Gabe Martini

Transfiguration is one of the twelve Great Feasts of the Orthodox Church. It comes forty days before the Elevation of the Holy Cross, and is the next-to-last feast of the ecclesiastical year. In this feast we are reminded of our calling as Christians: to be transfigured; to mature into ripened fruit; to be glorified in Christ.

Second Sunday of Lent, St. Gregory Palamas

Nathan Duffy

For modern western Christians (who typically have very little exposure to Orthodox Christianity), it’s often difficult to grasp the nature of the divide between east and west. In my experience, most reflexively tend to reduce the differences in their mind to being relatively superficial or inessential. But the divide runs much deeper than most tend to realize.

Prayer on the feast of the Transfiguration

Archimandrite Iachint Unciuleac

Come to us again, O Jesus—do not listen to Peter! Come down from Tabor and come to our homes, into our hearts! Come here, where we are suffering and laboring for our daily bread! Come here, where we are crucified by people, demons, and passions! If Peter does not want to come down, leave him on the mount and come to us, to our hearts!

Reincarnated “Christians”

Igumen Nikon (Vorobiev)

I recalled today these two holy prophets, Moses and Elias, who appeared and conversed with Christ during His Transfiguration, in order to clarify the Orthodox Church’s point of view on the Hindu theory of the transmigration of souls, otherwise known as reincarnation.

Sermon by Archbishop Seraphim (Ivanov, + 1987) of Chicago and Detroit on the Transfiguration

Archbishop Seraphim (Ivanov)

We Christians, even today, are faced with a great challenge—which we face with the aid of the Church Mysteries, of fasting and prayer—and that is to be transfigured here on earth, in our souls and bodies, which really happens to the saints of God, the righteous and simply good Christians.

St. John Chrysostom and the Light of Tabor

Dr. Christopher Veniamin

A study of his sermon reveals the saint understood the light of Transfiguration as a manifestation of divinity—consistent with Orthodox theology as later more fully elucidated.

Sermon 51: On the Transfiguration

St. Leo the Great

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.

To Bring All Things to the Knowledge of the Truth: A Homily on the Feast of the Transfiguration

Fr. Christopher Rocknage

"So often, my dear brother and sisters, we forget about the fact that it’s not about me, it’s not about any of us, individually—it’s about Christ redeeming the world. Yes he came for me, yes he came for you—He came for everybody, the entirety of creation, to bring all things to the knowledge of the Truth, to bring everything to Himself, so that all could be saved."
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