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Christ is in our midst, my dear readers!
During the afterfeast of the Transfiguration of Our Lord Jesus Christ, in the final hot days of summer, we want to thank God for His unsurpassable taste, filled with colors, sounds, and aromas all over the world! God invites all mankind to partake of this beauty, He offers it to us for free, out of His love.
Today as I took a bite of a peach, I stopped in amazement. How could such a taste and smell have been created! This is exquisite! Exquisite, just like everything the Creator has created. But unfortunately, people rarely notice it. In passing, in vanity, we rush past the green trees and the fragrant flowers, sit down at the table, turn on the television or internet, and immerse our attention into the flow of information without paying any attention to the taste of the joy that the Lord gives us in fruits of the earth.
And thus it is with everything, day after day. Man has no time to stop and raise his head to the heavens, to stand a bit in silence, casting the noise of the vain world from his head. Looking ever downward at the plane of earthly existence, people become earth, to which they will indeed go after they die.
But if we turn our gaze away from the earth and toward God, then we partake of His eternity, and all that is earthly is transfigured, filled with extraordinary flavor and fragrance. Everything created by the Lord is predestined for human joy, but it is only possible to feel this joy in the love of God.
It is no accident that the Church established the feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord at the end of August (although we know that Christ ascended Mount Tabor with His three disciples not long before His Crucifixion, in February or March according to our Church calendar). This was done for educational purposes, in order to push out the pagan traditions (in part, bacchanalias) practiced during the days of harvest, and to fill them with Christian meaning—to give thanks to God for the fruits of the earth, and for everything that He created according to His great wisdom.
