Why is the Transfiguration placed at the turning point of Christ’s public life?
God the Father puts his seal on Christ's mission at the Transfiguration.
God the Father puts his seal on Christ's mission at the Transfiguration.
Editor’s Notes
Continuing the series on the Transfiguration, started in Lent.
In this piece, Fr. Coleridge tells us…
How the Transfiguration reveals Christ’s divine Sonship through the Father’s testimony.
That this revelation confirms Christ as the fulfilment of the Old Testament Law and Prophets.
Why the Father’s command to ‘hear ye Him’ marks Christ as the definitive Teacher of mankind.
He shows us that Christ is the chosen instrument of divine grace, and in him alone is our salvation.
For more context on this episode, its significance and its place in the Roman Liturgy, see here:
The Transfiguration
The Preaching of the Cross, Part I
Chapter III
St. Matt. xvii. 1–13; St. Mark ix. 1–12; St. Luke ix. 28–36
Story of the Gospels, § 83
Burns and Oates, London, 1886
Headings and some line breaks added.
Sung on Ember Saturday of Lent, the Second Sunday of Lent and the Feast of the Transfiguration (August 6)
Part I: Why did Christ reveal his transfigured glory before the Passion?
Part II: Why were Moses and Elias at the Transfiguration?
Part III: Why is the Transfiguration placed at the turning point of Christ’s public life?
Part IV: What’s the link between the Transfiguration and the Baptism of the Lord?
Part V: Why did Christ command secrecy about the Transfiguration until after Easter?
The bright cloud and the voice
‘And as he was yet speaking these things, there came a bright cloud and overshadowed them, and they were afraid when they entered into the cloud. And lo a voice came out of the cloud, saying, This is My Beloved Son in Whom I am well pleased, hear ye Him. And the disciples hearing fell on their faces and were very much afraid. And whilst the voice was uttered, Jesus was found alone. And Jesus came and touched them, and said to them, Arise, and fear not. And immediately looking about they saw no man any more, and lifting up their eyes, they saw no one but only Jesus.’
It is clear that this part of the manifestation is altogether distinct from the other. The display of glory in our Lord’s Human Body and in those of the two ancient Saints passes away, and gives place to another mystery which forms one of the two great manifestations of the Ever Blessed Trinity which are related in the Gospels. Our minds are at once carried back to the Baptism of our Lord, with which this scene is directly connected by the Words of the Father. The order of what is here related seems to have been, that while St. Peter was speaking about the three Tabernacles, the bright cloud gathered, as it were, in the air, and enfolded in itself our Lord and the two ancient Saints, while at the same time it overshadowed the three disciples, and in some measure tempered the excessive brightness which dazzled their eyes.
In the words of St. Luke, the distinction is made between the two sets of three. The fear of the disciples is attributed to the entrance of the ‘others’ into the cloud. After this comes the voice from Heaven, on hearing which the disciples prostrate themselves, as in the presence of God, and then after awhile, our Lord comes and touches them, and they find themselves alone with Him.
Clouds in the Old Testament
The cloud of which the Gospels speak is connected by many of the Catholic writers with the cloud out of which God spoke to Moses and to the people of Israel at the time of the giving of the Law, and especially at the time when the promise was made of the Prophet who was to be raised up like unto Moses. Indeed, it is common in the Old Testament to find God speaking to those whom He so favours out of a cloud. Thus the appearance itself of the cloud may have prepared the disciples for some further communication as from God Himself. And this may have added to their fear.
This cloud is said by St. Mark to have been bright and shining, and some of the Fathers see in this a distinction to be noted between the New and the Old Testaments, the cloud on Mount Sinai having been dark. St. Peter, from whom St. Mark must have had his description, speaks of the cloud as the ‘excellent glory,’1 as if there had been something very splendid and glorious about the appearance. St. Paul, in the second Epistle to the Corinthians, has a great passage in which he contrasts the ministries of the two Testaments respectively on this particular point of glory.
He reminds the priests of Corinth, to whom he is writing, of the glory of the Old Covenant, how the children of Israel could not steadfastly behold the face of Moses, for the glory of his countenance, which, he says, ‘is made void,’ and he argues, ‘ How shall not the ministration of the Spirit be rather in glory?’ that is, more glorious than the ministration of the letter. Then he goes on to say that Moses had to put a veil on his face that they might be able to bear its splendour thus veiled, and he says that the Jews have still that veil upon them when Moses is read to them, but on the other hand:
‘We all beholding the glory of the Lord with open face, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord.’2
Fear of the Apostles
‘And they were afraid as they entered into the cloud,’ both from the awfulness of so much glory, and also perhaps at finding themselves separated from the others, for our Lord, with Moses and Elias, was enfolded in the cloud from which they were themselves excluded.
The Voice from the cloud was the Voice which had been heard from Heaven at the time of our Lord’s Baptism, spoke in the Person of the Eternal Father Himself, and gave the same testimony to our Lord in words almost identical with those which had then been heard, at least by St. John Baptist, if not by others, among whom it is not impossible that his disciples may have been, among whom these three Apostles had been numbered at the time.
On the former occasion the words seem to have been in the first instance addressed to our Lord Himself, ‘Thou art My Beloved Son,’ and the rest, and afterwards repeated for others, ‘This is My Beloved Son.’ At the time of the Transfiguration there seem not to have been any words directly addressed to our Lord. On the other hand, the injunction, ‘Hear ye Him,’ occurs on this occasion alone.
‘This is My Beloved Son’
The first words of the utterance from the bright cloud, or as it is called by St. Peter, from the excellent glory, ‘This is My Beloved Son,’ are rather more forcible in the Greek original, which has ‘This is That My Beloved Son.’ It is easy to see that our Lord is thus pointed out by the Father as His Son in a manner of His own, which is not communicable to any other, for, if it had been meant that we should understand the words of an adopted Son, they would not mark out our Lord as different in this respect from Moses and Elias, and indeed from all God’s adopted children.
The words moreover seem to refer to some promise or prediction, as if it had been said, This is that Beloved Son of Mine Whom you have been taught to expect, of Whom the Prophets have spoken, to Whom all the types of the Old Law looked forward, as their fulfilment, this is that Son of My Love in Whom I am well pleased. The words have a special force, as we shall see, when considered as referring back to the promise made through Moses to the people, of which we shall speak presently. The promise is recorded in the Book of Deuteronomy, where Moses says to them:
‘As thou desiredst of the Lord thy God in Horeb, when the assembly was gathered together, and saidst, Let me not hear any more the Voice of the Lord my God, neither let me see any more this exceeding great fire, lest I die. And the Lord said to me, They have spoken all things well. I will raise up to them a Prophet out of the midst of their brethren, like to thee, and I will put My words in His mouth, and He shall speak to them all that I shall command Him. And he that will not hear His words which He shall speak in My Name, I will be the avenger.’3
But the words here used rise far above the promise, because they speak not of a Prophet like Moses, but of the only-begotten Son of God. They may have been in the mind of St. Paul when he wrote in the opening of the Epistle to the Hebrews, that God, ‘Who at sundry times and in divers manners spoke in times past to the Fathers by the Prophets, last of all in these days hath spoken to us by His Son.’4
When the Divine Words go on to speak of our Lord, not only as the Son Who is One with His Father in substance, but also as the Son of His love, on Whom His love rests, they seem to signify a kind of anticipation of the objection that might rise to the mind when men saw Him crucified and apparently abandoned by God, as Isaias says, ‘smitten of God and humbled.’ It might be thought that He was a Son under the displeasure of His Father, instead of being in that very humiliation of His the object of His most special delight.
Or the same words may convey to us the thought of the immense love for us of God, in giving us His own only-begotten and most dear Son to be our Teacher and our Redeemer. It may also be understood that these words express the difference between the Old and the New Law, a difference founded on and summed up in the truth that our Lord was the Son of the Love and Delight of God, and that therefore the Law which He gives must be a Law of love, a Law which opened to us the loving compassion of the Father, a Law which secures us the adoption of sons, and all the treasures of God’s most tender love, a Law therefore for children, not for servants.
In all these respects the Gospel Law is such as might have been expected when it was confided to the Son of God Himself, instead of to a servant even so highly honoured and regarded by God as Moses. This contrast between the servant and the Son is drawn out by St. Paul in the Epistle to the Hebrews, where he says that:
‘Moses indeed was faithful in all his house as a servant, for a testimony of those things which were to be said, but Christ as the Son in His own house, Whose house are we, if we hold fast the confidence and glory of hope unto the end.’5
Thus this single word ‘beloved’ contains a great amount of foundation for our Christian hope and confidence.
‘In Whom I am well pleased.’
But the same hope and confidence are immensely increased by the word which follows in the Greek, which is rendered, ‘in Whom I am well pleased.’ Something has been said before in this work about the meaning of the good pleasure or good will of God, which is first mentioned in the New Testament in the song of the holy Angels at the Nativity, ‘On earth peace to men of good will,’ or ‘to men of the good will.’
For the good will or pleasure of God is that Eternal Counsel and determination of His to bring us to His glory and possession in Heaven, by means of our Lord, and our call to this is not founded on any deserts or merits of our own in the first instance, but springs from the free spontaneous choice of His own good will, although it is a part of that choice that we should be capable of having a share of our own in the gaining of the reward. From this original spring has flowed the whole mighty volume of the beneficence of God towards us, and it is this good will and free bounty of God which is embodied in the Person of our Lord.
It was the cause of His Incarnation, of His Life and sufferings, and its carrying out and execution are the fruit of His Precious Blood, and the end and object of the whole system in which the benefits of His Redemption are stored up and administered to the souls of men in the Church. This free choice and decree of God was one of the thoughts in which St. Paul specially delighted, and he speaks of it and of various parts of the great Counsel, in several places in his Epistles.
It gives a fresh light as to the meaning of these solemn words of the Eternal Father with regard to our Lord, to understand that the word here used to express His good pleasure or delight in the Incarnate Son is the same which is used in so many places in which the great decree of salvation is referred to. Our Lord is thus solemnly declared to be the chosen instrument and means and channel of this good pleasure. Without this, the words, considered in their simple and ordinary meaning, express the truth that our Lord in His Sacred Humanity is the object of the great delight and joy of the Father, and on this account He is the Person to Whose character and example and instructions we are to look for guidance, how to become ourselves pleasing to God. It is natural enough merely from this consideration to look to Him as our guide.
But if we add to this the truth that God delights in Him in this special way, placing in Him the execution of His most loving and bountiful decree, we see still more clearly that in Him and through Him alone can we hope to have a share in the benefits which that decree involves, and thus the declaration of the Father directs us to Him, not merely as the pattern of all excellence but as the channel of all His graces.
‘Hear ye Him’
The last words of this declaration, ‘Hear ye Him,’ which are not found in the history of the parallel mystery of our Lord’s Baptism, seem to confirm the impression that there is all through this manifestation a reference to that promise made to the people through Moses of which mention has been made. For that promise included a command that the Prophet then foretold should be obeyed in all that He spoke in the Name of God, and it seems also to be implied in the passage of Deuteronomy that there would be danger lest His words should not meet with the requisite obedience, for a severe threat is added on those who do not obey.
Thus we have our Lord not only declared to be the Chosen Minister of God for the execution of His good pleasure and merciful will, but He is also made the official Teacher of the people, for Whom they had so long been looking, and they are commanded with equal solemnity to listen to His teaching. The words may have had a special meaning in the ears of Peter and his companions, and they may have understood them as enjoining on them a particular obedience to that part of our Lord’s doctrine which was so new to them at that moment, and which seemed to them to be strange and unworthy of Him, the doctrine of the Passion and that also of the Cross, as to be borne after Him by all Christians.
This was to be the characteristic of the last stage of our Lord’s teaching, which begins from this time and lasts up to the end. It was a doctrine founded upon His Divinity and unintelligible without that foundation. It was consequently, for more reasons than one, reserved for the latter period of the Public Life, although its principles may be discerned in the earlier teaching, especially in the Sermon on the Mount. But it was in the counsels of God to give to it this special authority and sanction, which are contained in this beautiful mystery of the Transfiguration, which is placed at the outset of this last portion of the Public Life as the Baptism is placed at the outset of the former period.
The Transfiguration
Part I: Why did Christ reveal his transfigured glory before the Passion?
Part II: Why were Moses and Elias at the Transfiguration?
Part III: Why is the Transfiguration placed at the turning point of Christ’s public life?
Part IV: What’s the link between the Transfiguration and the Baptism of the Lord?
Part V: Why did Christ command secrecy about the Transfiguration until after Easter?
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St. Peter i. 17.
2 Cor. iii. 7, seq.
Deut. xviii. 16, seq.
Heb. i. 1.
Heb. iii. 5.