What the Transfiguration means for Christians today
Christ's Transfiguration represent a stage in our divine adoption, by which we become 'sons in the Son.'
Baptism and the Transfiguration mark stages of our divine adoption, by which we become 'sons in the Son.'
Editor’s Notes
In this piece, Fr. Coleridge tells us…
How the Transfiguration and Baptism both manifest the Three Divine Persons.
That the Transfiguration foreshadows the perfect adoption of sons through Christ’s glory.
Why divine sonship finds its fulfilment in the glorification of the body.
He shows us that the Transfiguration confirms our adoption as sons of God, perfected in Christ.
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?
Resemblance to the Baptism of our Lord
It has already been hinted that there is a great resemblance between these two mysteries. One of the most important points of this resemblance must be thought to consist in the manifestation in each of these mysteries of the Three Divine Persons of the Godhead. In the earlier mystery this is perhaps more evident than in the latter. For in the Baptism of our Lord there is the appearance of the Holy Ghost in a bodily form like a dove, as well as the Voice of the Eternal Father and the Presence of our Lord Himself, declared from Heaven, as now, to be the Beloved Son. But in the Transfiguration the presence of the Holy Spirit is to be found in the bright cloud in which our Lord and His saints entered, and which overshadowed the three disciples.
For as some of the Fathers tell us, He is the cloud which covers, protects, enlightens, and fertilizes everything good, without Whom, as the Church sings, there can be no supernatural good in us at all. In this way then the mystery of the Transfiguration is to be compared, as has been said, to the mystery of the Baptism.
Prayer of the Church
This may perhaps be illustrated from the prayer which the Church puts into the mouths of her priests on the feast of the Transfiguration. She speaks first of the confirmation of the sacraments or mysteries of the faith by the witness of the Fathers, which took place in the Transfiguration. She means, we may suppose, the confirmation of the faith in our Lord’s Divine Person and Mission by the testimony of the ancient saints, which confirmed incidentally, not merely the truth concerning His Person, but also the particular truths concerning His Passion and the Redemption to be wrought thereby.
Then she adds that God in the same mystery ‘did marvellously foreshow the perfect adoption of sons, by the Voice which came down from the shining cloud.’ In this she probably means that the Voice from Heaven declaring our Lord to be the Most Beloved Son of God, was a foreshowing of the perfect adoption of sons or filiation which we receive through our Lord. This was taught and promised by the declaration that our Lord, as seen in the Transfiguration, was the Beloved Son of God. For the perfection and completion of our adoption cannot be till we also receive the glory of the body, as well as the regeneration of the soul.
This glorification of the body was especially shown in the Transfiguration. For our adoption consists in our being made like to our Lord, the true and natural Son, in all things in which we can be made like Him, and therefore our adoption is not complete, as long as there is anything in which we can resemble Him, in which we have not as yet attained to that resemblance.
The ‘adoption of sons’—explanation of St Thomas
The words of St. Thomas may suffice for an explanation on this point. ‘The adoption of sons,’ he says:
‘… is by a certain conformity of image to the natural Son of God. This takes place in two ways. It is brought about, first by the grace of life, which is an imperfect conformity. Secondly, by the glory of the heavenly country, which will be perfect conformity, as St. John says, Now we are the sons of God, and it hath not yet appeared what we shall be, we know that when He shall have appeared we shall be like to Him, because we shall see Him as He is.
‘Therefore, since we obtain grace by Baptism, and because in the Transfiguration is foreshown the clarity of the future glory, therefore both in the Baptism and in the Transfiguration it was fitting that the natural Sonship of Christ should be manifested by the witness of the Father, because He alone, together with the Son and the Holy Ghost, is perfectly conscious of that perfect Generation of the Son.’
Further on he says, that…
‘… as in the Baptism of our Lord in which the mystery of the first regeneration was declared, there was shown the operation of the whole Trinity, in that there was there the Incarnate Son, and the Holy Ghost appeared in the form of the Dove, and the Father was there shown by the Voice, so in the Transfiguration, which is the sacrament of the second regeneration, the whole Trinity appeared, the Father in the Voice, the Son in the Man Christ Jesus, and the Holy Ghost in the Bright Cloud.
‘For as in Baptism He gives innocence, which is represented by the simplicity of the dove, so in the Resurrection He will give to His elect the clarity of glory, and refreshment from all evil, which are represented in the bright cloud.’1
Stages of adoption
This doctrine of St. Thomas is enough to explain to us the correspondence, and at the same time the contrast, between these two great mysteries of the Baptism and the Transfiguration of our Lord. In each of them there is a stage gained in the process of the perfect adoption of sons, which is ours by virtue of the natural and incommunicable filiation of our Lord to His Eternal Father. It cannot well be denied that the ancient saints of the Old Testament received something of this adoptive relationship to God, as many of the Fathers teach, and we know that when St. Paul counts up the special privileges of the chosen people, he places among them this of ‘the adoption and the glory.’
But under the Old Law the adoption was rudimentary, whereas by virtue of the Baptism of our Lord it is imparted in a far more perfect form by what St. Thomas has called in the passage just now quoted, ‘the first adoption.’ This is given us when we are regenerated in Baptism, and is the fruit of our Lord’s Baptism in one sense, and of the Redemption of the Cross in another. But this adoption is not all, it is not perfect, it raises us to a state of Sons of God in a sense in which we had not that state and dignity before, we receive in it the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of Adoption, and of children, our state is no longer that of servants but of sons, as St. Paul often argues.
But it cannot be said that our adoption is perfected until we are made partakers of the glory of the body which is foreshown in the mystery of which we have been speaking. And thus we find St. Paul himself speaking of the ‘redemption of the body’2 as the adoption of the Sons of God, and of the whole creation expecting the revelation of the Sons of God as the signal for its own liberation from the bondage of corruption.
The Transfiguration stands in relation to this in somewhat the same position as the Baptism of our Lord at the first adoption of which St. Thomas speaks. And inasmuch as in each of these adoptions we receive something of the filiation of our Lord to His Father, through His Sacred Humanity, it is natural that in these two mysteries alone of His life upon earth, there should be this manifestation of the Blessed Trinity and the words of the Eternal Father declaring that our Lord in His Human Nature also is His most dearly loved Son, the Source and Fountain of all sonship to Him in others than Himself.
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. Thomas iii, qu. xlv. art. 4.
Rom. viii. 23.