In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen. Today in the Holy Church we celebrate the great feast of the transfiguration of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The eye of this feast is beautifully decorated on the Anilogian right here before you on the Soleilah. We see Christ depicted at the peak of Mount table with the prophets Moses and Elijah on either side.
And we see the apostles Peter, James and John on the ground. And Christ is transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun and his garments became white as light. These three disciples receive a glimpse of the glory of the God-Man Jesus Christ.
And as today’s hymns tell us, they are barely able to withstand this glory, to bear it. In fact, today’s gospel describes Peter, James and John as having fallen on their faces. And we see this in the icon. This reminded me of something that St.
Ephraim the Syrian said in his commentary on the book of Genesis. St. Ephraim tells us that the divine glory radiating from the face of Adam before the fall was so bright that as the animals approached him one by one to be named by him, they could not look at his face because of the brightness that shone in it. Their reflection of the divine glory, they weren’t able to take it in.
Notice when you look at the icon of the transfiguration, man has become after the fall like the animals, unable to bear the brightness of the glory of God. Peter, James and John are on the ground and all four, turning away from Christ whose face shone like the sun. Notice as the animals were unable to bear the glory of God that shone from the face of man before the fall, so now man has become like the animals unable to bear the glory of God. Though the fathers teach us that before the fall, Adam was in full communing with God.
He walked with God and saw him face to face, but that changed when Adam tasted of the fruit of disobedience and he turned his face from God. He shifted his attention away from the uncreated one and he began to orient himself towards created things. He was no longer facing God, therefore he could no longer reflect the glory of God. He lost the brightness that the animals once saw in his face.
It was a spiritual nakedness because Adam, as soon as the fall happened, realized that he was naked, often we think of that just in physical terms, but he realized, Adam after the fall, that he was spiritually naked. Adam was once clothed with divine glory. He found himself not only stripped of that glory, but unable to bear it. The purpose of the incarnation of our Lord was to reverse the effect of the fall and to restore the divine likeness in us.
To take our life, which had been disfigured by sin and to transfigure it by his grace, the path to transfigured life is heeding Christ’s call to ascend the mountain. In today’s Gospel we read that it was Christ who took the disciples and led them up behind mountain. In scripture, mountains often are a meeting place with God, a place where we can experience his divine glory, and we see this in the life of the Prophet Moses when he ascended Mount Sinai and he spoke to God face to face. When Moses came down from the mountain, his face was shining so brightly with divine glory that in order for him to speak to the people, he had to cover his face with a veil because they could not bear the glory of God that reflected from his face.
This was just a foreshadowing of the restoration of the divine likeness that Christ would finally bring to mankind through his death, his resurrection and his ascension into heaven. So where is this mountain that Christ is calling us to ascend? I want to remind you of a conversation that Christ had with the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s world. She said to him, “Our fathers worship on this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is a place where one ought to worship.” Christ responds to her, “Woman, believe me.
The hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. The hour is coming when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth.“ St Paul, his first epistle to Timothy, tells us that the church is the pillar in the bulwark of truth. And we know that it is through the church that the Holy Spirit is given to the world. So the mountain that we are called to ascend is the Holy Church.
Ascending the mountain means going to church. The church is the mystical body of Christ, it is the continuation of incarnation on earth. It is the source of all of God’s grace and blessings, the vehicle of our healing and salvation. The church is the source of immortality and incorruption where we are born and moved through the waters of baptism and nourished by her mysteries.
The church is where we receive the medicine of immortality, the most precious body and blood of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ. The church is Mount Table where we meet the transfigured Christ in all of his glory. If you visit a traditional Orthodox country, you’ll notice that their churches and their monasteries in their cities and villages wherever you go, their churches and their monasteries are built at the highest point of the city or the village. And if the village or the city is not very mountainous or hilly, the church is often the highest structure that you can see.
This reflects the Orthodox ethos that nothing is more important than the church because it is the place of communion and fellowship with God. It is the place where we ascend the mountain. Brothers and sisters, church is no ordinary place in the divine services of the church. We ascend and we meet God in His holy dwelling place.
Don’t imagine that right now, you are in Paleos Heights, Illinois on August 6th, 2023. That’s not the case. When we enter into the worship of the church, we transcend time and space and enter into God’s eternal dwelling place. We enter into and participate in the eternal worship that’s always taking place in the kingdom of God before His holy throne.
Though the altar is mystically the throne of God, all the Orthodox churches in the world mystically become the same place. We are all worshiping at the same heavenly altar and receiving all the communion from the same chalice, and that’s where we get the expression amongst Orthodox people who live in different places, “see you at the chalice.” When they say “see you at the chalice,” they’re referring that they will see you in the heavenly altar in God’s dwelling place. No matter where you are in the world, you are mystically in the same place when you are in the worship of the church. Oftentimes, Sunday in your throughout church is not only referred to as the first day of the week, but it’s also referred to as the eighth day.
Yes, there are seven days in the week, God created the world in six days and He rested on the seventh. But the work that Christ accomplished by His resurrection transcends all time. Have you ever noticed when we celebrate a feast of Christ that we’re always speaking in the present tense? For example, on Pascha, what do we say?
Today is the day of resurrection, a yom yom yom yom yom yom yom yom yom yom yom. Or on the nativity, we say, “today the virgin comes to the cave.” On the feast of the enunciation, we say, “today is the beginning of our salvation.” As that the anthropos, the God-man, everything that Christ has done for us has eternal ramifications. This is important to understand, and I’ll say it again, everything that Christ has done for us has any total effect. That’s why we call Sunday the eighth day, the day that transcends all days, the eternal day, the day of resurrection, because it is timeless.
If we truly understand what happens at the divine services of the church, we would never want to leave the church. We would not be in a hurry. During the divine services, a portal is opened, and the uncreated and divine grace, energy in light of God is being poured out on us. This is what we mean when we say glory to thee who has shown us the light, or we have seen the true light and have received the heavenly spirit.
This is the transfiguring light that the apostles, Peter, James, and John experience on Mount Tabor. This is the experience of the uncreated light that many of the saints of the church have experienced, even the modern saints like St. Sarah from Sorro, or St. Joseph, the Hezekus, or St.
John Maxima, which do you see the grace available to us in the services? What do you think or why do you think the devil fights us so hard at church services? He doesn’t want us to receive this heavenly spirit, he does not want us to see the light. The Great Desert Father of the Egyptian Desert, Abba Agafar one said, “There is no greater labor than that of prayer to God.
For every time a person wants to pray, our enemies, the demons, want to prevent us from praying, for they know that it is only by turning us away from prayer that they can hinder our journey.“ In other words, they can hinder our ascent, our ascent to the divine mountain, our ascent here in the Holy Church. And there are three primary ways that Satan and his demons attacked us while we sit here in church attempting to pray. They try to attack us through sleepiness, distracting thoughts and a temptation to talk. And I just want to say a brief word on each, and then I’ll end.
First sleepiness, have you ever noticed how often we yawn when we come to church? Sometimes that’s due to not getting enough sleep. But other times it could be a sleepiness induced by Satan to prevent us from praying and make us lose focus. St.
John Cassie once wrote, “Once when I was talking to some brothers on a spiritual topic, they will overcome by sleep so deep that they could not even open their eyelids any longer. Then, wishing to show them the power of the devil, I introduced a trivial subject for conversation. Immediately they woke up full of joy. Then I said to them with sighs, “Until now we are discussing heavenly things and your eyes were heavy with sleep.
But when I embarked on a useless discourse, you all woke up with enthusiasm. And therefore, brothers, I implore you to recognize the power of the evil demon. Pay attention to yourselves, guard yourself from the desire to sleep when you are doing or listening to something spiritual. The reason often you see orthodox people make the sign of the cross over their mouth after they are on is to whirl off sleep that could be potentially induced by Satan and his demons.
Second, distracting thoughts. If we are not struggling with sleepiness, then we are struggling with distracting thoughts. I am so hungry, what am I going to eat after the divine liturgy? What chores do I have to do today?
What’s my schedule like this week at work? Why is Father way off key in his singing? Why is the choir singing this way and not that?“ These children are so noisy and they are all over the place. Look at what she is wearing.
Or maybe it’s a weird or crazy thought that just enters into your mind, you get the picture. All those thoughts are from the demons. No thought should keep us from worshipping God. If we are not able to focus, don’t blame anyone or anything else, it’s our fault for listening to the suggestions of the demons.
As soon as the temptation to be distracted comes, we have to flick the thought away. Don’t dwell on it, but dismiss it. The third temptation is to talk. I want everyone to pay attention here.
St. John Klimake says that there is a specific demon assigned by Satan to tempt us to talk while we are in church. When you speak in church, while the divine services are taking place, no matter what the reason is, even if it might seem like a good reason. This applies to all of us, the clergy and the altar, the choir and the charters, the ushers in the back, the people sitting next to each other and the pews.
There is no good reason to talk. It is a temptation of Satan. We should not listen to him or to his demons. We should not talk in church.
My beloved family, the greatest weapon we have against these three temptations of the demons during the divine services. You know what the greatest weapon we have against them so that we can focus? It is a prayer rope. How many of you have a prayer rope?
This is something you should bring to church with you. If you do not have a prayer rope, get one and bring it to the church. You take it out and you begin to pray internally, “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me. Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.
Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.“ You say that Jesus prayer quietly to yourself. Someone might say to you, “You shouldn’t use your prayer rope during the divine services. You should focus on the prayers instead. It would be great if you can focus on the prayers with your whole heart and your whole mind, but the demons attack so much that they keep us from focusing, especially during the divine services of the church.
What would be the alternative to saying that Jesus prayer? Leopiness, distracting thoughts, and the temptation to talk. So I rather do the Jesus prayer than those three things and you’ll find out that doing the Jesus prayer will actually help you focus on the services and I want you to try it. You’ll discover that it will be easier to hear and to understand the prayers being said and the hymns being sung and that the world will penetrate your heart even more because you’re filling your heart with the name of Jesus.
Finally, let me remind you the blessings that you receive at the liturgy and other divine services is proportional to the struggle and effort that you put into preparing yourself for services and remaining attentive during the services. And this preparation is not just the day of or the night before, it’s a constant preparation and a constant awareness that only increases when we live a life of repentance, prayer, fasting, purity, and forgiveness. And if you prepare yourself properly, you will receive blessings and grace so that a daily desire will be ignited in you to attend more and more church services, Sunday will not be enough to quench the desire in you. Once you understand what is happening at the services, that we are transcending time and space that a portal into the kingdom of heaven is being opened to us and that through this portal, God’s uncreated energy and grace and light is being poured out on us.
You will never want to leave church. Going to church once a week again will not be enough. You’ll begin to realize that being outside of the church is the most unnatural thing for a human being and that being in church for every service that’s offered is the most natural and authentic way to live for a human being created in God’s image and likeness. We will become like Peter, James, and John, who after attending the mountain and experiencing the transfiguring light and power and grace of Christ, they said, “It is good for us to be here.
Let us build three booths.“ They did not want the experience to end. They wanted to remain in the presence of Christ’s uncreated grace and energy and light. They were not in a rush waiting for the moment to be over. The church is Mount Table offering us the transfigured life of Christ and the more we ascend, the more we come to church, the more transfigured we will be and the less disfigured by sin we will become because we are coming into direct contact again with the uncreated and life-giving grace of our Lord and God and Savior of Jesus Christ.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen.