Feast of Transfiguration  
2 Peter 1:10-19; Matthew 17:1-9

Among the Ukrainian people, this feast day is popularly called Spas. The Lord, Jesus Christ is the Saviour of the world, and the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor is a foretelling of His salvation and that in the future He will again take on the image of God, which is inaccessible to human contemplation. There is one Saviour in the world for all people. "And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved." (Acts 4,12).

In order to be saved, to have eternal life, people must follow Christ, the light of His teaching, His instruction, in faith. The Lord testifies:

"I am the light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life." (John 8,12).

By His Transfiguration, Christ showed with the radiance of revealed divine light that although a difficult road of mockery, insults, the judgment of the unrighteous, the passionate path to Calvary, and suffering and death on the cross still lies before Him, at the end shines the divine light of the Resurrection and the victory of good over evil, truth over untruth, life over death.

Christ also showed by His sudden change, the Transfiguration, that He is able to take on the divine image and be invulnerable to all evil human designs. Thus, He does not go to the cross to suffer because of weakness, but to fulfill God's plan for the salvation of the human race.

Also, by his Transfiguration, the change from a human person to a divine person, by his union with the most famous prophets of the Old Testament, Christ showed every believer and his follower that despite the difficult roads and prickly thorns on that road, despite the ravines, chasms and mountains that lie along our life’s way, everyone can, through communion with the Almighty Divine Saviour, reach the ultimate goal - the ultimate haven of life, and find salvation in Christ.

But followers of Jesus Christ, Christians, must be aware that they must spiritually look upon the radiance of Christ's face at the time of the Transfiguration in order to shine in life with the light of virtue, love, and mercy, so that our images are not clouded by black clouds of anger, pride, cruelty, cunning and betrayal.

The face, the clothing of the soul of a Christian, should always be pure, truthful, enlightened and imbued with the commandments of Christ. Only Christ can whiten, clean that spiritual garment. Only He can wash away the dirt and stains on our spiritual clothing, and the impurities of the soul, through our participation in the Sacraments, which the Lord gave us for our soul’s purification and healing.

We should not expect miracles, some kind of automatic, mechanical cleaning of one’s spiritual clothes and the acquiring of a feeling of brightness of the soul, if we are only guests and not active members of the Church of Christ.

Each person and each nation reveals its spiritual, moral face, spiritual baggage before people and before God. The Lord Jesus Christ testifies (Matthew 25:32) that the time will come when all nations will gather before Him and He will separate the sheep from the goats. Here it is necessary to emphasize, as it is written in the Gospel: "And before Him all nations will be gathered..." (Matthew 25:32). “Nations” cannot be replaced with "all people"; the Lord has determined this.

Even nations, which have already disappeared from the face of the earth, such as the Phoenicians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Huns, Vandals - they have all left behind their spiritual face and their spiritual clothing: their faith, customs, deeds, what good or evil they did.

We, the Christian nations, will face special demands before the Judgement: "Every one to whom much is given, of him will much be required" /Luke 12,48/. We know the commandments of Christ, we know the Gospel, we know God's will - we may be asked how we changed, grew into true Christians, and whether we tried to live according to Christ's instructions.

And, yet, what darkens or mars the face of a people?

This can occur when a nation loses its faith, piety, morality; when it commits violence, robbery, destruction of other nations (which exist by the grace of God), robs other nations... Let us, for example, recall Shevchenko’s words in his poem Caucasus: “...because they have already taken/ Both the field and the sea.”

We can say with dignity that our nation has not enslaved anyone, does not bear the seal of Cain for killing other peoples, did not gain prosperity at the expense of other peoples. The hands of our people were often covered in blood, but in defence against the predatory attacks of our neighbours....

Even so, we also have stains on our clothes and grievous wounds on our bodies. The atrocities of the enslavers of our people also bloodied and stained the face of our people. Within our people, among entire strata and classes, as a result of foreign enslavement, there was fostered an indifference to one's own nation and a service to foreigners, to the detriment of one's neighbour, to one's people. For generations within our nation, the enslavers nurtured betrayal of their own people and their Church. This was the product of venality, with the aim of obtaining personal benefits.

Celebrating and experiencing the Lord's Transfiguration, when the light of God illuminated the human image of Christ the Saviour, we pray to God to enlighten us with his light and transform our spiritual faces, so that we all change internally, that we transform and be rid of these stains of betrayal, betrayal and hatred of one’s neighbours, of one’s people. We should eliminate betrayal of Christ, and always serve the Truth of God, in order that love and mercy flourish among us, and that we always walk the paths of the Lord's Commandments and achieve salvation in Christ Jesus and our Lord.

Amen.

Very Rev. Fr. Taras Slavchenko

Taras Slavchenko was born on March 8, 1918 in Nikopol, Dnipropetrovsk region in Ukraine. After graduating from school and the Pedagogical College, he entered the language and literature faculty of the Scientific Pedagogical Institute. Having successfully completed it in 1938, he served as a teacher in a secondary school.

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