What did the caterpillar say to his friend as he saw the passing of an iridescent butterfly? “You’ll not catch me going up in one of those things!” – Metamorphosis.
From: Alice Through the Looking Glass
‘There’s glory for you.’
‘I don’t know what you mean by glory,’ Alice said,
‘I meant “There’s a nice knock-down argument for you.”’
‘But glory doesn’t mean a nice knock-down argument,’ Alice objected
‘When I use a word’, Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone: ‘it means just what I choose it to mean-neither more nor less.’ Lewis Carroll
Glory is at the heart of this moment, which we know as Transfiguration but in Greek is Metamorphosis.
The word Glory in ancient Greek comes from a word meaning opinion, distinction or fame.
When the Hebrew Scriptures were translated into Greek in about 220 BC something rather remarkable happened. This Greek word got a little hijacked. A word which meant opinion or fame took on greater and deeper meanings.
From of Old, what was known and what dwelt with God’s people was his majesty, presence and abiding, even tenting, was part of the meaning of one of the words. The various different words in Hebrew were translated by the word Doxa in Greek. This filtered through into the New Testament, through the translation of the OT.
The classical Greek word has given way in the Greek of the New Testament to a word which speaks of God’s presence, his weight and his shining. Michael Ramsay summarises an investigation he made of the word Glory thus:
In so far as doxa is the divine splendour, Jesus Christ is that splendour and in so far as the state of light and radiance awaits the Christian, that light and radiance draw their meaning from the presence and person of Christ: such is the place of Jesus Christ in relation to the divine glory that it is possible to speak of the glory of Christ, and by those words to mean no less that the glory of God himself.
Back to metamorphosis.
Being changed was one of the great issues in ancient Greek thought. Real things in Greek thought did not and could not change. They were constants in the real divine realm. On earth, where everything was a shadow, appearance gave way to its divine image and type; the true soul of human beings was in a sense liberated by death, that was the only change to be contemplated.
Jesus’ metamorphosis (his transfiguration), was the revelation of who and what he was: the true radiance of God’s glory.
Jesus revealed God’s weight, and his very being and essence made clear that heaven and earth had been united; and even, that past, present and future culmination had been anticipated.
The end, the very end, was already here – this is what the narrative of the Transfiguration is telling us.
St Irenaeus said at the end of the 2nd c. that “the glory of God is a human being fully alive” while “the life of humanity consists in the vision of God.”
Through the eyes of those three, Peter, James and John (they are us, of course), Jesus shows us humanity in all its richness, glory and beauty. It is somehow the end in the middle.
The wonderful poet of our days, Malcolm Guite captures what Peter speaks of:
For that one moment, ‘in and out of time’,
On that one mountain where all moments meet,
The daily veil that covers the sublime
In darkling glass fell dazzled at his feet.
There were no angels full of eyes and wings
Just living glory full of truth and grace.
The Love that dances at the heart of things
Shone out upon us from a human face
And to that light the light in us leaped up,
We felt it quicken somewhere deep within,
A sudden blaze of long-extinguished hope
Trembled and tingled through the tender skin.
Nor can this blackened sky, this darkened scar
Eclipse that glimpse of how things really are.
With the Lenten path before us, with whatever mountains there are to climb or deserts to stumble through, we have this vision to contemplate and take solace from. We may look at the suffering of God in Christ, and remember that we will share in his resurrection glory, then even suffering and death become part of the path to glory.
And here in the Eucharist, as Christ is again transfigured, metamorphosed, in this bread and wine, let us strive and long to see the presence of the Glory of God.