12 Sunday After Pentecost-- Postfeast of Transfiguration

AN ILLUSTRATION OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE: BREAD ON THE TABLE

Brothers and sisters in Christ—

     Today, we continue to celebrate the Feast of the Transfiguration of Our Lord, God, and Saviour Jesus Christ.  This is a very important feast in our Church, because this mystery so clearly reveals the true essence and meaning of the Christian life.  The Gospel accounts concerning the Transfiguration are very brief, but we know that this event was a very important, a very powerful experience for the apostles, who were present with Christ on the Holy Mountain.  The Holy Apostle Peter, the Prince of the Twelve Apostles, tells us about it in his first epistle: “As all things of his divine power which appertain to life and godliness, are given us, through the knowledge of him who hath called us by his own proper glory and virtue. By whom he hath given us most great and precious promises: that by these you may be made partakers of the divine nature… For he received from God the Father honour and glory: this voice coming down to him from the excellent glory: This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him. And this voice we heard brought from heaven, when we were with him in the holy mount.”

     The great desire and goal of the Christian life is salvation, which means everlasting life in the Kingdom of God, but we receive everlasting life when we become partakers of the divine nature, just as St. Peter said.  The only everlasting life is God’s life, for only God lives eternally. If we hope to take part in everlasting life, we have to be in God.  St. Athanasius of Alexandria spoke about this fact in very simple terms. He said: “God became man, that man might become god.”  In Christ, we take part in the very life of God, so that we have the same life with Him, and, as we know, that which has the same life we call by the same name.  Christ accomplishes our union with God in His own Person, for Jesus Christ is One single Divine Person, who subsists in two natures: His own proper Divine Nature and also the human nature, which He accepted from the Most Holy Mother of God.  In this way, Christ God became “Emmanuel,” for He was God, Who created the universe, from the beginning, but He became “with us,” becoming our brother according to the human nature.  In His Person, He has already accomplished our union with God, but in order to take part, personally, in this everlasting life, we have to have fellowship with Him.  How can we become united with Christ? Our effort begins with the destruction of our will.  The human will is not evil in itself, but God made it to infallibly choose the good.  Sin introduced into it the sense of deliberation, just as the Prophet Moses described in the Book of Genesis: “The serpent said to the woman: No, you shall not die! But God knows, that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will become like God, knowing good and evil.”  Our ancestors already knew good.  Afterall, they knew God.  What they learned was evil.  In other words, they learned nothing from the transaction, for evil is only a shadow and a deprivation. 

     We can restore our wills, if we destroy the sense of deliberation, which is in them.  In order to do this, we have to accept that which God sends us.  It is necessary for us to practice “kenosis” just as the Holy Apostle Paul says of Christ: “He, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But He emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men.”  Our Lord Jesus Christ gave us a very simple, yet powerful, illustration of His humility, which is our example: He became bread for us.  The Early Christian Church had the intuition that individual Christians need to become like bread for others.  St. Ignatius of Antioch wrote about his approaching martyrdom: “I am the wheat of God, and I will be ground by the teeth of the wild beasts that I might become the pure bread of Christ.” In the account of the martyrdom of Ignatius’ friend the Bishop of Smyrna, St. Polycarp, it is related that, after the saint’s terrible torments at the hands of the government officials, when they finally burned him to death, his holy body took on the appearance and aroma of baked bread.  Closer to our own time, St. Albert Chmielowski, the Polish saint of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, and a friend of our Metropolitan the Servant of God Andrey Sheptytsky, said that “the Christian needs to become like bread on the table. Anyone who desires some can cut off a portion.  Bread has no self-interest. It is for the hungry.”

     All we need to do is to imitate Christ—Our Heavenly Bread. If we become like that Heavenly Bread, then we will have the peace and joy of the Heavenly Kingdom, in the same way that Christ offered Himself in sacrifice for us (He became our Bread) I was also glorified to the right hand of the Father.  In the Mystery of the Transfiguration, He showed to His disciples His Divine Nature, giving to them and to us a glimpse of our ultimate goal.  But when He descended from the mountain and continued His journey to Jerusalem, there He showed to His disciples the manner in which they would be able to attain that goal.  He washed their feet and gave them the Divine Eucharist, His own Body and Blood, then He showed them His sacrifice, giving to them the solemn commandment that they love one another as He had loved them.  He told them: “Greater love than this no man has, that he lay down his life for his friends. When you do everything that I have commanded you, then you are my friends.”