Tag Archives: Transfiguration

Moses’ Shining Face

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  • The Moses Fountain in the Old City of Bern, Switzerland shows Moses with rays of light. But it was common to depict Moses with horns because in Latin, the word for “rays of light” is only one or two letters different from the word for “horns” so the Latin text of Exodus read, “Horns came from Moses’ face” rather than “Rays of light came from Moses’ face.” Whether the original translation was mistaken, or copyists simply made a mistake that got repeated, the result was the same: Moses was usually depicted in Western Christian art with horns.





The Well of Moses by Claus Sluter (a Dutch sculptor) portrays Moses with two small horns outside a monastery in Dijon. The sculpture was carved in 1395–1403.



If the ministry of death, carved with letters on stone, came into being with glory, so much so that the Israelites could not gaze at Moses’ face because of the glory of his face which was vanishing, surely the ministry of the Spirit will be even more glorious. For if glory belongs to the ministry of condemnation, surely the ministry of righteousness abounds with even more glory! (2 Cor. 3:7-9)

St. Paul is referring to the story in Exodus about Moses and the Ten Commandments. According to the Old Testament, Moses spent 40 days atop Mt. Sinai while God carved the Ten Commandments on tablets of stone. The mountaintop was hidden by thick clouds and lightning; none of the people down below could see what was happening. When Moses finally came down the mountain with the stone tablets, no one could look at him because his face was so bright. He had spent time in the presence of God and God’s glory had saturated Moses’ skin. Moses had to cover his face if the people were to be able to look at him. Eventually, the glory began to fade but …. Anytime Moses went into the Tent of Meeting to speak with God, the same thing happened: the glory of God saturated Moses’ flesh and he had to cover his face when he came out because his skin was so bright no one could look at him.

St. Paul says that if the commandments which God revealed on Mt. Sinai and throughout the time of Israel wandering in the wilderness–which had dire punishments attached to them all and only taught people what they could NOT do and condemned them because it was impossible to keep all the commandments–then the commandments of the New Testament and the gift of the Spirit (which makes the people righteous, not condemned) must be even more glorious. (Hebrews 10 points out, “A man who violated the law of Moses dies without mercy at the testimony of two or three witnesses.”)

The apostles see the glory of God shining around Jesus at the Transfiguration on Mt. Tabor. In the cloud of light, they see Moses and Elijah talking with Christ. In the Acts of the Apostles, the face of St. Stephen shines with the glory of God and no one can look at him. Throughout history, saints have been seen shining with the glory of God. Sometimes, it was the disciples of the saints who were also seen shining; just as Moses spent time with God and saturated with divine glory, those who spend time with the saints who are saturated with glory, can also shine with the glory of God themselves.

There was a famous conversation between St. Seraphim of Sarov (d. 1833) and one of his disciples:

I replied: “I cannot look, Father, because your eyes are flashing like lightning. Your face has become brighter than the sun, and my eyes ache with pain.”

Father Seraphim said: “Don’t be alarmed, your Godliness! Now you yourself have become as bright as I am. You are now in the fullness of the Spirit of God yourself; otherwise you would not be able to see me as I am.”

After these words I glanced at his face and there came over me an even greater reverent awe. Imagine in the center of the sun, in the dazzling light of its midday rays, the face of a man talking to you. You see the movement of his lips and the changing expression of his eyes, you hear his voice, you feel someone holding your shoulders; yet you do not see his hands, you do not even see yourself or his figure, but only a blinding light spreading far around for several yards and illumining with its glaring sheen both the snow-blanket which covered the forest glade and the snow-flakes which besprinkled me and the great Elder. You can imagine the state I was in!

“How do you feel now?” Father Seraphim asked me.

“Extraordinarily well,” I said.

“But in what way? How exactly do you feel well?”

I answered: “I feel such calmness and peace in my soul that no words can express it.”

Righteousness and light. Divine glory. To be saturated with glory is to be filled with the Peace of God which passes understanding and this is not an experience that was limited only to ancient times or only the great saints. It is an experience that is available to anyone who honestly seeks God.

And where God’s glory and peace are found, the fragrance of his holiness is never far behind!

What Kind of Body?

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This wall painting from the Dura Europa synagogue in Syria depicts the raising of the dead from the dry bones, described in Ezekiel 37.


But someone will say, “How can the dead be raised? What kind of body will they have?” You fool! What you yourself sow does not come to life unless it dies. As for what you sow, you do not sow the body that will be but only a naked seed, such as wheat or something else. (1 Cor. 15:35-37)

Greek thinkers were disgusted at the thought that a dead body would be raised by God. They taught that the soul was immortal and that at death, it was set free from the prison of the body. That’s why pre-Christians and non-Christians often cremated the dead: to destroy the jail that was the body and liberate the soul.

Jews, like the Apostle Paul, did not believe in the immortality of the soul. They taught that the dead would be raised, body and soul together. A person was not complete without both a body AND a soul. The body was not a prison that a soul was trapped in; a body was an essential aspect of human reality. Early Christians taught that a human body was an aspect of the image and likeness of God that the human race was created to be.

The body is not the obstacle that prevents us from entering the Kingdom of God but rather our willful wickedness.

St. John Chrysostom, Homily 41 on 1st Corinthians

But none of the Jewish or Christian thinkers thought the resurrected bodies would just be our natural bodies resuscitated. The resurrected body of a person would be different somehow from the natural body before death. But no one was sure how the body would be different.

Origen thought our bodies would all be round, like beach balls, because the sphere is the perfect shape. Others thought our bodies would all look as they did when we were 33 years old since that is the age Jesus was when he was raised from the dead. Others said that the resurrected body would be gloriously bright, like Jesus’ body at the Transfiguration.

The resurrected body was described as “spiritual.” This did not mean “immaterial” or “ethereal.” St. Paul always uses the word flesh to mean “fallen, sinful.” He uses the word spiritual to mean “godly, saved.” Our resurrected bodies will not be sinful but godly, permeated and saturated with the Spirit and glory of God. Just as Jesus had a spiritual body after the Resurrection that could eat and drink and that the apostles could touch, so our bodies will be touchable but able to walk through locked doors and appear or disappear from rooms.

Certain saints are able to display some of these qualities even before they die, working various miracles by the Spirit of God that is already saturating their bodies because they have been washed with the water of baptism, anointed with the holy chrism, and consumed the Body and Blood of Christ in Holy Communion. Which is also why their bodies (i.e. relics) are able to perform miracles after they die. Our bodies display characteristics of the resurrection even before being raised because they are already becoming spiritual, i.e. godly.

“…like the sun in all its brilliance”

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Christ in glory as described in the Apocalypse, surrounded by the four heavenly beasts which are emblematic of the four evangelists. The 8-pointed stars in the concentric heavenly spheres are iconographic shorthand for the Saints gathered around Christ.

“In his right hand he held seven stars, and coming out of his mouth was a sharp, double-edged sword. His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance.” (Apoc. 1:16)

St. John describes his initial vision of Christ in the Apocalypse in terms very similar to the description of Christ at the Transfiguration in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Christ is shining more brilliant than the sun, in clothes more brilliantly white than possible on earth. The transfiguration itself is commonly associated with the End, the final Judgement and the revelation of the saints and righteous who will also shine more brilliantly than the sun. This “theosis” or “divinization” is also the common term for Greek-speaking Christians to describe salvation itself: by cooperation with God, the human person becomes like God and comes to share certain divine attributes–primarily love-charity. This assimilation of human to divinity is described in 2 Peter 1:4: “… that you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.”

The seven stars in Christ’s hand are commonly seen painted–many times over!–on the ceilings of churches. These stars are not meant to be stars in the sky, as if the roof were invisible, but are artistic shorthand for painting the saints in the Kingdom of Heaven. Rather than painting a multitude of faces, the church is adorned with a multitude of stars just as the righteous are commonly described as stars in visionary literature.

The sword which is the word of God (Isaiah 49, Wisdom 18, Hebrews 4) is both text and person. The “word of God” in English is commonly understood to be text, the word(s) spoken by God while the “Word” of God is understood to be the Divine Person who was incarnate. These distinctions of upper-case and lower-case are all editorial choices based on the theological opinions of the editors or typesetters. But in the Greek manuscripts there were few–if any–distinctions between upper-case and lower-case letters so that each time the phrase “word of God” appears it would have been understood to be BOTH the text spoken and the Divine Person who was made flesh.