Feast day: August 6

The Transfiguration of the Lord

Feast · 1st century

Patron of —

On a high mountain Jesus is transfigured before Peter, James, and John, his face shining like the sun, as Moses and Elijah appear and the Father's voice is heard from a cloud.

The Transfiguration is recorded in three of the Gospels. Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up a high mountain — by long tradition Mount Tabor in Galilee — and there, as he prays, he is transfigured before them: his face shining like the sun and his clothing becoming dazzling white, whiter than any earthly bleaching could make it.

Moses and Elijah appear and speak with him — the Law and the Prophets, the whole of the Old Covenant, bearing witness to Christ. Peter, overwhelmed and hardly knowing what to say, offers to build three tents to prolong the moment. Then a bright cloud overshadows them, and from it the Father's voice is heard: 'This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.'

The Church has always read the event as a gift given to the three apostles to steady them for what was coming. Coming shortly before Jesus sets his face toward Jerusalem and his Passion, the blaze of glory on the mountain is a foretaste of the Resurrection, meant to hold them firm when they would see him disfigured on the Cross.

Kept on August 6, the feast was extended to the universal Church in 1457 in thanksgiving for the relief of Belgrade from a besieging army. In the Eastern churches the Transfiguration ranks among the very greatest feasts of the year, a celebration of the light of God shining out through the humanity of Christ.

For a moment the three apostles saw Christ's hidden glory blaze out — a foretaste of Easter given to steady them before his Passion.

“This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.”
— The Transfiguration of the Lord