Message from Bartholomeos I, Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople

There is no other way for us, as Church Fathers constantly tell us, but to relive inside us all that happened in the life of the God-man who undertook all our likeness in Him except for sin. If He was persecuted, we too shall be persecuted; if the Lord was crucified, we too need to be crucified, so that we may be glorified as He was glorified, be transfigurd as He was transfigured, be resurrected as He was resurrected. If we want to follow in the footsteps of His three select disciples who went up on Mount Thabor, we must follow the footsteps of the Master who walks towards Calvary. “Those who fervently wish to obtain the divine charisms and thirst to partake in the expectations prepared for the saints,” writes St Cyril of Alexandria in his Homily on the Transfiguration, “gladly accept the struggle for the love of Christ” and instead of unrewarded procrastination prefer a life of glory.

“Come, therefore, let us also climb up the mountain where Christ shone, to see things from there on high!” orders the fervent herald of Grace and Light, St Gregory Palamas, Archbishop of Thessalonica (Homily on the Transfiguration of the Lord). But he hastens to add: “Or rather, if we are ready and have become worthy of such a day, He himself, the Word of God will lift us there at the opportune moment”. All the might of our desire should, according to Father Sofronij Sacharov of blessed memory (Discourse on the Transfiguration of the Lord), be oriented solely in “obeying irreproachably and without fault the orders of God” (1 Tim. 6. 14).This is the way to understand the marvellous and supernatural event of the Transfiguration which is described with such simplicity in the Gospels. It is not we, who with our own mind can understand the mystery of the “transformation of mortals” but it will be the Lord who, if we renounce the works of darkness, will introduce us to His marvellous mysteries.