"Full of Grace"

The highest Mount of Transfiguration, which towered far above Mount Tabor or Mount Hermon, was a fifteen-year-old girl. She was meticulously prepared for this Most Holy event, first by Her saintly parents and then by years of holy living being fed by angels. Upon this High Summit did God lightly step into the lower climes and heavier air of human habitation.

And the sacred language reserved for this event, which was to open the Gates of Heaven, was επισκιάζω / episkiázo rendered as "to overshadow." Better definitions are "to envelop," "to embrace," or still better, "to envelop with light."

Episkiázo is a rare verb in the Gospels, used by Luke only twice: once to describe the Annunciation (Lu 1:35) and once the Transfiguration (Lu 9:34). Matthew and Mark use this verb once each to describe the three Disciples being enveloped on the Mount of Tranfiguration. Matthew says "a cloud of light" enveloped them, in Greek a νεφέλη φωτεινὴ / nephéle photeinè.

This cloud mysteriously is God. Let us read closely:

Are not the three Disciples enveloped with God? Enveloped in Uncreated Light? There immersed in a Cloud. And a Voice came of the same Cloud. And that Voice was God.

The only reference point outside of the Annunciation for this "enveloping with light" is the Transfiguration. And the only reference point outside of the Transfiguration for the same Light is the Annunciation. In the Gospels they are set apart as a sacred pair. They are moments where the veil between the Divine and the earthly disappears.

Preparing the Disciples for the Transfiguration, Jesus brings them onto a burning point, seating before the grotto of Pan near the headwaters of Jordan. He asks them, "Who do you say that I Am?" At that moment, they would have seen the Temple to Augustus Caesar to the left and booths carved in the side of the mountain to the right where pagan deities stood and were worshipped.

He then would lead up to the summit of nearby Mount Hermon, truly the "most high": at 7,336 feet the highest mountain in Israel (which explains why everything should be turning white). You see, Cyril of Jerusalem posited that Mount Tabor (about three centuries after the fact) was the scene for the Transfiguration. He did this only because it was nearer than Mount Hermon to Jesus' general activities. But Mount Hermon is next to Banias and the Grotto of Pan. And Mount Hermon would explain why Peter should offering to build "booths" (skene) for Jesus, Elijah, and Moses (Mt 17:3). He had just seen these at the Grotto of Pan.

The point is this: the Disciples had been led to an all-important moment of decision, to a crossroads. "You tell Me!," Jesus challenges them. "What does all this mean?! Who do you say that I Am?!" And when they equivocate &mdash' "Some say Elijah ...." — He cuts them short. "But Who do you say that I Am?" They have come face-to-face with God, and now the time has come to give an account "for the hope that is in [them]" (1 Peter 3:15), as Peter would later say.

Soon after this they are brought into the undoubted Presence of the Divine, enveloped in a cloud with the Divine. There stand the three who have stood face-to-face with God: Moses, Elijah, and Jesus, which now brings their examination to a climax.

Mary, too, must face a crossroads. She too must be examined, this time by an angel:

The same test had been administered to Zacharias:

But Zechariah equivocates. He questions the veracity and authority of Gabriel:

The angel makes his flinty reply:

Mary's reply to Gabriel is quite different and will stand as the pattern of faithfulness unto the ages of ages:

For Mary, the moment was to be fulfilled. Her parents had known that Her birth was special: a gift of grace. Her life was set apart. She lived in expectation of the holy. But then, as Jesus entered the creation, She would be thrust into that terrible place where the twisted world faces Heaven. It is a bloody and cruel place: the Slaughter of the Innocents, the Flight to Egypt, The boy Jesus sharply debating the authorities ..... who would bait Him the rest of His life. Truly, She, with Her Son, would fulfill Simeon's prophecy: He as God's Sign of Contradiction ( καὶ εισ σημει̃ον αντιλεγομενόν / kaì eis shmeîov antilegómenon ) and She as the one whose soul would be pierced by a sword (Lu 2:35).

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What of Moses and Elijah on the Mount of Transfiguration? They stand in eternity in union with God. Their earthly existence was but a twinkling. "Man is like a breath; / His days are like a passing shadow," writes the Psalmist. Indeed, their lives were cut short as both were assumed into Heaven before the natural span of their years. Which then shall we say is their ordinary state? Is it not eternal life participating forever in God's Uncreated Light their ordinary state?

Christianity is personal. It is about each of us and the spiritual drama which is our lives. I say drama .... our lives are epics filled with deeds of arms and smoking battlefields as we must engage the evil one and his demons. Ours is not a religion of the book read comfortably under a tree. Wrote Joseph Ratzinger, our religion is an encounter with a Man, Jesus of Nazareth.

The Annunciation is not a once-for-all curiosity. Yes, the Incarnation is unique, but Jesus is born within each of us. He is the Logos; He created us with His own breath. We are the created Image of the Visible Image of the Invisible God, Jesus Christ being the Eldest Brother. His Tranfiguration also was not a once-for-all event. For this reason John and James and Peter were led to the Mount of Transfiguration and immersed in the Uncreated Light.

We too have been prepared for our encounter with the Most High. We lived for years beneath the soaring skies of youth with Heaven palpably above. We were shown the Heavenly light of countless dawns and sunsets. We have seen the starry skies in the awesome firmament. We have been blessed with intimations of the Divine. Some of us have even been ushered into the near Presence of God as the Disciples were. It is not for nothing that these things have been done. For our Heavenly life this is our ordinary life.

And we long for it especially in our later years. We regret the wasted time alienated from God. We regret the culture of death and yearn for the culture of life which alone can be found in Him. The scene is captured powerfully in the Acts of the Apostles:

You see, these people are invalid and diseased. The taste the approach of death. They bitterly regret the tawdry world and their part in it.

And then Peter's shadow passes by. In this shadow is vestige of the Uncreated Light that has touched Him. And this shadow is the only other place in the New Testament outside of the Gospels where the verb επισκιάζω / episkiázo is used, the same verb associated with the cloud of light which alighted upon Mary and into which the three Disciples are immersed. Here, it marks the boundary between the world of disease and death and life leading to endless life with God.

Intimately related to this cloud of light is the equally rare μεταμορφοώ / metamorphoó, which occurs only once in the Gospels:

(Yes, it also appears one time in St. Matthew's Gospel describing the same scene but we should note that 97% of Mark's Gospel is found in St. Matthew.)

Remarkably, St. Paul uses this verb, but only twice, once in is his landmark sentence from the Letter to the Romans:

And he uses it once in the Second Letter to the Corinthians, describing the same subject:

As I say, rare. What he is talking about here, again, is a participation in the Uncreated Light, which is the life for which we all are being prepared .... if we will consent to it.

We must read with sobriety that this life is incompatible with mainstream twenty-first century lifestyles: those who have casual sex (πόρνοι), those who break their marriage vows in adultery (μοιχοἱ), and both partners in the act of sodomy (μαλακοἱ and αρσενοκοι̃ται) will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

Like Mary, like the Apostles, we face a crossroads. We may defile ourselves on earth and have our pornography and act on every impulse of our passions. Or we may have life with God. But we cannot have both. It is impossible to commune with God, to participate in His Inner Life, if we have already chosen for eternal death and are filled with the vileness of that life. We cannot enter His banquet hall if we are not wearing the wedding garment, signifying purified life (Mt 22:11ff), but will taken to "outer darkness [where] there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth" (Mt 22:13).

Our religion is deeply personal, even down to the most intimate and private detail, like the religion given to the Patriarchs.

How different from the religion depicted in Deuteronomy. Ours is not an aloof god demanding a succession of slaughtered goats and bulls. Ours is not a centralized authority who can only be encountered in a building erected in Jerusalem as a headquarters for the Persian Empire. No wonder, the scribes and Levites and priests and Pharisees are left behind. Like Zacharias, they doubt that the angels, the messengers of a personal God, even exist. Judah-ism, invented in Babylon and promoted by the Maccabees just before the Incarnation of God, is intended to rule a vassal province, not to bring its adherents to Heaven. You see it regulates life on earth and does not even contemplate Heaven.

Today, as we observe the Most Holy Annunciation to the fifteen-year-old Mary, we have a foretaste of Jesus' promise that we shall see angels ascending and descending (a subject banned in the Zion temple and absent in Deuteronomy). The Pauline Correspondence and the Acts of the Apostles depict the Kingdom of Heaven being shared far beyond Mount Zion, even to the ends of the earth. It is a world where angels are apt to appear anywhere and everywhere, where the power of God is falling all around us, and where a fifteen-year-old girl might be immersed into a cloud of light, opening a gate through which will pass the Person of God.

The Kingdom of Heaven is real. And it appears anywhere people say "no" to the world and its ways and "yes" to the Church and her teachings. Say "yes" to godly life. It is no loss. The only things you must give up finally are your personal defilement and death. And what you gain is the luminous world of angels, who surround you even now, and the saints alive in God's ineffable light: a place prepared for you in a House of many mansions.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.