The Feast of the Transfiguration of Our Lord Jesus Christ: An Anglican Perspective

• The Biblical Event
• The Appointed Readings
• The Two Collects
• The BCP 2019 Preface
• The Feast of the Transfiguration in Anglican Worship
• Observing the Feast
• Conclusion

Feast Day: August 6

The Anglican calendar is ordered by a hierarchy of holy days, each carrying a different weight of observance. At the top sit the seven Principal Feasts, the highest days of the liturgical year. Below them are the Red-Letter Holy Days, appointed in the BCP 2019 with their own collects, propers, and lectionary readings, listed on page 688. They are called Red-Letter Days because, in the tradition of printing church calendars, these days appear in red ink, distinguished from the Optional Commemorations which appear in ordinary type. The Transfiguration of Our Lord Jesus Christ, observed on August 6, is one of these Red-Letter Holy Days. The BCP 2019 appoints a collect on page 630 and lectionary readings on page 731 for this feast.

August 6 falls in the Season after Pentecost, typically in the week of Proper 13. The long green summer season is interrupted by the mountain, by the shining face, the cloud, the voice, the disciples falling on their faces in terror, and the touch of the Lord: Rise, and have no fear. The Transfiguration is not an interruption of the ordinary season so much as its deepest claim: the one in whose name the Church gathers every Sunday, the one whose word it reads and whose body and blood it receives, is the one whose face shone like the sun on a mountain in Galilee before three witnesses who did not know what to make of what they had seen.

The BCP 2019 observes the Transfiguration twice. It appears first as the Last Sunday of Epiphany, Transfiguration Sunday, when it serves as the hinge between the season of light and the season of the cross, the glory revealed before the passion. It appears again on August 6 as a fixed Red-Letter Holy Day, observed regardless of the day of the week on which it falls. The two observances carry different collects and approach the same event from different angles. The Sunday collect looks toward the cross: the glory before the passion, the cross borne in the strength of that vision. The August 6 collect looks toward the vision itself: the King in his beauty, the soul delivered from the disquietude of this world. Both are needed. The Church looks at the Transfiguration from two directions and sees something different each time.

§The Biblical Event

The appointed Gospel for August 6 is Luke 9:28–36. Jesus takes Peter and John and James up the mountain to pray. It is while he is praying that the appearance of his face is altered and his clothing becomes dazzling white. Moses and Elijah appear in glory and speak with him about his departure, his exodus, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. Peter, not knowing what he is saying, offers to make three tents, one for each of them. A cloud comes and overshadows them. And out of the cloud comes the voice: “This is my Son, my Chosen One; listen to him!” (Luke 9:35, ESV) When the voice has spoken, Jesus is found alone. The vision is over. Luke adds that the disciples kept silent and told no one in those days anything of what they had seen.

Luke’s account carries three distinctive marks. Jesus goes up the mountain to pray, and the Transfiguration occurs in the midst of prayer, an overflow of communion made visible, not a spectacle arranged for disciples. Moses and Elijah speak with Jesus about his exodus; Luke alone names the subject of the conversation: the cross. And the disciples are weighed down with sleep, an echo of Gethsemane, where the same three will sleep again when what is happening exceeds what they can bear.

Exodus 34:29–35, the appointed Old Testament reading, is the account of Moses descending from Sinai with his face shining. He had been speaking with God, and he did not know that the skin of his face shone because of his speaking with God. Aaron and the people were afraid to come near him. Moses spoke with them, put a veil over his face, and returned to speak with God. The pattern is the same as the Transfiguration: the proximity to God produces radiance, the radiance produces fear, the one who carries the radiance speaks to those who are afraid. Moses’ presence on the mountain in Luke 9 is not a cameo. He is the type that Jesus fulfills, and exceeds. Moses’ radiance was reflected and faded. The radiance of Jesus on the mountain was his own, proceeding from within, and it did not fade.

§The Appointed Readings

The lectionary for the Feast of the Transfiguration is found on page 731 of the BCP 2019 and is fixed across all three years. Exodus 34:29–35, Psalm 99, 2 Peter 1:13–21, and Luke 9:28–36 are appointed every year.

Psalm 99 is the psalm of the holy mountain: “The Lord reigns; let the peoples tremble! He sits enthroned upon the cherubim; let the earth quake! The Lord is great in Zion; he is exalted over all the peoples. Let them praise your great and awesome name! Holy is he!” (Psalm 99:1–3, ESV) The psalm names what the Transfiguration enacts: the holy God who sits enthroned, before whom the earth trembles, whose name is awesome and holy, is the same God who speaks from the cloud on the mountain. And verse 7: “In the pillar of the cloud he spoke to them; they kept his testimonies and the statute that he gave them.” (Psalm 99:7, ESV) God speaks from the cloud to Moses and Aaron and Samuel. And on the mountain in Galilee, God speaks from the cloud to Peter and John and James: this is my Son; listen to him. The same cloud. The same voice. A different mountain. A different name.

2 Peter 1:13–21, the appointed Epistle, is Peter’s farewell and eyewitness testimony. Verses 16–18 are the apostle’s direct account: “For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,’ we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain.” (2 Peter 1:16–18, ESV) Peter writes as a dying man looking back at the ground of his certainty. He is not passing on a myth or a symbol or a theological framework. He is passing on what he saw and heard on a specific mountain on a specific day. The feast of August 6 takes that eyewitness testimony and places it in the middle of the summer, the long ordinary season, as a reminder that the ordinary rests on something extraordinary.

Peter then moves from what he heard on the mountain to what the prophets had written before the mountain: “And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.” (2 Peter 1:19, ESV) The Transfiguration confirms the prophecies. The prophecies illuminate the darkness until the full dawn arrives. August 6 is the feast that holds this together: the event on the mountain, the testimony of the eyewitness, the confirmation of the prophetic word, and the lamp shining in the dark place of ordinary time until the day dawns.

§The Two Collects

The BCP 2019 appoints distinct collects for the two Transfiguration observances, and comparing them illuminates the event from both sides. The Sunday collect on page 604 reads: “O God, who before the passion of your only-begotten Son revealed his glory upon the holy mountain: Grant that we, beholding by faith the light of his countenance, may be strengthened to bear our cross, and be changed into his likeness from glory to glory.” The Sunday collect looks through the Transfiguration toward the cross. The glory is given before the passion; the Transfiguration’s purpose is to prepare the disciples for what is coming. The petition is for strength to bear the cross and for transformation from glory to glory.

The August 6 collect on page 630 reads: “O God, who on the holy mount revealed to chosen witnesses your well-beloved Son, wonderfully transfigured, in raiment white and glistening: Mercifully grant that we, being delivered from the disquietude of this world, may by faith behold the King in his beauty; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.” The August 6 collect looks at the Transfiguration as a vision of the King in his beauty. The petition is not for strength under the cross but for deliverance from the disquietude of this world, the agitation, the distraction, the noise of ordinary time, and for the gift of beholding by faith the King in his beauty. Where the Sunday collect presses the Transfiguration toward the passion, the August 6 collect lifts the eyes from the passion toward the glory.

The two collects are not contradictory. They are complementary. The Church needs both angles. It needs the Transfiguration as a preparation for the cross, the glory that makes the passion endurable, and it needs the Transfiguration as a vision of the King in his beauty, the glory that interrupts the disquietude of this world and lifts the eyes above it. The Sunday observance in February gives the first. The feast day in August gives the second. Both belong in the Anglican year.

§The BCP 2019 Preface

The Preface of the Transfiguration, found on page 153 of the BCP 2019, is appointed for this feast: “Because in the mystery of the Word made flesh, you have caused a new light to shine in our hearts, to give the knowledge of your glory in the face of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord.” (BCP 2019, p. 153) The preface grounds the Transfiguration in the Incarnation: it is because the Word became flesh, because God took on a human face, that the knowledge of God’s glory is given in the face of Jesus Christ. The Transfiguration does not reveal a God previously hidden. It discloses the glory that has been present all along in the incarnate Word, briefly and deliberately unveiled before chosen witnesses, so that the Church may know whose face it looks for in the darkness of ordinary time and the darkness of death.

§The Feast of the Transfiguration in Anglican Worship

White vestments are worn on the Feast of the Transfiguration, appropriate to the luminous character of the event and to its status as a feast of the Lord. The seasonal antiphon appointed in the BCP 2019 for both the Epiphany season and the Feast of the Transfiguration is: “The Lord has shown forth his glory: O come, let us adore him.” The same antiphon governs both observances, confirming their shared theological character as feasts of the manifestation of Christ’s glory.

August 6 falls in the middle of the Season after Pentecost, most commonly in the week of Proper 13. The feast has been observed in the Eastern Church since the fourth century and in the Western Church since the seventh. It was included in the Anglican calendar at the Reformation and has been maintained in every subsequent edition of the Book of Common Prayer. The BCP 2019 gives it full Red-Letter status alongside the other major feasts of the Lord and the apostles.

The feast falls six days after James the Apostle (July 25) in the calendar. James was one of the three who saw the vision on the mountain. He was also the first of the Twelve to drink the cup. August 6 now honors what he saw before he drank it.

§Observing the Feast

The Feast of the Transfiguration falls on August 6 and always lands in the Season after Pentecost. The collect is on page 630 of the BCP 2019 and the lectionary readings are on page 731. White vestments are worn.

To observe the feast: pray the August 6 collect and let its particular petition sit alongside the Sunday collect you may know from February. The Sunday collect asked for strength to bear the cross. Today’s collect asks for something different: deliverance from the disquietude of this world, the gift of beholding the King in his beauty. In the middle of August, in the ordinary heat of summer, in the long green stretch of the Season after Pentecost, what would it mean to be delivered from the disquietude of this world? What would it mean to behold, by faith, the King in his beauty? Read Luke 9:28–36 and watch Jesus praying on the mountain, his face altered, his clothing dazzling white. Read 2 Peter 1:16–18 and receive Peter’s eyewitness account: “we were with him on the holy mountain.” (2 Peter 1:18, ESV) Read Exodus 34 and see Moses descending from Sinai with his face shining, not knowing that his face shone.

Let the feast do what August 6 is designed to do: interrupt the ordinary season with the extraordinary vision. The lamp shines in the dark place. The morning star will rise. Until then, the Church has been given the Transfiguration to look at, the face of Jesus shining like the sun on a mountain in Galilee, the voice from the cloud naming him the Chosen One, the touch on the shoulder when it is over: Rise, and have no fear.

§Conclusion

The Feast of the Transfiguration on August 6 is the Anglican calendar’s gift of the mountain vision in the middle of ordinary time. The Season after Pentecost is long. The weeks are green and the formation is slow. And then, on August 6, the mountain appears in the middle of the season, the shining face, the dazzling white, the cloud and the voice, the chosen witnesses falling on their faces. The King in his beauty. The collect does not ask the Church to bear the vision toward the cross, as the February collect does. It asks the Church simply to behold. To be delivered from the disquietude of this world long enough to see who is at the center of its worship, whose face shines in the darkness of ordinary time, whose glory the prophetic word has been pointing toward since before the mountain.

“O God, who on the holy mount revealed to chosen witnesses your well-beloved Son, wonderfully transfigured, in raiment white and glistening: Mercifully grant that we, being delivered from the disquietude of this world, may by faith behold the King in his beauty.” (BCP 2019, p. 630)