Transfiguration and liturgy
Back in February, we celebrated the feast of the Transfiguration in the Church of Norway, on the Sunday that would traditionally be Sexagesima (which we celebrated a week earlier, on the Sunday that would traditionally be Septuagesima). As I noted back then, this makes sense, as the event of the transfiguration happened chronologically before Christ started His road towards Jerusalem and the Passion, the road we follow with Him during Lent. Nevertheless, I thought that I would write some reflections on what this means for us, as yesterday was 6th August, the day of the feast in most of Christendom.
In my homily, I noted that what happened at mount Tabor is not principally that Christ was transformed but that the Apostles were. Christ was, rather, revealed. In Norway we call the day Kristi forklåringsdag, which translates to “the day of Christ’s explanation” or “the day of Christ’s revelation” (which is why it also makes sense that in the Church of Norway it closes out the season of Epiphany). By the light of Christ on the Mountain, we are transformed. And I think that this is where we ought to look for the rationale for liturgy. The point of the liturgy is transformation, not only of us, but of the world. Citing Aidan Kavanagh and Alexander Schmemann, David W. Fagerberg makes the point that “liturgy is doing the world as the world was meant to be done,” and that “liturgical theology is not that discipline that has liturgy as its specific object,” but that its “specific object” is “a new and transfigured world.”1 The point of liturgy is that the “primary theologian” (i.e. the one who worships as part of the gathered liturgical assembly),2 sees the world as the place of liturgy. He or she, noted Fagerberg, “does not look at the liturgy (as do people who possess master’s degrees in liturgical studies), she looks through the liturgy at the world in the light of Mount Tabor. She sees the world as it was given by God (sacrament), and she sees the world as a gift to return to God (sacrifice). She has been capacitated to see all cosmic matter seeking its liturgical form.”3 By looking at the world liturgically, through Christ, we see it as redeemed from its fallen state, although that is eschatological, as it is not completely fulfilled yet.4 As St. Paul notes, in 1 Timothy 4:4-5: “For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving; for then it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer.” It seems to me that we must understand liturgy as a participation in the transfigured Christ, who is the Word, and that the liturgy reveals to us a transfigured world. And it happens every time we celebrate the liturgy.
Through the liturgy, where the divine word is enacted in various forms, humans prayers are transformed into divine utterances, water becomes a wellspring of grace, and bread and wine becomes the bread of life and the cup of salvation. This is what St. Augustine says when he notes, in his commentary on John 15:1-3, that the divine word (which comes to us in Scripture but is not exhausted by it) comes to these elements to transform them: “the word comes to the element and this becomes a sacrament” (Lt. accedit verbum ad elementum, et fit sacramentum).5 Liturgy is all about transformation, about the ritual and eschatological anticipation of the time when all will be changed, when God will makes all things new (Revelation 21). So remember that today. Remember that the light of Mount Tabor is not an anomaly; it is “true light that enlightens every man” (John 1:9). It is Christ Himself, as He is, and it reveals to us what we can become in Him.
David W. Fagerberg, “Liturgical Theology,” in T&T Clark Companion to Liturgy, ed., Alcuin Reid (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016), 3-20.
In Confessio Augustana (hereafter: CA), the central Lutheran confession (after the three ancient creeds), the church is defined as “the assembly of saints (Lt. congregatio sanctorum), in which the gospel is taught purely and the sacraments are administered rightly” (art. VII). For the Latin and German (with introductions), see Die Bekenntnisschriften der Evangelisch-Lutherischen Kirche, vollständige neuedition, ed., Irene Dingel (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), 63-225. For the translation (with introductions), see The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, eds., Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert (Fortress Press, 2000), 27-107.
Fagerberg, “Liturgical Theology,” 15.
Fagerberg, “Liturgical Theology,” 9-11, 15, cf. 1 John 3:2; Revelation 21.
See St. Augustine, Tractates (Lectures) on the Gospel of John (In Iohannis Evangelium), tractate 80:4, in Augustine, Opera 8, Corpus Christianorum 36 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1954), 529, translated by John Gibb and James Innes, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, volume, 7, ed. Philip Schaff (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1888; reprint, Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1995), 344 (343-345, cf. 7-452).