In our Orthodox Church on the sixth of August, we celebrate one of the Great Feasts of the Lord. It's called Metamorphosis, or Transfiguration.

Now what is that Transfiguration? What are we celebrating? Actually, it's the Christian Feast of Tabernacle. All the Christian feasts are biblical feasts. They were first feasts in the Old Testament. The Passover Pascha, becomes our Pascha or Easter Resurrection. Pentecost, the giving of the Laws to Moses and the feast of the first fruit, becomes our Pentecost Sunday when the Holy Spirit comes upon the Disciples. The Feast of Lights is our festival of Epiphany and Christmas. And our Transfiguration if the Feast of the Tabernacle, of the Old Covenant, which shows the indwelling of God with man that is prefigured in the harvest and then takes place at the end of the ages when the Messiah comes.

Now, it's important to see where that Transfiguration of Christ comes in the Gospel. It comes after Peter confesses that Jesus is the Christ. Jesus went around doing everything that the Old Testament said the Messiah would do. He announced the Gospel to the poor. He proclaimed freedom to the oppressed. He cast out the demons. He healed all the diseases. He made the blind people see and the lame people walk; the deaf people hear, the dumb people talk. He walked on the water and calmed the winds to show that He had power over nature. He fed the people in the wilderness with bread to show that He could do that, which was a messianic sign. In fact, He did it twice! Once in Jewish territory, and once in Gentile territory. That's why you have the feeding of the multitudes two times in the Gospels. And then of course He did the most magnificent of all the signs of the Messiah, He raised the dead in front of Peter, James and John, and told them not to tell anybody.

And then after He does all these things, He asks, "Who do you say that I am?" And Peter says, "You are the Christ." In Matthew, he says, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." And then Jesus says this is true. And He tells Peter it's not flesh and blood that has revealed this to him, but God the Father in Heaven. And then He even says, "You are Peter and upon this rock," the rock of your confession, "I will build my Church. And the gates of Hades will never prevail against it." He even said to Peter-and later He said to all the Apostles-that He will give him the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven, so that what you bind on earth will be bound in Heaven, what you loose on earth will be loosed in Heaven.

But next, He began to teach that He had to suffer and die. Until that point He never said it. Only after the confession of Peter did He begin to teach them that He would be rejected, betrayed, arrested, beaten, flogged, whipped, have a crown of thorns put on His head, ridiculed, degraded, spit upon, buffeted, and then nailed to a cross in the most shameful way that a human being-and especially a Jew-could possibly die, at the hands of Gentiles outside of the city, as a criminal among criminals. And that's the center of the Gospel, that He came to become a sin and curse and to raise the dead through His own death. Peter says to Him, this can never happen. The Messiah is supposed to live forever. And then Jesus actually said to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan." You are a scandal, a hindrance, a stumbling block to me. You're looking at it humanly, not from God's point of view. You don't know what you're saying. Archbishop Demetrios, the primate of the Greek Orthodox Church in America, pointed out in his commentary on St. Mark's Gospel that Peter, the leader of the Apostles, was the only person that Jesus ever called Satan. He called him Satan when Peter said Jesus shouldn't be crucified.

After saying this, eight days later, or six days later depending how you count, Jesus takes Peter and James and John up on to a high mountain. By Tradition, it was Mt. Tabor. And being on that mountain, He transfigured before them. Only they could see what was happening. No one else could see it, only Peter, James and John. And they were terribly frightened by what they saw. He became glistening and full of light, brighter than the sun, and His clothes were so white and glistening you couldn't look at them. Moses and Elijah appeared with Him, and they were talking together. And in St. Luke's Gospel it says that they were talking about the Exodus that He would make in Jerusalem. In other words, when He would die and have His Passover and be raised and glorified.

Peter says, Lord, it is good for us to be here. Let us build three tabernacles-because it was on the Feast of Tabernacles that this happened-and just stay here forever. And of course Jesus couldn't let that happen. They had to go back down from the mountain and down all the way down to hell and to His passion. As one of my students once said, after the high point of the Transfiguration it was all down hill after that for poor Jesus and His disciples. But Moses and Elijah are there for several reasons. One is because Moses stands for the Law and Elijah stands for the Prophets. And it's to show that Jesus is the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets. Moses stands for the Earth, and Elijah stands for Heaven, because Moses died and was buried in the earth-he didn't even enter the Promised Land, as you know-and Elijah never died. He was taken up alive in to Heaven so that he could appear at the Transfiguration, to be the forerunner of the glorious return of Christ. St. John Chrysostom said, "John the Baptist was His forerunner to the Cross, and Elijah is His forerunner in to glory."

But then also Moses and Elijah stand for the dead and the living, because Moses died and Elijah never died. So Moses and Elijah stand for the Law and the Prophets, for earth and Heaven, the dead and the living. And it shows that Jesus is the fulfillment of all things. But we must always remember that the salvation of the world did not take place on Tabor. It took place on Golgotha. Tabor was only the prefiguration. It was not the salvation. And they spoke about the Exodus. It's interesting that in our Orthodox Church Transfiguration-which providentially is the day on which the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima-is exactly 40 days before the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross. Because as we sing in the Transfiguration, "so that when they would behold Thee crucified," it says in the kontakion, "they would know that Your suffering on the Cross was voluntary." So the Transfiguration prefigures the death and ultimate glorification of Christ in the Kingdom of God, where He shows Himself as Lord of Heaven and Earth, the Law and the Prophets, the living and the dead. In fact, the Lord over all things through what He suffered. But before He suffered, He transfigured before the disciples, the three of them, to show that His passion was voluntary and that indeed He was the messianic Son of God. And at the Transfiguration the voice of God the Father is heard, like at the Baptism, which says, "This is my beloved Son. You listen to Him!" It's not enough to celebrate. You've got to listen to Him, obey Him, and follow Him, in order to enter in to His glory.

Protopresbyter Thomas Hopko is Dean Emeritus of St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary in Crestwood, New York. He has authored numerous works on all aspects of the Orthodox Church's faith and practice. His writings have been translated into 15 languages. Fr. Hopko is a world-renowned lecturer at various Orthodox and ecumenical forums. He and his wife of 43 years, Anne Schmemann, have five children and fourteen grandchildren. He is currently completing his forty-third year of service as a priest, professor and pastor in the Orthodox Church in America (OCA). Fr. Hopko is a regular contributer to OCN.