by Milan Komadina

Dear sisters and brothers, today our Holy Church commemorates The Transfiguration of the Lord. At the beginning of this sermon let us pray and read from the Bible about Transfiguration.

Mark 9:2-10 After six days Jesus took Peter, James and John with him and led them up a high mountain, where they were all alone. There he was transfigured before them. ³His clothes became dazzling white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them. ⁴And there appeared before them Elijah and Moses, who were talking with Jesus. ⁵Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters-one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” ⁶(He did not know what to say, they were so frightened.) ⁷Then a cloud appeared and covered them, and a voice came from the cloud: “This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!” ⁸Suddenly, when they looked around, they no longer saw anyone with them except Jesus. ⁹As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus gave them orders not to tell anyone what they had seen until the Son of Man had risen from the dead. ¹⁰They kept the matter to themselves, discussing what “rising from the dead” meant.

Many times when I meditate on this chapter from the Bible I found impressive a few things. When I think about Jesus I am impressed by the fact that he was displaying himself to people around him in a very modest and humble way. He rather liked to be seen as a servant than as a Son of God. The transfiguration has shown the real nature of Our Lord. His heavenly father confirmed from above that Jesus is His beloved Son. Yet Jesus seems to be a bit shy. He did not have the proud as we do. We, who are sinners tend to show our pride for the small things we do or achieve in our lives. But Jesus did not show pride. He didn`t say like “I am the Son of God, look how glorious I am“. What he did is saying his friends and disciples not to talk about what they saw. I always try to learn something from Jesus and I always try to understand certain paragraphs from the Bible in order to use them in my daily life. What I think is a good approach is to stick to the rule – whatever we do, whatever we achieve who ever we are – give praise to the Lord. Do not be so proud and self-confident because everything could be changed and we can lose all very easily. Even our own selves.

The second interesting part which I love regarding The Transfiguration is the fact that Elijah and Moses were there with Jesus. I grew up in a traditional orthodox Christian environment and when I was younger I was regularly attending protestant churches. But what I always found personally very beautiful, spiritually useful and relaxing is a prayer to the Holy Mother of God and the saints. In Transfiguration story I can see how Jesus actually like sharing his glory with his saints. He was not there alone. There were Elijah and Moses. Sometimes I also pray to St. Elijah, sometimes to St. Moses and most often to Holy Mother of God. Some people believe that saints cannot hear our prayers. Some people believe that a prayer to saints is worshiping them. However through Bible we just know that this kind of prayer is the same like asking our friends to pray for us. We do not worship them, but we ask their prayers. Also, they can hear us and Transfiguration shows that saint who died are still alive.

The last part of the Transfiguration story is talking about the resurrection. And this is something what I also like to meditate about. How this is amazing. We are all afraid of death. We are suffering when our family members or friends die. But still we do have hope and we do have promise. And this promise is that the same as Elijah and Moses who died and were displayed alive we will also live after we die. We will see and be together with all of those who we loved and who passed away. Our family members, friends, neighbors,…