Pure Light

After Jesus had foretold his Passion to the disciples, “he took with him Peter, James and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain apart. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his garments became white as light” (Matthew 17:1-2). According to the senses the light of the sun is the brightest light known in nature but, according to the spirit, the disciples briefly glimpsed an even more intense splendour, that of the divine glory of Jesus which illumines the whole history of salvation….

The Father himself proclaims: “this is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him” (Mt 17:5). The Transfiguration is not a change in Jesus but the revelation of his divinity: “the profound interpenetration of his being with God, which then becomes pure light. In his oneness with the Father, Jesus is himself ‘light from light’” (Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration, Doubleday, New York, 2007, p. 310).

His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI

Angelus, 20 March 2011

For more information, please visit:

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/angelus/2011/documents/hf_ben-xvi_ang_20110320_en.html

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... Since each of us possesses God in his heart and is being transformed into His divine image, we also should cry out with joy:  It is good for us to be here—here where all things shine with divine radiance, where there is joy and gladness and exultation; where there is nothing in our hearts but peace, serenity and stillness; where God is seen.  For here in our hearts, Christ takes up His abode together with the Father, saying as He enters:  Today salvation has come to this house.  With Christ, our hearts receive all the wealth of His eternal blessings, and there where they are stored up for us in Him, we see reflected as in a mirror both the first fruits and the whole of the world to come.

 

From a sermon on the Transfiguration of the Lord by

Anastasius of Sinai, bishop

Office of Readings

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Year of Faith Pilgrimage to the Holy Land

 

Join Fr. Joseph Gotwalt as we follow in the footsteps of Jesus from March 9 – 19, 2013.  The scriptures will come alive on this journey to the roots of our faith. Tour includes:  Daily Mass at holy sites, licensed Christian guide, accommodation in First Class hotels (five nights in Jerusalem, three nights in Tiberias, on the shore of the Sea of Galilee), breakfast and dinner daily, land transportation by deluxe motorcoach, roundtrip motorcoach transportation from Harrisburg to New York JFK, roundtrip airfare from JFK on nonstop flights with Delta Airlines, and more, for $3,150 per person/double occupancy.

For complete details on this pilgrimage, please contact:  George’s International Tours, (800) 566-7499, sales@georgesintl.com, or Karen Hurley, k.m.hurley1@gmail.com.

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For more information on the Transfiguration of the Lord, please visit:

http://theapostoliclady.blogspot.com/2011/08/it-is-good-that-we-are-here.html        

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