Thoughts on The Sunday next before Lent – The Transfiguration
Holy
Communion at the Church of St Mary the Virgin, Glanvilles Wootton
(15th
February 2026)
I wonder if you’ve ever met a saint? I think I have, a few times.
I’m not using the word ‘saint’ here to describe every baptised Christian – or every born-again Christian. The word saint in some circles just means one of those two options. When I use the word saint about someone I am describing something the Church has always referred to as sanctity or holiness.
Years ago (I was in my mid 20s) I ran headlong into a nun! I was cleaning carpets in London for a living, and one lunchtime I decided to nip in to the Brompton Oratory for some prayer time. As I opened the door to go in to the Church I literally bumped into what looked like a Benedictine nun who was on her way out.
I’ve never forgotten her, not because it was mildly embarrassing that I nearly knocked her off her feet as though she was a skittle in a bowling alley, but because there was something about her that I can only describe as ‘shining’.
I remember apologising and then being tongue-tied and taking a step back. She just smiled at me and held my gaze for a bit before walking out of the Church.
There have been a few other occasions like that when I have encountered someone who seemed, somehow, to radiate the presence of God.
In Christian art and iconography these folks are always depicted with a halo – a circle of light around the head or sometimes even the whole body, and that’s a symbolic way of depicting what I am talking about.
There’s something about holy people that makes them shine with a light that doesn’t really come from them because it’s God’s light.
In our first reading today Moses goes up a mountain to commune with God and it says that God appeared both as a dark cloud and as a glorious fire and Moses entered that dark cloud for 40 days.
What this particular passage doesn’t tell you is that later on in the Book of Exodus Moses is described as ‘shining’. Here’s what it says:
29 When
Moses came down from Mount Sinai…Moses did not know that the skin of his face
shone because he had been talking with God. 30 Aaron and all the people of
Israel saw Moses, and behold, the skin of his face shone, and they were afraid
to come near him. 31 But Moses called to them, and Aaron and all the leaders of
the congregation returned to him, and Moses talked with them. 32 Afterward all
the people of Israel came near, and he commanded them all that the Lord had
spoken with him on Mount Sinai. 33 And when Moses had finished speaking with
them, he put a veil over his face.
34 Whenever Moses went in before the Lord to speak with him, he would remove the veil, until he came out. And when he came out and told the people of Israel what he was commanded, 35 the people of Israel would see the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses' face was shining. And Moses would put the veil over his face again, until he went in to speak with him (Ex 34:29-35).
There’s something about spending time with God that rubs off on us. I love the image of Moses taking the veil off his face when he goes in to speak with God, because that sums up a very important aspect of prayer. When we enter what Jesus calls the ‘secret place’ (Mt 6:6) in prayer we take off the veil – or the mask that we wear in our everyday lives, and we present ourselves just as we are, in all our vulnerability, to the God who knows us intimately and loves us immeasurably.
That can sometimes feel a bit bewildering – a bit like entering a cloud in which we can feel a little lost, and it can sometimes feel challenging - a bit like encountering a fire that illuminates the darker aspects of ourselves and purifies us.
The great Catholic saint, John of the Cross uses this image of fire and burning to illustrate what I am talking about. Imagine for a moment that you are a log, placed in a fire and you’ll get the point. As a log is placed in a fire, it initially sputters and spits as it dries; it releases obstacles to the fire like moisture and sap; and it smokes, before being completely transformed into the fire itself, radiating its heat and light.
For an example of a person who lived his whole life in that divine fire, and radiating its light and its heat (because he is that Divine Fire) , we turn to our Gospel passage for today, where Jesus takes his three closest disciples up a mountain and shines for them: he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white.
You know it’s easy to fall into the trap of explaining away these kinds of spiritual phenomena as happening to everyone else, especially obviously holy people like Jesus and Moses and Benedictine nuns, but the Bible is very clear that we are all called to the same destiny, and that the road to that destiny is the path of Christian faith, and especially the practice of Christian prayer.
Here’s how St Paul puts it in his 2nd Letter to the Corinthians: And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another (2 Cor 3:18).
We are about to enter the season of Lent – Ash Wednesday is this coming Wednesday – and this season is a yearly reminder that we are all called to shine – to develop the habit of climbing that mountain, of entering that cloud, of taking the veil off our faces, and encountering that Fire for ourselves. Lent is a reminder that we are all called to be saints.
There’s a wonderful daily prayer in the service of morning prayer that’s a perfect way to end, so let us pray: "As we rejoice in the gift of this new day, so may the light of your presence, O God, set our hearts on fire with love for you; now and for ever. Amen."
* The picture is Ivanka Demchuck's icon of the Transfiguration
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