Oleksandr Zhabenko

🇬🇧 Glory be to Jesus Christ! 🌞

Dedicated to Emma Kok.

(2 Peter I, 10-19)

Continuation of the reading, which was referred to by the link:
https://www.facebook.com/Oleksandr.S.Zhabenko/

2 Peter I, 11, 14, 16 – ‘ημων’ – ‘emon’ – ‘us’ (our).

2 Peter I, 13 – ‘ειμι’ – ‘eimi’ – (I) ‘am’. It is used for emphasis.

2 Peter I, 15 – ‘εμην’ – ‘emen’ – ‘my’.

2 Peter I, 18 – ‘ημεις’ – ‘emeis’ – ‘we’.

2 Peter I, 19 – ‘προσεχοντες’ – ‘prosekhontes’ – ‘considering; devoting oneself; having in addition or besides’. ‘εως ου ημερα’ – ‘eos ou emera’ – ‘until this day’ – here the Day of the Second Coming of Christ is meant, that is, until Christ comes again. The prophecies are valid until the Second Coming, both those that have been fulfilled and those that are to be fulfilled.

Entering the Kingdom of God also refers to the ability to consciously live in accordance with God’s will and purpose now, even before the Kingdom of God comes, but also to the Kingdom of God itself after the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

My present dwelling place (in the original, a word that is related to the word tabernacle, tent, and also recalls both the Old Testament tabernacle and the Transfiguration, which is described below) is Peter’s body before his death.

Christ had revealed to Peter that he would soon pass away to be with the Lord, which Peter recalls here.

Peter saw one of the tasks of his ministry as establishing others in faith and virtue (cf. Luke XXII:32; John XXI:15-25), and he continues to do so even after his bodily death.

He then refers to the Transfiguration of the Lord, which he himself personally witnessed and participated in. Many Gentiles’ myths and legends contain artistic speculations, the fantasy of the authors, often quite inventive, but the apostles were witnesses of Christ.

And here Peter testifies to the Transfiguration, the feast of which is celebrated today.

The conclusion of the reading was mentioned above, the richness of meanings in a complex metaphor with several components is very great, so it is difficult to give a good translation. Prophetic words are both something to have in addition and it is good to entrust oneself to God believing in them, and they are also worth considering and paying attention to. The significance of the Old Testament prophecies for the establishment of the faith is great.

(Matthew XVII, 1-9)

Matthew XVII, 1 – ‘ημερας’ – ‘emeras’ - ‘days’.

Matthew XVII, 2 – ‘εμπροσθεν’ – ‘emprosthen’ – ‘before, in the face of’.

Matthew XVII, 4 – ‘ημας’ – ‘emas’ – ‘us’. ‘σκηνας’ – ‘skenas’ - ‘tents’ (see the parallel with the reading above).

The reading is about the Transfiguration of our Lord God and Saviour Jesus Christ.

As faithful people understand it, this manifestation was intended to strengthen the faith of the apostles when they would see Christ suffering on the cross, at the time of His Passion, Death and Resurrection. The prohibition to tell may have been caused by the fact that the disciples still did not understand the upcoming events with Jesus, although He had already told them about them, so in order not to spread the wrong vision of the event, Jesus forbade them to tell.

We also see here the appearance of the Trinity – the Son was transfigured, the Father testified with His voice, and the Holy Spirit appeared in the image of a light-bearing cloud. There is a parallel with the appearance of the Trinity at the time of Jesus’ Baptism in the Jordan.

In the description of the event, we can see a clear manifestation of the human spirit (as I wrote about earlier). The human spirit manifests itself most vividly in three areas – the desire for God (thirst and hunger for righteousness – one way to put it in other words), the fear of God and conscience (directly related to the ability to recognise good and evil) (see this in Ukrainian at
https://parafia.org.ua/biblioteka/hrystyyanstvo-virovchennya-ta-tradytsiji/zakon-bozhyj/chastyna-tretya-svyaschenna-istoriya-staroho-ta-novoho-zavitu/#toc---
).

Here we see high degrees of manifestation of all three at the same time – It is good for us to be here… and the desire to stay is the desire of God; the disciples’ great fear is the manifestation of the fear of God (about which more is written at
https://oleksandr-zhabenko.github.io/en/DialogueOnWordsChristFear.html
or in the Dutch:
https://oleksandr-zhabenko.github.io/nl/dialoog.html
); and It is good for us to be here… is also a manifestation of conscience, which testifies that it is good to see the light of the Transfiguration, the light of God.

So, the Lord did show His glory to the disciples to the extent that they could contain it – to the full extent for the spirit, the vision with the bodily eyes, and all together – the meaning for the souls.

There were also discussions about what the light of Tabor was like in the XIII century, and the doctrine of this light was formulated by Saint Gregory Palamas. Without going into details, I will say that the light of Tabor is Divine energy, the operation of God outside of His own nature, the operation in creation, grace, which is uncreated, eternal. We can say that it is God Himself (though not in Himself, but in creation) revealing and manifesting Himself.

As I wrote earlier, the word grace in Scripture can be used in other meanings (see, in particular, the following link:
11082023.html
).

Glory be to Thee, our God, glory be to Thee!

Source:
19082023.html