Transfiguring Love, reflections on the Feast of the Transfiguration, August 6, 2026 by Mr G.

In the Transfiguration (see Luke 9: 28-36) God gives us a snapshot of human glory – Christ transformed and it is as if God is telling us that this is what we can become if we follow his way of doing things.

What follows the Transfiguration is the journey to Jerusalem by Jesus and his companions leading to the death of our Lord Jesus on the Cross.  There, Jesus absorbed all human pain, conflict and hurt as he became the instrument of our transfiguration. He absorbed human sin and nailed it to the Cross and he did so out of sheer love for humanity. What transforms the Cross is love because the Crucifixion is God’s ultimate statement of His love for us. “You can do this to me,” his actions say, “and yet I will go on loving and you cannot stop me for it is only love that transforms humanity and changes our destiny.”

I once heard a story of a young Russian priest who was arrested when communism took over his country. For years he was held in a prison camp and there he was beaten and tortured. When he was eventually released his friends asked him what was left of him.
‘Nothing’ he said, ‘they have taken everything away. Only Love remains.”

That priest had discovered the one thing that changes every human situation and disarms every human conflict – sacrificial self-giving love. The Cross which Jesus took upon himself is the action by which all of us can be changed – and when we are changed, the world is changed. Only Love remains – only love will conquer the human heart. Only love will Transfigure the world. Perhaps we are unable to see that as a possibility in conflicts throughout our world – in Ukraine and Russia, in the Sudan, In the Middle East, in Iran, Israel, Lebanon, in Gaza where the people are living without hope. So many conflicts, so much hatred; all we can hope is that the world will come to its senses before it is too late.

But there is one area where we can see this glory of Transfiguration and that is in our own lives and in our own dealings with others. Wars do not begin on foreign battlefields far from home. They begin in our hearts – when we refuse to allow others dignity or understanding. When we want what we want, come what may and when we believe our own views to be the only right views – a sure way to begin oppression of others.

That is not God’s Way. As Mother Mary Clare of the Sisters of the Love of God once put it so clearly, God’s way  is to call us to stand at the place of the Cross – at that intersection where human pain, hurt and conflict meet and are held by the transforming love of God. This is where Love will always remain and we are invited to become it with Jesus.

It is only when we stand in this place where God in Jesus Christ always is – the place of transforming love – that we will begin to see the glory in each other. That is a wonderful message of the Transfiguration. If we do not grasp it then not only will we ill treat others, we will also diminish ourselves – and, more importantly, we will be in danger of denying God.

[Mr G]