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Day 8 (August 13)

So they kept the matter to themselves,

questioning what this rising from the dead could mean (Mk. 9:10).

As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of the man of heaven. (1 Cor 15:48-49)

When we become incorruptible and immortal, having attained the state of beatitude, having become likenesses of Christ, we shall be ever with the Lord, according to the word of Scripture, enjoying His visible theophany in purest contemplation, illuminated by his radiant beams, just as the disciples were illuminated at the time of his divine Transfiguration; at the same time, through our impassible and immaterial intellect, we shall participate in his intelligible illumination and also in the union above intelligence, in the incomprehensible and blessed brightness of those more than radiant beams of light, in a state similar to that of the heavenly spirits. For, according to the word of Truth, as sons of the resurrection we shall be likenesses of the angels and sons of God. (Pseudo Dionysius the Areopogite)

The person of the Holy Ghost remains hidden from us even in his descent at Pentecost, which conferred immediately only the gifts of the Spirit.But there is a human person to whom it is given to manifest the Holy Ghost himself, and that is the most holy Virgin, Mary, the heart of the Church. And yet this manifestation of the Holy Ghost—let us emphasize the fact that it is precisely a manifestation, not an incarnation—remains for us in this life beyond our understanding.

It vanished from the world with the event of the death, resurrection, and assumption of our Lady; her glorified likeness is unknown to the world, which cannot yet receive its revelation of the Holy Ghost. It concerns only the age to come, and will belong to the last things. Together with the appearance of the glorified Christ at his coming again in Glory, the world will behold his glorified humanity in the person of the Spirit-bearer, the Virgin Mary.

Divine-humanity is to be found “on earth as it is in heaven”—in a double, not only a single, form: not only that of the God-human, Christ, but that of his Mother too. Jesus-Mary—there is the fullness of Divine-humanity. The internal self-disclosure of the Holy Trinity is marked by this same duality: the revelation of the Father is made through the Son and Spirit together, inseparably and unconfusedly. In like manner, in the Incarnation, the Son is “conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary.” She is the personal subject of the humanity of Christ, and his feminine counterpart. The image of the Mother of God with her child is an expression of this Incarnation of Divine-humanity. To separate Christ from his mother (still more to forget her, as historical Protestantism has done) is in effect an attempted violation of the mystery of the Incarnation, in its innermost shrine.

Yet the veneration of the Virgin extends not merely to her divine maternity, but also to herself. Accordingly she is depicted in certain of her icons apart from the Holy Child, as the “Unwedded Bride,” as “Ever-Virgin.”This conception of her perpetual virginity is, as it were, a personification of the Church, the glorified creation, the Bride of the Lamb; and it is in this sense that the expressions of the Song of Songs concerning the mystical marriage of Christ and the Church are most often understood, alike in East and West. (Sergei Bulgakov)

Musical Selection

Prayers

When the chosen apostles beheld upon the mountain of the Transfiguration

the overwhelming flood of Your Light, O unoriginate Christ,

and Your unapproachable divinity,

they were caught up into a divine trance.

The cloud of Light shone around them on every side.

They heard the voice of the Father

confirming the mystery of Your Incarnation,

for even after taking flesh, You remain the Only-begotten Son,

and the Savior of the world! (Orthodox Vespers of the Transfiguration)

Come, O people, let us sing today to Christ our God a song of David!
“The virgins that follow her,” he said, “shall be brought to the King.
With joy and gladness shall they be brought!”
For she, through whom we have been deified, is of the seed of David,
and gloriously and ineffably commends herself into the hands of her own Son and Master!
Praising her as the Mother of God
we cry out to her and say:
Save us who confess you, O Theotokos,
from all distress and tribulation! (Orthodox Vespers of the Dormition)

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