On the Transfiguration (Aug. 6th)

Pietro Perugino, The Transfiguration, 1497, in the Sala delle Udienze del Collegio del Cambio

By Bp. Joseph Boyd (Ancient Church of the West) 

The Early Theology of the Transfiguration 

In Paul’s earliest writing, the writing that seems to show a thesis that is both a radical departure from Judaism and forms the crux of his disagreement with the Jerusalem Apostles, is the Book of Galatians. Galatians insist in salvation as a process that takes place despite or outside of the Law established in the Old Testament – That Christ’s work is available to us through Faith, and that in this experience, we are empowered to live Christ’s life by Christ’s spirit, His Presence, His Grace. 

Paul’s damning summation of the contradictions are stated in Galatians 2:15-21 (NKJV) “We who are Jews by nature, and not sinners of the Gentiles, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law; for by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified. “But if, while we seek to be justified by Christ, we ourselves also are found sinners, is Christ therefore a minister of sin? Certainly not! For if I build again those things which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor. For I through the law died to the law that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died in vain.” 

The young John Mark, the disciple of Paul who replaced Barnabas after he abandoned him for Peter’s pharisaic betrayal, and possibly the writer of the First Gospel, presents the story of the Transfiguration in a parallel to Paul’s own situation, and we can discern from the rest of the book, that it was written to persuade the leaders in Jerusalem to accept both the Gentile Church and Paul’s prophetic vision of a Church established in the gathering up and calling out of the whole world, thus realizing the highest aspirations of the Old Testament and proving Christ to be the fulfillment of the Jewish Law. It was therefore necessary to show those in a powerful community center, who obviously controlled the “brand” of Christianity through right of succession and by controlling the source of the memories of Jesus, that they had misunderstood the core message of Christ by excluding the Gentiles from the Christian Gospel! This could not be done without challenging the supremacy of the Tradition of Moses. Thus, the necessity of the scene as it appears in Mark becomes apparent and its psychological and cultural subtext. 

Mark 9:2-8 (NKJV) - Now after six days Jesus took Peter, James, and John, and led them up on a high mountain apart by themselves; and He was transfigured before them. His clothes became shining, exceedingly white, like snow, such as no launderer on earth can whiten them. And Elijah appeared to them with Moses, and they were talking with Jesus. Then Peter answered and said to Jesus, ‘Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; and let us make three tabernacles: one for You, one for Moses, and one for Elijah’— because he did not know what to say, for they were greatly afraid. And a cloud came and overshadowed them; and a voice came out of the cloud, saying, ‘This is My beloved Son. Hear Him!’ Suddenly, when they had looked around, they saw no one anymore, but only Jesus with themselves.” 

Christ the Master, waited upon by the two fundamentally formative teachers of the Jewish Tradition, Moses and Elijah, with a voice declaring him an authoritative voice on all things Jewish. Paul’s Gospel is figured here, the message that he presented at the Jerusalem meeting in Galatians 1:1-2 between Peter, James and Paul may be the unstated subtext. Christ’s suffering is the key to unlocking the meaning of the passage, especially if the older John Mark is the writer of the Gospel of John, in which the Transfiguration is absent, meaning that this passage was referring to Christ being lifted up in “glory” through his suffering, and that it was within this experience that the Gospel was declared and the Jewish prophets shown insufficient, incomplete, and in need of a “Rabbi!" In the message that Paul Prophetically put forward, James and Peter were shown to reject the Gospel of Christ crucified, making Christ into a ruler, rather than into the servant and self-sacrificial Messenger that he really was. Therefore, Paul is reflected, if not directly written into, the context of this pericope. (Dr. Paul Nadim Tarazi, “The New Testament Introduction: Paul and Mark”, 1999, St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Seminary Press, p. 190-192) 

Luke, another disciple of Paul, writes from a slightly different angle, mainly to provide an explanation of Paul’s Gospel to the Gentile converts within their many new churches. He is writing to “Theophilus” (the “God Lover”), the “Righteous Among the Nations”, those Gentiles who love God and keep God’s Commandments and who are accepted by Him (Acts 10:34-35). In Luke 9:28-36 (NKJV) the Transfiguration is pictured in this way… “Now it came to pass, about eight days after these sayings, that He took Peter, John, and James and went up on the mountain to pray. As He prayed, the appearance of His face was altered, and His robe became white and glistening. And behold, two men talked with Him, who were Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of His decease, which He was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. But Peter and those with him were heavy with sleep; and when they were fully awake, they saw His glory and the two men who stood with Him. Then it happened, as they were parting from Him, that Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good for us to be here; and let us make three tabernacles: one for You, one for Moses, and one for Elijah”—not knowing what he said. While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were fearful as they entered the cloud. And a voice came out of the cloud, saying, ‘This is My beloved Son, Hear Him!’ When the voice had ceased, Jesus was found alone. But they kept quiet, and told no one in those days any of the things they had seen.” 

In Luke we find a very different set of prerogatives and motivations for the construction of this passage. He was trying to create a grand, biblical chronicle, an account that would both give authority to the new Gentile Christian Community, and that would also challenge the role of the Jewish people to claim peoplehood through the divine intervention and sovereign will of the Almighty. We find that Luke is concerned with creating a new narrative of the Chosen People of God, the Church, which follows the direction and mirrors the significance of the Exodus account. This is also why he must dethrone Jerusalem as the dwelling place of God, which we will deal with later. He, therefore, places the Transfiguration at the point of the narrative in which Moses ascends the Mountain to receive the Covenant, tying it to the Mount of Olives, the dwelling place of God in Christ, and both effectively hollows the Jerusalem and the Temple of its traditional meaning and discredits the Jerusalemite Leadership of their claim to stewardship of God’s Presence. Christ must, then, surpass the importance of Moses. To do this, Luke must show that Christ was the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets, and also must show that his position surpassed even Moses and the primary Prophet, Elijah. This goal is accomplished by God himself telling the disciples to “Hear Him” after both of the Old Testament heroes were gone! (Dr. Paul Nadim Tarazi, “The New Testament Introduction: Luke and Acts”, 2001, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, p. 75-80) 

Matthew narrates in his conciliatory tone a very close narrative to Luke, but with a greater attention paid to Hebrew sensibilities in the wake of the destruction Jerusalem and its Temple, probably referenced in Peter’s desire to build tabernacles. “Now after six days Jesus took Peter, James, and John his brother, led them up on a high mountain by themselves; and He was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became as white as the light. And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them, talking with Him. Then Peter answered and said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if You wish, let us make here three tabernacles: one for You, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” While he was still speaking, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them; and suddenly a voice came out of the cloud, saying, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Hear Him!” And when the disciples heard it, they fell on their faces and were greatly afraid. But Jesus came and touched them and said, “Arise, and do not be afraid.” When they had lifted up their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus only. Now as they came down from the mountain, Jesus commanded them, saying, ‘Tell the vision to no one until the Son of Man is risen from the dead.’” (Matthew 17:1-9 NKJV) 

While similar to the other accounts, there are a few minor changes that refocus the narrative slightly. The fear experienced by the apostles is no longer due to the presence of the Old Testament saints, but is now due to the Voice from Heaven, which declares Christ to be the ultimate teacher. Matthew shows the crisis of faith that the apostles faced, coming to the surface in Matthew 6:30, 14:23-24, 16:8 and 17:1-13. Matthew shows that the Apostles were not, at least originally, champions of faith, but tended to doubt and be rebuked by Christ for “little faith.” “Matthew’s interest in Jesus’ ultimate authority in matter of teaching makes explicit what Mark had left implicit: that the Baptist was the eschatological Elijah: ‘Then the disciples understood that he was speaking to them of John the Baptist.’ (Mat 17:13)” (Dr. Paul Nadim Tarazi, “The New Testament Introduction: Matthew and the Canon”, 2009, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, p. 207-209) 

The theme of Christ’s Transfiguration and its transformative effect on the human person echoes throughout all of Paul’s writings, as can be seen in the poetic description of salvation as metamorphosis that we see in II Corinthians 3:18 “But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.” This is what happened on the Road to Damascus, when Paul saw the Lord, his eyes were blinded by the glory of the Risen Messiah, and he was converted from a “Pharisee of the Pharisees” to a “Servant of Christ”. It is within this experience that we find the primary paradigm that influenced his “Gospel” and confirmed his vision for a Gentile Church. It is also at the root of the controversies surrounding the Law and its uses, and the underlying reasons for the writing and canonization of the Pauline Epistles, the Gospels, and the fundamental struggle laid into the very foundations of Christianity - the Contradiction between God’s Love expressed through the Word and Man’s Brokenness, which turns God’s Presence, His Grace, into a commodity and His Word, the expression of His creative, sustaining and unbounded Love into Law enforced by human agency for the purpose of social stability and declarative authority. 

2 Peter, widely believed by biblical scholars to be a letter written in Peter’s name from the Pauline School because of its handling of Paul’s epistles as Scripture on par with the Old Testament (2 Peter 3:15-16), sums up the role of the Transfiguration in the believer’s life in many of the same ways that the later Greek Fathers would see the process of Theosis - 

"Simon Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ, to them that have obtained like precious faith with us through the righteousness of God and our Saviour Jesus Christ: Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord, According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue: Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.” (2 Peter 1:1-4 KJV)

This last verse, verse 4, teaches us that we are partakers in the Divine Nature. Without Paul’s theology of Transfiguration, this would be an incomprehensible thing. The “Glory” experienced by the receivers of the Word of God is the certification of the Word’s truth, “Our hearts burn within us” (as it says in Luke 24:32), and that it is through this mythos that the transformative Presence of the Holy Spirit is felt within our Christian life.

2 Peter 1:16-18 NKJV - “For we did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of His majesty. For He received from God the Father honor and glory when such a voice came to Him from the Excellent Glory: “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” And we heard this voice which came from Heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain.” 

This sums up the only experience that ties both the “Keeper of the Law” and the “Free” together in Christ, the Pharisee and the Gentile, for both have seen Christ in His Glory, and feel that glory in the Words of the Gospel Books, and through them are changed from “Glory to Glory” by the Power of the Holy Spirit. 

The Fathers on the Theophoric Vision 

St. Ireneaus of Lyons’ ancient apology, “Against Heresies”, is the earliest testimony to the teaching of Theosis outside of the New Testament itself. His teaching was very simple: Christ became man, so that we could be unified with God. Only by taking on human nature could God make His Nature available to mankind. After this, the next great historical witness for Theosis was the father of monasticism, St. Antony the Great (251-356AD). In his “Life” (The “Vita” written by St. Athanasius around 356AD), St. Anthony had a vision of Divine Light that scattered the demons that were attacking him. Upon further questions as to why God had not scattered the demons sooner, he was answered in prayer that “I waited to see if you would persist before I showed myself.” This is a profound moment in the history of theology, for this illustration prompted many later saints to see in the delayed revelation of God’s true light an instance of "synergy" (συνέργεια) between human effort and God's Free Grace. (Gregory Hillis, “To Be Transformed with Divine Light”, p. 3) 

Never was it believed that effort could make one “worthy” (worth being given by God’s love and mercy alone), but it could “prepare” the heart to receive what God would do. As Cabasilas says in his “Commentary of the Liturgy”, “Christ, in his parable of the sower, has illustrated this way that God has of dealing with us. ‘A sower went forth to sow,’ he says, ‘to sow’ – not to plough the earth, but to sow: thus showing that the work of preparation must be done by us.” (Nicholas Cabasilas, “Commentary on the Divine Liturgy”, Chapter 1, p. 25, translated by J.M. Hussey and P.A. McNulty). 

St. Clement of Alexandria and Origen of Alexandria, both, to a degree saw Platonic ascent into a God-given “Gnosis” as the object of spiritual life, thereby creating a Christian approach to the mystery of Theosis that has often been confused with the “Philosopher’s Way” in the Greek Philosophical Tradition of “Henosis” and “Thermaturgia”, which are so aptly presented in Plato’s “Timeus” and the “Enneads” of Plotinus. While it is true that Early Christianity felt free to borrow terminology and analogies from every corner of human experience, it is also wrong to see this as evidence of an unbiblical or pagan root within the Early Christian concept of salvation. Origen was later deemed unreliable by later generations of Christian theologians and proclaimed a heretic by the Fifth Ecumenical Council. Some of Origen’s analogies and terminology still remain within the world of theological speculation, but his syncretized concept of the soul’s fall from Paradise (he believed in the preexistence of the soul), its gradual cleansing by accumulating experiences and virtue, and its reunification with God, was completely rejected by the Church on biblical and patristic grounds. The Ancient Church does not embrace reincarnation, the preexistence of the soul, or an ideal of unification with God that makes us one with God in Essence. The reason for the necessity of Hellenic terms in the development of Christian theology was the fact that Christ’s claims to Godhood and His teachings of “radical unity” and communion with God could not be expressed within the Rabbinic Jewish inheritance of the Early Church. These concepts were inferred in the Old Testament, but never explicitly stated, thus making the new “vocabulary of oneness” essential to the teaching and growth of the Early Church. This was not an easy transition, however, as the conflict between the Alexandrian and Antiochian Schools would prove in the Post-Nicene period of Christological debates. 

St. Athanasius (293-373AD) provided the primary key through which the Ancient Church now see the “mechanism” of salvation. He expounded upon St. Ireneaus’s (Died 202AD) earlier teachings and shows the inner cohesion of the Gospel Narrative in his work, “On the Incarnation”, which makes Christ’s Incarnation the pivotal act in God’s Economy of Grace and His Divine Plan of Redemption. This “incarnational” focus would later become the primary difference between East and West, as the East would maintain its focus on the “Mystery of the God-Man Incarnate” and the West would become increasingly focused on the “Revelation of the Cross”. This difference would also be seen clearly in the different approach to depiction and iconography within church buildings, as the East maintained the use of Icons as a declaration of Christ’s incarnation, His “Circumscribement” as a man, while the West would give greater focus to the Cross and the Agony of the Passion, rather than upon His Resurrection, Life, and His Eternal Glory in the Heavenly Kingdom. 

St. Evargius (345-399AD), another great monastic leader in the 4th century, under the influence of Origen, wrote extensively on prayer as an intellectual function, an exercise in “Christian Gnosis” that could partake in God’s being through contemplation. While many of his ideas were rejected, his basic insistence that “praying without ceasing” should be a goal for Christian life was highly influential, as was his idea that we could benefit mentally from a constant realization of the presence of God. In many ways, his work was the ancient equivalent to Brother Lawrence’s “Practicing the Presence of God”, which has so helped and encouraged modern Catholic and Protestant Christians. 

Later on, St. John Climacus (523-603AD), the abbot of the Monastery of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai, would describe the process of following Christ and being cleansed from evil in his classic text, “The Ladder”, which brought an element of “gradualism” and “long-term spiritual planning” into the monastic life, giving men who had devoted their whole lives to prayer a “goal” for the realization of intimate life with Christ through prayer. He used Christ’s 33 years on earth and “Jacob’s Ladder” as analogies for the trials and struggles that all who set out to follow Christ must surely endure, he also recommended the use of a short, profound prayer for those times when the mind was not otherwise occupied with prayer or worship, consisting of the Name of Christ and a plea for mercy. 

St. Macarius (300 – 391AD), through his “Homilies” greatly changed the focus of those who concentrated on the inner life of noetic prayer. Instead of seeing it as a function of the “intellect”, St. Macarius saw it as an exercise of the mind and heart together, focusing much more on the ancient Hebrew understanding of the Heart as encompassing all of the human being. Therefore, the whole body could pray, focusing on Christ in the most holistic sense, and experiencing the blessing of this prayer with one’s whole body. (+Kallistos Ware, “The Orthodox Church”, p. 64-65) It was within these homilies that the Jesus Prayer was identified as the “Prayer of the Heart”, and continual, heartfelt praying of the phrase, “Lord Jesus Christ Have Mercy on Me”, began to be seen as one of the best ways for realizing and experiencing the Grace of God, a simple metaphor for the whole Christian experience. 

The saint that best typifies the lifestyle and experience of the Macarian way of prayer was not St. Macarius, but a poet of prayer and a lover of God, St. Symeon the new Theologian (949–1022AD). While he did not add anything to what he received in the Hysechastic theological theory, he was probably the best expression of the heart of the Jesus Prayer, which was a soul completely enthralled with the Love and Light of God. It is within St. Symeon’s visions of light and passion for the Divine Eros that the heart’s prayer can be best contextualized, not as a process of mechanical meditation and self-structured “progress”, but as a romantic adventure with the Person of God. St. Symeon proved that those who dedicate themselves to experiencing God do not lose their personality or become passionless automatons, but, instead, are those who truly live like Christ and His Apostles, forming faith the size of a grain of mustard seed so that mountains truly will leap into the seas! 

The Later Development of the Theology of Transfiguration 

In the late 1200’s, the Byzantine Orthodox Empire was crumbling, the Roman Catholic Church and the claims of the Pope were ascending, and in order to avoid a 4th Crusade mounted by the Holy Roman Empire, Michael VIII, the Emperor of Byzantium and the East, tried to negotiate peace with their Western brothers. In response to these inquiries of peace, the Pope of Rome, Clement VI, called a council in Lyon in 1274, and official ratified the pope’s declaration of the Filioque’s addition to the Creed. From Pope Leo IX, the first pope to proclaim papal supremacy and universal jurisdiction over the other Churches at the beginning of the Gregorian Reformation, which split the Roman Church from the other Churches in 1054 by the excommunication of the Byzantine Patriarch through Pope Leo’s legate, Cardinal Humbert, the Flioque was said in the Roman Church but had not been officially received. Now, as if to prove the papal claims and to make the reconciliation of the two Churches impossible, the claims of the Filioque were ensconced in the Western Creed, not by universal council of all the Churches, but by the profound deviation of a council ratifying a papal decree based on the anti-patristic claim of papal infallibility! Patriarch Gregory of Cyprus responded to this heretical Roman move by writing his “Tomus”, which defines the outward manifestations of God as distinct from His Unknowable Essence as a response to the Latin use of the biblical phrases “Spirit of the Son” and “Shining from the Son” as referring to a double progression. Patriarch Gregory showed the nature of the “Spirit” in glory upon Christ, not as a double origin, but as the “Spirit resting in the Incarnate Christ.” (The Christian East and the Rise of the Papacy, p. 221-236, and quoting from Fr. John Meyendorf’s translation of the text “De Processione Spiritus Sancti”) Therefore, in the vision on Mount Tabor, we see the Presence of the Holy Spirit visible in Glory upon Christ, sent by the Father, resting in the Son, but not proceeding from the Son (this is also clearly seen in the icon of Epiphany in the Jordan). With this theological buttress in place, the stage was set for the final teachings of the Ancient Church regarding Theosis to be received, championed by an obscure monk from Palamas in the face of the Roman Catholic Church’s claims to papal infallibility. 

St. Gregory Palamas (1296-1359AD) was a singular figure, obviously brilliant but not a scholar. He had chosen the path of practical learning, spiritual hardship and silence, studying “Hysechasm”, “Inner Stillness”, from an early age with monks on Mount Athos. When Barlaam of Calabrian, an equally brilliant and well-trained Greek theologian who had studied in the West, published scathing criticism against the Hysechast monks, scorning them for “naval gazing” (the monks would often stare down at their heart while chanting their prayers), St. Gregory spoke out. His floury of writings in defense of those who seek God with their whole being, and who experience visions of light and love in response, will never be forgotten. Rarely have there been such eloquent or philosophically cohesive responses to criticism! It was based upon the Palamite synthesis of the biblical and patristic witness that the teachings of the Ancient Church regarding Theosis were clarified in contrast to the Augustinian and Filioque-based teachings that gained prominence in the West. St. Gregory did not believe he added anything to the teachings that he defended, and the Council of Constantinople in 1351 states this belief clearly as well. What he did do was to give the classical teachings of the Church regarding the identity of Grace, the difference between Essence and Energies, and the reality of God’s Glory within the created world a framework that would withstand the theological scholasticism and Aristotelian reductionism that the West began to employ during the High Middle Ages. It insured that the Eastern Church never fell into the errors of scholasticism, abstraction, and the de-hypostisizing of Christian philosophy by the Protestant Reformation (forgetting the central place that the Person of the Father played in the Trinity, and that the human person ultimately plays in creation and the unfolding plan of salvation). Because the East was able to formulate its radical rebuke to the West’s error of applying logic to revelation, and was able to reject the de-linking of the current age from the biblical and patristic experience, the Eastern Churches were able to maintain the theology of the Early Church without addition or truncation. 

Applying the Transfiguration to Our Lives 

The theology of the Transfiguration teaches us, fundamentally, that reality is based upon the Trinity, and that it is within the communion of the Trinity, the infinite love and shared life of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that man finds his salvation. This relationship within the Trinity can be seen on Mount Tabor and the Theophoric Vision of Christ’s Incarnation, Shining with the Uncreated Light of the Holy Trinity, fully manifesting the Will of the Father. This is a vision of life, destiny, and of the cosmos that is explicitly personal, being based on the super-existential nature of the Father’s Person, and as such, shows Christ and the Spirit to also be persons in their relationship with one another and personal in their relationship with us. It also turns our minds to the contemplation of the Transfiguration, and the great mystery of deification through communion with God. This vision contrasts sharply with the view that would have God’s divinity be one of essence, expressed in person, which is ultimately impersonal and akin to the Hindu understanding of God and reality as “Atman”. Without God’s Person to safeguard the Trinity, the concept of multiplicity becomes polytheistic, logically insisting that if one essence can take three forms, it can take on many more as well. Without the difference between “Essence” and “Energies” becomes pantheistic, and there is no ultimate difference between created and Creator. The uniqueness and the necessity of the Trinity in relationship to the Father is lost. 

With the foundations of reality being established in personhood, reflected in a relationship of light, our human existence takes on new meaning. While we are infinitely inferior to God’s existence in every way, unable to even comprehend the true nature of God’s existence by any positive description, we become, by our very existence, reflections of God’s Being. We become “apophatic icons” of our Creator God. This makes our lives, insignificant as they are, incredibly important as a witness to God’s nature, to His Love, and His purpose. Our persons become purposeful because reality is expressed in its highest, most real form, within personhood itself! This, along with the assertion that we can experience God, directly, unmediated, and personally, makes our humanity the apex of the cosmic creation and the object of the Trinity’s love. We have become the lovers of God! 

Theosis also teaches us that God’s Energies are multiple, as St. Gregory Palamas points out in his discussion of the “Seven Spirits of God”. Without the distinction between Essence and Energies, we fall again into the danger of polytheism, but with these distinctions in place, we see that the seven spirits that the scripture describes, in both the Old Testament and within the Book of Revelations, are not inferior spirits or other, heretofore un-described members of an ever-expanding Godhead, but as the primary Energies of God, the works of the Holy Spirit in specific relationship to the needs of the universe and of man. Therefore, the Spirit of Wisdom, the Spirit of Understanding, The Spirit of Justice, the Spirit of Judgment, the Spirit of Equity, the Spirit of Truth, and the Spirit of Mercy, all of which are affirmed within Scripture, are all the Holy Spirit in His Multiplicity of Energies. (St. Gregory Palamas, “The Philokalia”, “Topics of Natural and Theological Science”, points 69-71, p. 378) These are all manifestations of God’s Grace, which is His “energy”, His “activity” of creating and sustaining in our Lives. We can submit ourselves to these “Godly Character Traits” knowing that, they are, indeed, manifestations of the Life of God, and shine in our hearts and upon our faces as a testimony to the Presence and Power of the Holy Spirit within His Church! We pray that by submitting ourselves to Christ in this way, we can also manifest some of the Father’s glory to the world, and people will be able to say, “It is good for us to be here.”