The Transfiguration of Jesus

Arnold Browne - Sue Ryder Prayer Fellowship

Yesterday’s Gospel was Matthew’s account of Jesus’ transfiguration. The Italian painter Raphael’s last painting was The Transfiguration, which he worked on in the years before his death in 1520. It hangs in the Vatican, and for centuries it was the most famous painting in the world. In the 18th century, Benjamin West, the President of the Royal Academy, confirmed ‘the opinion of the ages’ that ‘it still held the first place’. And in the 19th century the novelist Mark Twain said it was ‘wonderfully beautiful’ and ‘acknowledged by all to be the first oil painting in the world’.
Jesus’ transfiguration is depicted above the horizon, while below the horizon Raphael presents Jesus’ healing of the epileptic boy. In Matthew the healing follows the transfiguration, but the scenes are simultaneous in Raphael’s painting. As Jesus is transfigured the adolescent is already being healed. The boy fixes his eyes on the glorious Christ above our horizon, and his mouth opens as the demon departs. Below the horizon all the other characters react only on the human level, gesticulating and staring at one another, in despair and hopelessness. In Jesus’ own words, ’faithless and perverse’.
Perhaps we are more conscious than ever that humanity’s difficulties are insoluble on the human level. But if we look up, then our vision will be of the transfigured Christ, longing to transform the world he loves.
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