Vatican City, Mar 20, 2011 / 10:33 am
The Transfiguration reveals Christ’s divinity and shows that he alone is the true home of the Christian, Pope Benedict XVI told thousands of Catholics gathered for the Sunday Angelus.
Speaking from the balcony of his apartment, the Pope discussed the passage from Matthew 17 in which Jesus leads Peter, James and John up a high mountain where Christ is then transfigured before them. “His face shone like the sun and his garments became white as light,” the Gospel reads.
“According to the senses, the light of the sun is the most intense ever known in nature,” Benedict XVI noted. “But according to the spirit, the disciples saw for a short time a brightness more intense: that of the divine glory of Jesus, which illuminates the whole history of salvation.”
Citing the first volume of his work “Jesus of Nazareth,” the Pope said the Transfiguration reveals “the profound interpenetration of his being with God, which then becomes pure light. In his oneness with the Father, Jesus is himself ‘light from light’.”