The Transfiguration of Human Nature in the Resurrection¹
The Transfiguration of Human Nature in the Resurrection¹
I congratulate you, my beloved sons and brothers, on the glorious Feast of the Resurrection, wishing for all of you and for our dear Egypt every good and blessing from our good God. And praying for all the problems in Africa and throughout the Middle East, and in the Holy Land and Palestine. And the God of peace is able to pour out His peace upon all. And what human beings cannot do, God, who is almighty, can do.
And now, I want to speak to you today about a very important element of the Resurrection: that in the Resurrection the human nature is renewed and transfigured. And the transfiguration of this nature includes body, spirit, mind, and thought. So by its transfiguration it becomes in a new life, completely holy, different from what it was before.
As for the body, we rise with luminous, spiritual bodies, having been completely freed from the matter with which they were united in earthly life, and thus freed from all the wars of matter and all that pertains to flesh and blood.
And in the transfiguration of the body, the human being feels in eternity no hunger, or thirst, or fatigue, or sickness, and does not suffer from bodily or material desires, nor from the fickleness of the senses, their disturbances, or their deviations… this from the negative side.
But from the positive side, the senses in their transfiguration see what cannot be seen, or what they had not seen before. They see the spirits of the saints who preceded them to the world of glory, and they see the angels whom they had not seen before, all of them spirits unseen except by the transfiguration of human sight. And in the transfiguration of the senses, human nature hears what it had not heard before: the heavenly praises, the hymns of the angels, and the voices of the righteous from every land and through all ages. It hears them and speaks with them. And this happens only through the transfiguration of human nature.
The spirit also is transfigured and never sins forever. It used to sin when it was united with the body, sometimes dragged with it in its desires and material tendencies, as matter surrounds it with many temptations and wars. But in the Resurrection it has been freed from all this and liberated. And God granted it “the crown of righteousness,” so it became righteous perpetually, and it began to be nourished by divine love, growing in it day by day. And its true joy became the fellowship with God and His angels and His saints.
How beautiful is the saying of the Lord Christ about life in eternity, when He says of it: “You will be like the angels of God in heaven.” That is, in the purity of the angels far from all bodily desires, and likewise the lightness of the angels who move in the blink of an eye to the farthest place without crossing any space on the way. In the transfiguration of human nature, the mind also, and the thought and knowledge, are transfigured. No wrong idea roams the mind, as human nature in its transfiguration reaches complete purity of mind. And it becomes in the simplicity of our first parents before the fall into sin.
As for knowledge, in the transfiguration the human being knows only good. Formerly, he lived in a tiring duality of good and evil, lawful and unlawful, and what is unbefitting, wavering between one state and its opposite. But in the transfiguration of human nature, its knowledge becomes limited to good only. All knowledge of all names of evil and its synonyms is removed from it. And from the vocabulary of the new human dictionary the word “sin” is erased, and with it the words of corruption, injustice, adultery, immorality, murder, deceit, lying, theft… and the like.
With the erasure of all the sinful past from its memory—with all its stories, accounts, and recollections—as the images of evil people are erased, whether enemies or friends. In short: everything that had settled in the subconscious and in memory is forgotten. And human nature in the transfiguration gains a new, pure subconscious containing nothing but righteousness, as well as a new dictionary of vocabulary in which there are absolutely no words of sin, but all righteous new expressions.
And in the transfiguration of knowledge, the human being begins to have knowledge of God—I mean true, deep knowledge. For now we know of God only His name, without knowing the essence: we know, for example, that God is perfect, but what is the nature of this perfection? This we do not know. We know that God is great, and yet we do not know the nature of this greatness. We know that God is more beautiful than the sons of men, but we do not know the nature of this beauty. Everything we know of God is merely many names, without grasping their true meaning!!
But in eternity, when our human nature is transfigured, our knowledge also will be transfigured when He reveals to us His essence or some of His essence. Then we become in astonishment at the wonder and splendor of what we cannot comprehend. Then God expands our capacity of understanding so that we may grasp more about Him… and yet everything revealed to us of the glory of God, His majesty, His beauty, and His perfection places us in utmost amazement and wonder and inability to comprehend, so God broadens our understanding more and more until we can draw near to the understanding of His divine essence—and yet we do not understand! But when shall we know God as He is? This is the eternal life in its unlimited length, which is not enough to know Him, no matter how much our knowledge is transfigured! Yet the more we know of God, the more we increase in His love and reverence.
And with the transfiguration of our knowledge, we begin to know other things about the angels, with all their orders, ranks, and their work. And this, without doubt, requires a long span. Then our knowledge expands to include all the prophets, apostles, martyrs, worshippers, ascetics, and all who pleased the Lord from the beginning. So we rejoice in this and delight in their fellowship. And our knowledge grows in pursuit of understanding all the mysteries of the Kingdom.
And all this fills our conscious mind and our subconscious with accounts of righteousness related to all these and all they did in the love of God and pleasing Him. And with all this we cling to righteousness and goodness, and it becomes a nature in us, no longer something we struggle to attain as happened in earthly life.
Finally, as I speak about the transfiguration of human nature, I want to mention some examples to simplify this subject:
It sometimes happens in our days that a person’s mind is clear, producing thoughts of utmost brilliance. As when he composes a story or a novel of supreme creativity, leaving a deep impact on all. Or a person composes a poem considered among the masterpieces of poetry in its imagination, music, and deep meanings… so we say of this poet or that storyteller that he was in a state of transfiguration.
We may also say that a person is in a state of transfiguration if God has granted him a particular gift with an extraordinary ability in a form of art or music or drawing or sculpture or in some craft. So he produces a rare work which we call a kind of transfiguration. But all these examples indicate temporary transfiguration. As for the transfiguration that belongs to human nature after the Resurrection, it is permanent and fixed.
How great is the transfiguration that belongs to our nature in eternity. But what we have said applies to the righteous who reach heaven, being in a state of purity that qualifies them for the glory of this transfiguration.
Let us therefore prepare ourselves for all this with a life acceptable before God.
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An article by His Holiness Pope Shenouda III published in Al-Ahram newspaper on 4-4-2010
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