A sudden storm had come without warning and forced him to put in at this very island. After spending a frightening, uncomfortable night, he looked around the island and came upon a small mud hut beside which a very old man was sitting, and out of which two others emerged. They were most hospitable. They gave the fisherman food, dried his clothes, treated him with great kindness and helped him repair his boat. Most of what they did was done in silence.
They seldom spoke even to one another. But they understood one another perfectly. The archbishop was so enthralled with the story that he asked the captain if he could pay a visit to the old men on the island. A small boat was prepared and the archbishop, the fisherman and four crewmen headed for the island. When they reached the shore, the archbishop, in his splendid finery, stepped out.
The old men made obeisance to him, and he blessed them in return. One finally responded, "O servant of God, we know not how to serve God. We seek only to serve one another and to pray. And the eldest replied: "We pray thus: 'Ye are three, and we are three.
Have ye mercy upon us and the world. All morning and all afternoon he labored with them. Finally, he was satisfied and returned to the ship. And as the voyage continued, the little island disappeared from view. Later in the evening when the passengers had retired, the archbishop moved to the bow of the ship where he sat alone deep in thought.
He continued to gaze in the direction of the vanished island and think of the three old men. He remembered how pleased they had been to learn the Lord's Prayer and he thanked God for the privilege of imparting knowledge to those who were ignorant concerning matters of faith.
As he sat alone with his thoughts, gazing in the direction where the island had disappeared, he noticed a movement over the waters. Suddenly, it began to glow in the light of the moon. Whatever it is, it is moving rapidly and will quickly overtake us, he thought. Suddenly the helmsman cried, "God of heaven! There are three old men running across the water as upon dry land! Everyone could see the old men as they came up to the bow of the ship, hand-in-hand. They were radiant. With one voice they said to the archbishop, "O servant of God, we have forgotten already the prayer you taught us.
None of it can we recall. Wilt thou teach us again? Your prayer is most profitable unto God. And yet is there some connection between the Transfiguration of Jesus and the Transformation of the Christian? Hywel R. Jones presents answers to these questions in this book. In the course of doing so he shows how the divine can penetrate the human without destroying it as in the Person of Christ, and how the human can become conformed to the divine without its ceasing to be human as in the case of the Christian.
That kind of metamorphosis accords and exalts the Christian gospel over against the humanism of our culture, whether secularised or spiritualised. There is a distinction between God and Man which will never be obliterated but preserved for ever — even in the glorified Christ in whom they are joined.
But communion between the God-Man and his believing people will result in each Christian being fully conformed to the perfect humanity of Christ while retaining his or her own individuality. It will not result in a faceless absorption into the divine but face to face communion with the triune God for ever.
We are all so much like Peter and the other disciples. We sleep through important things going on around us. We get so worn down with our everyday lives that we miss out on the miracles. Or we open our mouths and say things without thinking through it before we say it. Most of us have had a mountain top experience. We see the transfigured Jesus in His glory and want some of that.
Being transfigured starts with transformation.
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