You were transfigured on the mount, O Christ God,* showing Your glory to Your disciples as much as they could bear.* Make Your eternal light shine* also on us who are sinners,* through the prayers of the Mother of God** O Giver of Light, glory to You!                                     Tropar of the Transfiguration (tone 7)

 This week we celebrate the Gospel event after which our parish is named! And after two years of COVID, we can be together again as a community of “Transfiguration”. The Transfiguration is sometimes called the second Theophany because Peter, John, and James recognized their good friend as God: a carpenter alight with divinity!

  We, together with all humanity, together with all creation, can shine with God’s light! Christ has shown us the way and we respond with joy and gratitude! Our feast of the Transfiguration is a feast of thanksgiving.

 We bless these sacred fruits of the earth renewing our strength and commitment to be Christ’s light in the world—to be a transfigured community, illuminated by

God and illuminating the spaces we inhabit. 

  At this time our ancestors believed that our deceased loved ones could visit the earth. The blessed food was shared not only with friends, neighbours and the less fortunate, but even with the spirits of the dead.

  We pray that we may have the courage to see God’s light in each other, in the strangers, in the homeless and in those that may have never been shown a transfigured world, until they met us.