Masterpiece Sunday: The Transfiguration

Transfiguration, Fra Angelico, 1440-1442. Museum of San Marco, Cell 6, Florence, Italy.

Fra Angelico was a Dominican friar who painted marvelous scenes of Christ’s life in the early Renaissance period. The monastery where he lived, San Marco, is now a museum in Florence to help preserve these amazing artworks. Several of his paintings were in the cells that brothers and priests lived in, which I think is a great call upon our lives. Do you have beautiful art in your room and home that calls your mind to Christ? How often are your surroundings stirring up reflection and conversation with Our Lord? Fra Angelico knew the power of beauty and of the space that we reside in. We should look carefully upon what surrounds us and how we can enhance our experience of what we are allowing ourselves to gaze upon. We are shaped by our surroundings, so we should do our best to make it beautiful. 

This painting shows Christ is revealing Himself as divine to Peter, James and John. Fra Angelico also included the heads of Moses and Elijah who appeared with the transfigured Jesus. The Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Dominic also appear in this depiction of the Transfiguration. Mary and St. Dominic are in postures of devotion, which refers to how they were not actually at the Transfiguration but reveal their importance to this event. Fra Angelico wanted to show the holiness of St. Dominic and how devoted the founder of his order was to Christ. Devotion to Mary was vital to St. Dominic and the whole Dominican order. Showing how connected she was to Christ and her knowledge about who Christ was is reflected in this painting. 

Fra Angelico’s depiction of the Transfiguration is particularly striking to me because of Christ’s posture. Christ with His arms straight out brings my mind directly to the Crucifixion, where our Lord’s arms were forcibly outstretched and nailed to a cross. At the Transfiguration, the three apostles had a glimpse of the reality of who Christ was and His importance to all of creation. They are grappling with this in awe, wonder, and I am sure quite a bit of fear in this painting. But this painting is less about their reactions and more about what Christ wants to say to us, which is that His glory is revealed on the cross. 

The truth of who Christ is was revealed to the entire world when He hung upon the cross, beaten and broken. 

The brightly shining, gloriously triumphant Lord that is shown during His Transfiguration is the same Christ that hangs upon the cross. In the triumphs and tragedies of His life Christ’s mission and identity never changed. His mission was to save us from sin and death and His identity is the Son of God. Jesus kept true to who He was and what He was sent to do, even when He could have avoided the tragedies. He chose to take the path that would actually save, would actually free, would actually allow us to know our sanctification comes in times of the deepest darkness and brightest light. 

Jesus Christ is inviting us into His glory through partaking in our own triumphs and tragedies. We will always give us opportunities to make a gift of ourselves where we can love God, ourselves, and our neighbor. The fullness of who He is as the Son of God is more glorious than we can ever imagine, but He continues to give this glory to us. He continues to invite us to partake and become the saints he intends for us to be. 

Life with Christ brings us to be as glorified and radiant as He was, both on the cross and at the Transfiguration.

At the transfiguration Christ, unbeknownst to the apostles, was showing them what they could be someday. After His death and resurrection, this path of transformation was opened to all of us. May we unite ourselves with Christ in our own crosses so that He may transform us to be as radiant as the sun.

Reflection written by Madeline Larson

Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Transfiguration_by_fra_Angelico_(San_Marco_Cell_6).jpg