The word metamorphosis comes from the Greek word metemorphothe, which means a striking alteration in appearance, character or circumstance.
August 6, the 218th day in the Gregorian Calendar, has been designated as a day when the Transfiguration of Jesus is celebrated—the unique miracle that happens to Jesus himself a revelation of who Jesus is.
“Not of nature but of glory,” a connecting “bridge between heaven and earth.”
August 6, 1945, is also an important date in world history. It is the day when the US dropped the first atomic bomb. American Boeing B-29 bomber, named Enola Gray, dropped an atomic bomb at the center of Hiroshima at 8:15 a.m.
The bomb detonated 1,800 feet above the ground, destroyed the city, killed about 105,000 people instantly, and an estimated 100,000 who died of radiation effects later. And “everything flattened” as far as the eyes could see.
As Jesus’ divinity shone through his humanity on the first Transfiguration Sunday, the nuclear powers’ capability to efface life on earth was proven in Hiroshima.
On that day, Jesuit priest Fr. Hubert Schiffer, 30, had just sat for breakfast after saying Mass at Our Lady of Assumption, near the congregation’s living quarters. The priest, who lived until 63, heard a terrific explosion.
“After one bursting thunderstroke, an invisible force lifted me from the chair hurled me through the air, shook me, battered me, whirled me round and round like a leaf in the gust of autumn,” he said.
Except for minor injuries due to broken windows, Fr. Shiffer and three other Jesuit priests did not suffer any ill effects of the radiation. As the disciples were awestricken and overwhelmed with Jesus’ Transfiguration, the world, too, was speechless in grief to witness the fruits of civilization in ashes and human figures silenced forever or in untold sufferings.
Jesus in a changed form
August 6 is the Feast of the Transfiguration, an important celebration among Roman Catholics, and members of the Eastern Orthodox and Anglicans.
After Jesus told his disciples that he will suffer greatly in Jerusalem and be killed and on the third day raise from the dead (Matthew 16:21), he went to Mount Tabor in Galilee with Peter, James and John (Matthew 17:1).
A bright cloud cast a shadow on them and they heard a voice: “This is my Beloved Son with whom I am well pleased; listen to Him” (Matthew 17:5).
Jesus’ face shone like the sun and his garments white as light that overwhelmed his disciples. The message is exactly the message from the heavens during Jesus’ baptism in the river Jordan: “This is my Beloved Son with whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17).
Perfection of life
The fathers of the Church stress that the Transfiguration of Jesus is a revelation of who Jesus is. An incident that complements his baptism, it proves that the faithful, after death, will also return to life.
Like Moses and Elijah, who were long dead but were seen by the disciples talking with Jesus, the faithful will live in the presence of God. Jesus, indeed, is the connecting link between man and the divine, temporal life and eternal life.
As Saint Irenaeus emphasize, the “glory of God is a live human being and a truly human life in the vision of God.” Our “God is not a God of the dead but of the living,” (Matthew 22:32), a condition of discipleship according to Jesus
Presence of God
“No way any human could survive nor anything…left standing at 1 kilometer,” from the Hiroshima blast, said Dr. Stephen Rinehart, the international expert in the field of atomic blast of the US Department of Defense.
But not only one but four Jesuit priests; Frs. Schiffer, Hugo Lasalle, Wilhelm Kleinsorge and Hubert Cieslik survived with no detrimental effects on their health.
Through the years the four survivors underwent about 200 detailed examinations from doctors and scientists. Finally, Dr. Rinehart said: “[There is] no physical laws to explain why they were untouched in the Hiroshima air blast.”
That they were thoroughly unaffected by the hellish searing gamma rays of the bomb elicited religious perspective comments, from others to replace normal laws of nature. Schiffer, the superior of the religious community, expressed the reason succinctly: “We were living the message of Fatima,”
The survivors did not see Jesus transfigured with blinding lights, but they saw more—the awesome manifestation of God’s power.
Hymn for the Transfiguration and Hiroshima bombing day by Aelred Seton Shanley:
The glory that is ours this day
Is shed by neither moon nor sun;
The dazzling splendor we behold
Shines forth from Christ,
God’s cherished One….
Yet, millions massacred this day
Reduce to ash all human pride;
The burning sun we dropped demands
We ponder why it is Christ died.
Hiroshima’s bright blinding cloud
Must ever haunt us with its glare:
We chose that day to be as gods;
We shadowed all the earth with fear.
Earth now is clouded by a light
Unknown to Peter, James and John:
Could Tabor, pointing to the Cross
Conceive the suffering of that bomb?
O Christ have pity on our race
Which parodies your healing light;
Come Abba, Breath and Word enfleshed
Transfigure and restore our sight.
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Santiago is a former regional director of the Department of Education National Capital Region. She is currently a faculty member of Mater Redemptoris Collegium in Calauan, Laguna, and Mater Redemptoris College in San Jose City, Nueva Ecija.
Image credits: Wikimedia Commons