Dear Parishioners and Friends.
The Transfiguration of the Lord on Mount Tabor was accomplished for our fulfillment of the glory  of the coming Kingdom of Heaven (Mt 17: 1-9). Jesus puts great effort into bringing the disciples closer to Himself. The bonds of God’s love are unbreakable! They are stronger than death!
An interesting story is about an Hindu father who, during the flood of the Narbada River, tied his children to a rope by the wrists of their hands and threw himself into the water. When he passed, he ordered the children to get ashore as well. He pulled them out with the rope, though they were almost drowned in the water, with faint hope that their frail hands could defeat the power of the elements. However, the strength of the father and the tying of the children to the rope allowed him to save all of them.
Likewise, Jesus ties Himself to us, pulling us to heaven, through the vicissitudes of fate that flood and entangle us, threatening to sink us to the bottom! Jesus was with the disciples on earth so that they might be with Him in heaven; the Transfiguration reveals this will to bring man into the Kingdom of Heaven! Thus, He led them up the mountain separately, and there He revealed to them the truth about the world to come.
Transfiguration reminds us of the most important question of man: why do we live? We only find happiness in God. Man is created to be happy in God and enjoy His glory. The only place where this is possible is the Kingdom of Heaven. The way to get there is this world – the world that is about to disappear. God left us signs and outlined paths for us, after which we are to go to the world of the future; these are His commandments. We made them blurry with the mud of iniquity and the flood of lies. So let’s get hold of the rope of His love, just as the children did in this Hindu story.
This world was not only marked by the signs of God, or His commandments, but also the signs of His happiness, which are the pleasures that exist in this world. God created them to remind us of the happiness of heaven. However, we have made them the purpose of our lives and it made us very unhappy. We acted like someone who had a photograph of a loved one and stopped there, forgetting to look for the real person. The photograph cannot replace them, and  only deepens the longing to the level of despair! This happens to us, because we cherish the pleasures of the image, and we forget about the happiness that is hidden in the real Personality of Jesus. We are deferring what will bring our hearts to God. We have made our own deities and therefore we suffer. This world is only a temporary road on which we travel. On this path we have only one task: to bond with God through Jesus Christ, so that our bonds, like cords, pull us into the world to come, the Kingdom of Heaven!

God bless!