St Peter’s Anglican Church

The Transfiguration of the Beloved Son - August 6

Today is the feast of The Transfiguration of the Beloved Son.

The transfiguration was an important festival in the eastern church by the eighth century. In the west, the festival was introduced much later and became common only when Pope Callistus III ordered its observance to commemorate the victory over the Turks at Belgrade on 6 August 1456.

The first three Gospels all tell of an episode in which Jesus took Peter, James and John with him up a mountain, and his appearance took on the look of one glorified (Matthew 17:1-9; Mark 9:2-10; Luke 9:28-36). There is no comparable event in John’s Gospel, but, as commentators have pointed out, the whole of the Fourth Gospel is suffused with the idea of the manifestation of the glory of Jesus right from the very prologue of the Gospel.

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Sermon by Vicar Stuart Goodin - 2 August 2020

There is a tantalising postscript to the mysterious story of Jacob wrestling with God in Genesis 32. The chapter ends with this statement:

Therefore to this day the Israelites do not eat the tendon attached to the socket of the hip, because the socket of Jacob’s hip was touched near the tendon. (v.32)

And I find myself wondering about that tradition. As the centuries passed might we have found some Israelite families gradually lost the tradition altogether, eating every part of the haunch without thought?.... Read more