Matthew 17: The Transfiguration of our LORD (Bishop Jeremy Taylor)

A wonderful selection and mediation from Nicholas Armitage. See:
http://comfortablewords.blogspot.com/2010/08/jeremy-taylor-1613-1667-on.html

Friday, August 6, 2010
Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667) on the Transfiguration

THE Feast of The Transfiguration Of Our Lord (see Mk 9:2-10) is given on this day in the prayer Book, although no Collect has been set for it.

The following Prayer comes from The Great Exemplar of Sanctity And Holy Life, a series of meditations and prayers on the Life of Christ by Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667), Bishop of Down, Connor and Dromore in Ireland.

Taylor saw the Transfiguration as a twin with the Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. The purpose of both together, he believed, was that his disciples:

might see of how great glory for our sakes he disrobed himselfe, and that they also might by the confronting those contradictory accidents observe, that GOD uses to dispense his comforts, the irradiations and emissions of his glory, to be preparatives to those sorrows, with which our life must be allayed and seasoned, that none should refuse to partake of the sufferings of CHRIST, if either they have already felt his comforts, or hope hereafter to wear his crown.

Part III, Discourse XIX, Ad Sect. 15 §2
http://books.google.com/books?id=D9UTAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA731#v=onepage&q&f=false

Bishop Taylor's prayer therefore focuses not on the glory which Jesus revealed in this moment, but on the contrast between his glory and the lowliness beneath which he concealed it for so long, and which he took upon himself for our benefit.

O HOLY and eternal Jesus, who wert pleased to lay aside the glorious and incomprehensible Majesty which clothed thy infinity from before the beginning of creatures, and didst put on a cloud upon thy brightness, and wert invested with the impure and imperfect broken robe of human nature, and didst abate those splendours which broke through the veil, commanding devils not to publish thee, and men not to proclaim thy excellencies, and the Apostles not to reveal those glories of thine which they discovered encircling thee upon mount Tabor in thy transfiguration, and didst by perpetual homilies and symbolical mysterious actions, as with deep characters, engrave humility into the spirits of thy disciples, and the discipline of Christianity:

teach us to approach near to these thy glories which thou hast so covered with a cloud, that we might without amazement behold thy excellencies; make us to imitate thy gracious condescensions, take from us all vanity and fantastic complacencies in our own persons or actions;

and when there arises a reputation consequent to the performance of any part of our duty, make us to reflect the glory upon thee, suffering nothing to adhere to our own spirits but shame at our own imperfection, and thankfulness to thee for all thy assistances;

let us never seek the praise of men from unhandsome actions, from flatteries and unworthy discourses, nor entertain the praise with delight though it proceed from better principles;

but fear and tremble lest we deserve punishment or lose a reward which thou hast deposited for all them that seek thy glory and despise their own, that they may imitate the example of their Lord.

Part III. Discourse XVIII. Ad Sect. 15 Numb. 6
http://books.google.com/books?id=D9UTAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA707#v=onepage&q&f=false
See also Sermons on the Transfiguration.