Today things that cannot be heard are heard by human ears; for the visible human being is attested to be Son of God: unique, beloved, of the same substance.
The witness cannot deceive, the proclamation is true; for the very Father who got him utters the proclamation himself.
Let David stand as witness, and strike the lyre of the Spirit that speaks God's words.
Let him sing the message now, more clearly and precisely, which the foresaw of old, as from a great distance, with purified eyes: the coming of the Word of God to us in flesh, as something yet to be, when he said, "Thabor and Hermon will shout for joy in your name."1
For this is the name above every name,2 over which Thabor and Hermon rejoice!
This is my Son, the Beloved!3
This is cause of rejoicing for all creation, this is a prize for humanity, a boast that will never be taken away!
For the one to whom this witness is borne is a human being, even if he is not merely this!
O joy, bestowed on us beyond all imagining!
O blessedness here, beyond hope!
O gifts of God, overcoming our desires!
O graces, not given simply in response to modest demands!
O generous giver, who have made a supernatural magnificence your own!
O grace, befitting not so much the receiver as the giver!
O mysterious covenants!
O you who grant power and take on weakness!
O you who reveal the human being as eternal, in that the eternal one begins to exist bodily as a creature!
For if the human person is divinized, in that God is humanized, and the one God himself is revealed as also human, then the same individual, being human, is eternal in divinity, yet still, being God, begins to live in his humanity.
-- St John of Damascus, Excerpt from a homily in celebration of the Transfiguration of the Lord
1. Psalm 88:13
2. Philippians 2:9
3. Matthew 17:5
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