st. john of damascus (676-749 - Cristo Raul

"
a mountain being the chosen spot.
SERMONS. 109
A mountain, as
rising high above the level of the earth, is a symbol
of that charity, or love, which is the crowning Chris
tian grace. To readers of the works bearing the
name of Dionysius the Areopagite, this thought will
be a familiar one. Through the successive stages of
purification and illumination the soul must rise to its
perfection ; as through faith and hope we reach the
"
empyrean summit of love. Wherefore," St. John
of Damascus continues,
"we should leave to the
earth what is earthy, and surmount this body of our
humiliation, and borne on high to the lofty and divine
watch-tower of love, there gaze on what had baffled
our gaze. For he who has attained to the eminence
of love, being in a measure out of himself, discerns
the unseen, and by soaring
above the gloom
of this
corporeal cloud that hovers over him, and reaching
the clear upper air of the soul, fixes a more piercing
gaze upon the Sun of Righteousness, even though
unable as yet to be fully sated with the spectacle."
And on the words apart and to pray, brought to
gether by joining the accounts of the first and third
evangelist, he adds the pithy comment, For quietude
is the mother of prayer as ; prayer is the manifesta
tion of divine glory" (c. x.).
The Transfiguration
itself was not an assuming of what Christ had not
before, but a manifesting to the disciples of that
which he had ; their eyes being opened, so that,
while hitherto but blind, they were now enabled to
see (c. xii.).
From the words,
"his face did shine as
the sun,"
he draws another illustration of the topic
ever present to his thoughts, the twofold nature of