St Gregory Palamas teaches us about the Transfiguration of our Lord:
The Lord said to his disciples, ‘There are some standing here who will not taste death till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power‘ (Mark 9:1); and after six days He took Peter, James and John, and when they had ascended Mount Tabor He shone like the sun, and His clothes became white as light (cf. Matthew 17:1-2). When the disciples could look at it no longer or, rather, because they lacked the strength to gaze at the brightness, they fell prostrate to the earth (cf. Matthew 17:6). None the less, in accordance with the Savior’s promise they did see the kingdom of God, that divine and inexpressible light.
St Gregory of Nazianzos and St Basil called this light ‘divinity’, saying that ‘the light is the divinity manifested to the disciples on the Mount’, and that is ‘the beauty of Him who is almighty, and His noetic and contemplatable divinity’. St Basil the Great also says that this light is the beauty of God contemplated by the saints alone in the power of the divine Spirit; and again he writes, ‘On the mountain Peter and the sons of thunder saw His beauty shining more brightly than the sun; and they were privileged to receive with their eyes a foretaste of His advent.’
St John of Damaskos as well as St John Chrysostom call that light a natural ray of the Divinity. The former writes, ‘Because the Son was begotten unoriginately from the Father, He possesses the natural, unoriginate ray of the Divinity; and the glory of the Divinity becomes the glory of His body.’ And St John Chrysostom says, ‘The Lord appeared upon the mountain more radiant than Himself because the Divinity revealed its rays.’ (THE PHILOKALIA Vol 4, pp 414-415)
