Words from the Holy Mountain

In one of the most enigmatic passages of the canonical Gospels Yeshua ascends the Mountain and is transfigured before three of his students. Their reaction is so unstable that they can hardly attend to what is happening all around them, but are instead focused upon themselves and their fear and unknowing. Recently while translating the Gospel of Philip from Coptic, I came to a section which is astounding. In it Philip records words from that scene and calls them "Eucharistic"--a form of great thanksgiving poured out in a cry of joy from the heart of Yeshua. Here is what is recorded:

On that very day in an act of great thanksgiving he cried, "O You who has united Perfect Light with sacred Spirit, let our angels be bonded to the icons.”

These words are full of a sense of the divine Presence in a cosmos of immense proportion and complexity. They suggest many things about ourselves and the understanding that the Christ has of what is happening "in Glory"--the realm of Transcendence. This prayer is not easy to understand given the conventional theology of western Christianity, but it does make sense within the framework of Semitic and Oriental spirituality.