I was late to the Vigil of the Transfiguration, but I finally heard it

Sometimes in the middle of our services, my parish priest likes to deliver what he calls ‘sermonettes.’ Our temple is generally a mix of old-timer Ukrainian Catholics and newbie converts like me who call ourselves Orthodox-in-communion-with-Rome (as well as a smattering of Latin Catholics), so it is good that our priest explains stuff to us every so often. His sermonettes are also the only few times during the service that I do not mentally complain about the pews (they really do get in the way when you’re going all the way down with a reverence – a bow where you are supposed to touch the ground), so grateful for a break, I had a seat. What he said shocked me out of both my frazzledness in coming into the service late and my familiarity with the passage on Moses seeing G-d’s glory. Referring to the second reading, my priest emphasized the point that no one can see G-d’s face and live; his glory would be too much for our bodies to bear. But in the Transfiguration (he continued), what we have is Moses (who is the closest that anyone ever got to seeing G-d – and only his back) and Elijah (who was taken up to heaven by chariots of fire), together with the disciples, seeing the face of G-d in Jesus Christ on Mount Tabor and not dying. Transfiguration, he said, is a very strange word in English; a simpler understanding, he then said, can be found in the explanation that it simply means ‘to change face.’ And with that, I felt my entire body shift from distraction into worship.