Christ is transfigured, in his light we see light: the divine light that radiates forth from him and transfigures his saints. Some saints, such as Abba Joseph and the Venerable Seraphim, were visibly transfigured during their lifetimes. Some saints were transfigured at the time of their death – at the hour of their repose, a pillar of light was seen to rise up heavenward from the bodies of Saint Scholastica and Saint Herman of Alaska. In the words of the Akathist “Glory to God for All Things”: “How often I have seen the reflection of thy glory in the face of the dead! How resplendent they were with joy and beauty not of this earth! How ethereal, how radiant their features!” Ultimately, a permanent transfiguration, an eternal enjoyment of the divine light, is what awaits the saints in heaven. In the stories about Father Arseny, we read that, in what we commonly call a “near-death experience,” he encountered many dead, martyred priests in a heavenly temple, vested to liturgize, and all vested in white—with raiment “glistening, intensely white, as no fuller on earth could bleach them” (Mk. 9:3).
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