Definition of "transfiguration" [transfiguration]

• A marked change in form or appearance; a metamorphosis. (noun)
• A change that glorifies or exalts. (noun)
• Bible The sudden emanation of radiance from the person of Jesus that occurred on a mountain. (noun)
• The Christian feast commemorating this event, observed on August 6 in the Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches, on August 19 in the Eastern Orthodox Church, and on the Sunday before Lent in most Protestant churches. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "The transfiguration is a feast which originated in the Eastern Church, becoming widely observed by the end of the first millennium."
• "_I answer that, _ The clarity which Christ assumed in His transfiguration was the clarity of glory as to its essence, but not as to its mode of being."
• "She was beaten down, overwhelmed, freed, as though the transfiguration were her own, from the pitiful barriers of consciousness ...."