“My mouth shall declare your justice, day by day your salvation. O God, you have taught me from my youth, and till the present I proclaim your wondrous deeds.” To be a Disciple of Christ is to know him, follow him, learn from him and ultimately to be like him. For Jesus, every moment was and is a teachable moment; an opportunity to learn and to grow in the will and knowledge of God. Jesus freely and generously shared his thoughts, his knowledge, his heart, his love, his wisdom with his disciples and continues to do so with us. Jesus understands that not everyone absorbs instruction and knowledge in the same way or at the same rate or at the same capacity. Our upbringing plays a key role in our development. It affects how we learn, how we teach, how we perceive, how we experience, how we understand. This is an important lesson for all teachers. To understand that not all the students start from the same page or the same place or from the same point of understanding. A good teacher understands their students; their abilities, their limitations, how they take in information, how they process it, how they learn and how they teach. Jesus understood this so he used different methods of teaching the disciples in order to encourage and honor different styles of learning. At times, the disciples learned through listening to Jesus while he shared different prayers and beatitudes. At times, the disciples learned through the signs and wonders performed by Jesus. Other times, the disciples experienced mercy through healing. Other times, Jesus taught them through parables to engage the disciples’ imagination in order to contemplate and experience what the Kingdom of God may be like. Through the use of these different styles of teaching and learning, Jesus re-enforced the most important lesson of them all – how to become and be loving, kind, joyful, merciful, forgiving, charitable. He showed and taught the disciples how to be Christian. That is, how to be like Jesus. How to live as a beloved child of God. Some of the lessons were difficult to understand and needed to be repeated more than once like why was it necessary for Jesus to be mocked, rejected, beaten and killed then rise on the third day? God forbid they said. But being the good, patient teacher that he was, Jesus helped the disciples to see, listen, experience, and imagine the importance of this lesson through repetition and through the Transfiguration.  They would come to learn, believe  and understand without a doubt the depth of God’s love and the power of his glory that would destroy death, forgive sins and restore life simply because he loves us. Fr. Ivan