Before us is an ordinary scene: the Teacher and His disciples; He tells them something, and they listen... This time the parable becomes an answer to a question put directly to Jesus: why do Your disciples eat with unwashed hands? (see Mark 7:5). And this question is not simply a reproach for untidiness or ignorance of hygiene rules; it is a question concerning tradition: "For the Pharisees and all the Jews, holding to the tradition of the elders, do not eat unless they wash their hands carefully; and when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash. And there are many other things which they have received and hold: the washing of cups, pitchers, kettles, and couches" (Mark 7:3-4). And suddenly the Pharisees notice something that deeply offends them: someone is not keeping this tradition, which for them is equivalent to an insult.

Here a natural question arises: were Jesus' disciples not Jews? Of course they were, and they surely knew this rule perfectly well. But the point is that now they are disciples of the Teacher, and not simply Jews. The freedom of the Spirit, the freedom of love, is already beginning to act in their hearts, calling them to fulfill the true law given by God and separating from it everything superfluous. "But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel, ... says the Lord: I will put My law within them and write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. And they shall no longer teach one another, brother teaching brother, and say, 'Know the Lord,' for they shall all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest" (Jer 31:33).

At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, where the most important rules for the life of Christ's disciples are gathered, there is a kind of comment by Jesus Himself on this whole moral teaching: one cannot limit oneself to hearing the word; one must carry it out, that is, apply it in life. This means that all these rules, commandments, and moral guideposts are not only ethics, a "moral code," or a charter, but rather instructions for putting faith into practice. For faith is the presence of God in a person's life, and therefore to believe means to live in a godly way. For Christ, no "religious convictions" detached from practice are possible. He is not expecting some special worldview or set of beliefs from us. He is expecting God to be present in the world through us...

What a strange theophany at first glance: terror and darkness! What was Abraham to think after experiencing such a revelation? How was he to imagine his God? Meanwhile God repeats all the promises previously given to Abraham, making them even more concrete. So what is happening? Why did Abraham's first meeting with God described in detail turn out to be so strange?

If darkness and terror were the meaning of the revelation Abraham received, we would have every reason to ask bewildered questions. A God who wants to frighten is clearly not the God of love. But does He want that? Or did it happen of itself? What, in fact, was Abraham able and meant to see and experience when he met God face to face? What can a human being see and experience in such a case at all?

As for seeing, of course, he will hardly see anything at all: after all, we are speaking of the One, the Creator of heaven and earth, whom a human being cannot see by definition. And then before the eyes of the one who sees there will, in all cases, be impenetrable darkness, as always happens when we stand before something completely beyond our perception. It is not surprising that, meeting God face to face, Abraham saw only a "great darkness," as the Hebrew text says; more precisely, he saw nothing. Nor is it surprising that before this darkness Abraham experiences terror: it is the terror of a finite human being before the infinite God, who has not yet done anything to lessen His majesty for man's sake.

As we can see, at the first face-to-face meeting God appeared before Abraham as He is. And Abraham responded accordingly. But this was only the beginning. The beginning of the story of God's movement toward man, which in due time would be completed by the final step that would be the Incarnation of God. To the point of complete inseparability.