The parallels between the Transfiguration of Jesus Christ and the accounts of Moses and Elijah going up the mountain were clear to the first readers of Luke's Gospel. On the mountaintop, both prophets heard the supreme revelation—the foundation of the message they brought to Israel (Exodus 19; 1 Kings 19). Now the apostles find themselves in their place: together with the prophets of old, they stand before the Source of revelation and, like them, hear the Father's voice from the cloud of light. This testimony is the foundation of the Gospel that they are to proclaim to the whole world: “This is My beloved Son; I delight in Him!” As in centuries past, what matters most is revealed not in theological formulas or as a secret doctrine, but in these words of Light concerning Light.

Today's reading includes two events that, at first glance, are connected only chronologically: the Transfiguration (vv. 28-36) and the healing of the possessed son of an unnamed man (vv. 38-45). And yet the Evangelist does not connect these two stories by accident. It would seem that, against the background of what had just happened, another healing, even one unsuccessful for the apostles, was an ordinary enough event that one might not even mention it.

Meanwhile Jesus' reaction to it was unusually harsh (v. 41). Commentators, of course, have still not come to a single opinion about whom Jesus' words primarily concern: the man who brought his son to Him, or the apostles. But against this background an important detail is the mention that, precisely after the unsuccessful healing, Jesus again and again reminds His disciples of His suffering and death (vv. 43-44), while they cannot understand Him at all: something hides from the apostles the meaning of what the Savior has said (v. 45). It is especially noteworthy that they were even afraid to ask the Teacher again. Until then He had never left their questions unanswered, and not once had He become angry at any question; what, then, could the disciples have been afraid of?

Of course, it was frightening to hear about the Teacher's death from His own lips, but the apostles were not children or cowards ready to hide their heads in the sand at the sight of danger. Apparently they did not simply fail to understand; rather, they did not accept Jesus' words, hoping that they were only a slip, a misunderstanding, or some image, a parable whose meaning would in time be explained. For on the day of the Transfiguration the apostles saw the Kingdom already in all its fullness; one could say that they came home to their Teacher, who had invited them to Himself in order to show them His true home. And there, on that day of triumph, He suddenly begins to speak to them about His death, which for them could only be defeat and catastrophe.

Such a thing, of course, could not fit into their consciousness: for the resurrection, in which the apostles of course believed, was still something too distant for them to become real within their own lives. And so they still did not trust Jesus to the end. But distrust destroys relationships, and when the moment of healing came, the moment of witness to the Kingdom, the apostles failed. Seeing this distrust, which had gone so far, Jesus may well have judged the situation with utmost severity. And no wonder: for the unreadiness mentioned here by the Evangelist to accept Jesus' words about His death and resurrection would later become the cause both of Peter's denial and of Judas' betrayal.

What makes the people of God the people of God? Special qualities? Hardly: in this respect the Jewish people are like all others. Of course, they have their own national face, always and everywhere easily recognizable; but what people does not? Then perhaps a special destiny? In a certain sense, yes: not every people can boast of such sharp turns in its history.

But all this is still a human matter. Who knows what twists history can produce when four millennia are involved. The presence of God among His people, however, is God's matter; it does not depend on people or on history. Though, of course, this independence is relative: preserving and guarding the presence of God is precisely a human task, entrusted to the people of God, who were called to bear witness to God dwelling among them. But then it is also true that the people of God remain such only as long as there is a place for God among them.

It is no accident that both the Torah and the prophets speak not so much of the people's ownership of the land God gave them as of their use of it, a use limited by the conditions of the covenant-union made with God. If the union is broken, a situation may quite well arise in which the people lose both their land and the Temple. But such a thing can become possible only in one case: if God leaves, if He abandons the land, the city, and the Temple that He once blessed and sanctified by His presence.

After that, the destruction of the city and the Temple and the desolation of the land become only the outward expression of this new spiritual condition, a kind of anti-witness, proof that, at least at this historical stage, the people did not manage to fulfill its spiritual task. But the return of the people to the land of their fathers, the restoration of the city and the Temple, mean precisely that, after repentance and a new turning, the people are again ready for the mission God has entrusted to them. And that means that a new stage begins in their historical destiny: a stage that leads them straight to the threshold of the New Covenant.