For the first readers of Luke’s Gospel, the parallels between the Transfiguration of Jesus Christ and the accounts of Moses and Elijah ascending the mountain were clear. Both prophets heard on the mountaintop the most important revelation, the foundation of the message they brought to Israel (Exodus 19; 1 Kings 19). Now the apostles take their place: together with the ancient prophets, 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 they are to proclaim to the whole world: “This is My beloved Son; I delight in Him!” As in ages past, the most important thing is revealed not in theological formulas or in the form of a secret doctrine, but in these words of Light about 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 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.