The theory on God collapses, when Job sees Him face to face. And it appears that the theory is not even necessary. He is alive. He is in reality above our understanding. Whatever we may have thought of Him – He is more than our representations. No matter if our representations are right or not, they are limited, and by definition cannot envelop His personality. Are we suggested not to think and reflect? No. But it is necessary to remember that He is more than we can imagine. And a genuine reality is opened in particular when meeting with Him face to face, eye to eye - that is in Eternity.

What do the words of Job mean? The Omnipotence of God? The impossibility for man to resist God? Probably, and that also. But in the context of the entire book, they probably all the same acquire another sense, not so obvious. What is the main problem of Job? What worries him most? The misfortunes that struck him? Probably, no. However, of course the starting point was exactly the misfortunes. But oppressed Job mostly makes the fact that he perceived these misfortunes as an injustice, and moreover as an injustice from God. He is troubled, he cannot understand: is God unjust? Or He simply doesn’t care about people? Both were for Job equally a spiritual disaster, quite as, certainly for any sincere religious person. And Job, naturally as a sincere person, began to ask very "uncomfortable" questions to God, and moreover in a very rude form (to the great displeasure of his friends, who used all the theological arguments available to them to reason with Job). And then, Job finally heard God.

The God, Who paradoxically had promised nothing to him and had answered him to none of the questions and nor any of the charges pronounced by Job to His face. What thus urged Job to reconsider his previous opinions? Is it only the overwhelming greatness of God, in front of which man cannot resist? Probably, not only it. If everything was so easy, God would not have needed to intervene, the arguments moved forward by the friends of Job would have been enough. Apparently, Job understood something else: he was persuaded that God has answers to his given questions, including the question about the sufferings of an innocent righteous. Besides, God is far from wanting to justify evil and suffering: they, it seems, are generally deprived of any sense and have no justification.

He, probably, simply let Job know that He has means to make these sufferings as former, and will come in the day, when He will do it. Such an answer would really mean that God can do anything, even what turns out, according to the laws of our non-transformed world, in principle impossible. He can do anything, not because He has the power to destroy the world and create it again, but because for Him there are no hopeless situations and irretrievable losses, for His righteous man He will find a way out of any impasse. Although, of course this way out can turn out not totally such or even totally not such as the person who shouts out to God for help and injustice imagines himself.

Today's reading brings us back once again to a passage connected with the theme of the apostolic proclamation. Unlike Matthew, Luke mentions a certain wider circle of seventy apostles about whom Matthew says nothing. But this does not change the essence of the matter: the seventy apostles receive from Jesus the same instruction that was given to the twelve closest disciples. Apparently, Jesus allowed no esotericism in His circle and had no special secret teaching for the “initiated.” And when the apostles returned, elated by their victory, and told their Teacher about the healings and exorcisms they had performed, He advised them to rejoice not in these successes, but in the fact that their names were “written in heaven” (vv. 17–20).

The point is, of course, not that the successes of His apostles in proclaiming the Kingdom were unimportant to Jesus. He simply considered it necessary to set the emphasis correctly in His disciples' spiritual lives. Visible successes always attract attention. And the apostles' attention was apparently fixed on the actions and manifestations of the Kingdom that accompanied their proclamation. Here there is always the danger of becoming absorbed in the process and forgetting what matters most. One can bear witness to the Kingdom only when one is rooted in it oneself. Such rootedness does not arise by itself; it is given by God and needs constant strengthening. For a person who physically lives in a world not yet transformed and lying in evil, abiding in the Kingdom is itself a distinct spiritual task.

But something else is important here as well. Bearing witness to the Kingdom is not an end in itself either. At first sight this sounds paradoxical, for Jesus Himself and all the apostles are occupied solely with bearing witness to it in word and deed! And yet bearing witness to the Kingdom is secondary. In the end it resembles an author displaying a work he has created: he himself, and sometimes some of his friends, invites everyone interested to look at what the author has managed to make. But what if such a work needed constant renewal and could exist only in this way? Then the chief task would clearly be not the display as such, but the creative effort directed towards renewing the work itself.

In the case of the Kingdom, the witness finds himself in precisely this position. One can bear witness to it only by manifesting it, and one can manifest it only by renewing one's own spiritual life through contact with it, a life that cannot be renewed in any other way. It then turns out, paradoxically enough, that the witness's chief work is not to bear witness to the Kingdom, but to live in it, and to live openly, in full view of everyone. This is how the chief task Jesus gives His disciples is accomplished: the growth of the Kingdom, which after His return will embrace the whole world.