Every person knows that someday he will die. Death is a unique phenomenon: it is completely obvious and completely closed to those who have not yet experienced it. God speaks with a person, and that person remains alive. On the basis of this Gospel passage, one can say that a person who speaks with God, not somehow but face to face, receives both life and death: life full of His presence, the light of revelation for all, and death as the fulfillment of the promise, as the possibility of a full and final encounter.

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.

In addition to the other biblical parallels, today the evangelist tells how Jesus, like the ancient prophet Samuel, was brought to the Temple in order to dedicate the Firstborn to God. But unlike the other firstborn sons, who were only symbolically "offered as a sacrifice" to God and redeemed from Him with sacrificial animals (for example, a pair of doves; compare Leviticus 12), Jesus Himself is called "redemption," a term connected with sacrifice.

In the Temple, Jesus becomes sacrifice, sign, salvation, and the fulfillment of the prophecies, bringing together in Himself all biblical symbols and realities. For the evangelist Luke, this very moment becomes a sacrifice in which Christ accomplishes the redemption of the people and of the "Gentiles."

By taking part in this service, Simeon fulfilled his purpose in this world and can now depart, showing the readers of the Gospel that their goal in this life is also to become participants in the redemption and salvation of the world.