"Lord, there are two swords here." He said to them, "Enough." – "Lord, shall we not strike with the sword?" – asked the disciples in Gethsemane, and before He could answer, – they struck.

Then Jesus said, "Leave it alone, it is enough" (Luke 28:30-51),

the same word as before, about two swords.

Either everything in the Gospel in general is accidental, or there is a red thread between the sword and the Cross. The red glow of the fire in the eyes of the Infant Jesus – the red fire of temptation in the eyes of Satan – the red fire of the torches of Gethsemane on Peter's sword – this is the connecting thread, broken only on the cross by Jesus – by Him alone, by no one else. The cross will win, and not the sword, already at the end of time, and to the end – the red thread is still stretching.

This, perhaps, is the most unknown torment of the Unknown; but if there had not been on His human heart this scar from the burn of the same fire that our heart burns:

Cross or sword? – then, perhaps, we would love Him, our Brother, less.

VI

He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God shall give him the throne of David his father. (Luke 1:32-33.)

Did not the Infant Jesus hear these words of the Annunciation already in his mother's lullaby; Did He not already suck this hope of Israel into Himself with His mother's milk?

Two messianic uprisings – two thunderstorms have passed; The third and last one is approaching. Lower, lower, blacker, a cloud hangs over Israel. Lightning awaits everyone – here, in Galilee, in the homeland of Judas the Messiah, as nowhere else in Israel; here, in Nazareth, in the house of Joseph the carpenter, as nowhere else in Galilee; the mystery of the Annunciation – "To the Son of the Most High is the throne of David" – the lightning calling metal.

How many young men in Israel in those days asked themselves, "Am I not the Messiah?" but only one will answer, "I."

VII

"Jesus was nineteen years old when Joseph died," says one Apocrypha, which may have preserved a historically firm point of tradition – memoirs: it is difficult, indeed, to understand who and why would have thought of inventing such an exact figure; this is first, and secondly: before the twelfth year of Jesus' life (the Child in the Temple), 8-9 AD, Joseph could not die; judging by how the memory of him fades without a trace in the Gospel tradition, he died long before the beginning of the Lord's ministry – around the year 30, so that these two dates confirm the historical authenticity of the 19th year of Jesus' life for the death of Joseph. [295]

Joseph passes like a quiet shadow in this life; The "angel of good silence" dies without saying a word in the Gospel, but at least to the seemingly unearthly, icy word of the Son to his mother: "Did you not know that I must be in My Father's house?" – he could, it seems, answer with a fiery earthly word: "Honor thy father and thy mother"; but she is silent, as always, perhaps not because she loves Jesus more than her mother loves Him, but because she remembers better what she forgot at that terrible moment – the mystery of the Annunciation.