And the third time - before the very suffering of the Cross, when Jesus exclaimed: Father! glorify Thy name, then came the voice of the Father from heaven: And I have glorified, and I will glorify again. It must have been a loud and terrible voice, for the people standing near Jesus said, "This is thunder."

But don't the angelic voices also come from God? Undoubtedly, from God. The Archangel Gabriel, sent from God to Nazareth to the Virgin Mary, testified of Him, as it is written: He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High... The Son of God... and he will reign... and His kingdom shall have no end.

And when He was born in Bethlehem, an angel of God said to the shepherds and testified of Him: "I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people: for this day there is born unto you in the city of David a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord; and this is a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. After this proclamation and the testimony of one angel, suddenly there appeared a multitude of the heavenly host, glorifying God and crying out: Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men!

Thus the heavenly messengers, sent from the Father, testified with their voices first to His conception in Nazareth, then to His birth in Bethlehem, and, finally, to His glorious resurrection in Jerusalem.

Silence

There is power in the voice, Theodoulos. But power is also in silence.

There is unequal power in both voice and silence. It depends on who is talking and what they are talking about, and who is silent and what they are silent about. The voice of the evildoer and the voice of the holy man of God have different power. And the silence of a thief who plots evil is not the same as the silence of a well-wisher who cares for good.

When God the Father answered Jesus, "I have glorified and I will glorify again," the frightened people said, "This is thunder." And when God spoke to the prophet Elijah in Horeb, He spoke in a quiet and "thin" voice.

What was the voice of Jesus? Sometimes quiet, sometimes strong, sometimes scary, but always penetrating to the marrow of the bones and fascinating. At this voice the barren fig tree withered; from this voice flowers grew among the rubbish and thorns. The voice of the Son of God is the same as the voice of the Father.

The silence of Jesus is the longest chapter in the history of His life on earth. He filled thirty whole years with His silence.

He wanted to fulfill all righteousness of the law, as He had said to John in the Jordan, "Leave it now, for thus it behooves us to fulfill all righteousness." In the East, there was a law according to which no one was supposed to teach people until they were thirty years old. And Jesus wanted to fulfill this truth, and therefore He was silent until His thirtieth birthday.

This is a lesson for the verbose West, which it needs like bread. After all, in the West there is no such restriction, and even young men under twenty are eager to become teachers, judges and writers. And when the unwise and inexperienced begin to teach the people, there is no reason to expect good. In the East, people develop faster than in the West, and they reach maturity, both physically and spiritually, more quickly. It is known that in Arabia and India it is allowed to marry at the age of twelve. But instead of leaving in force in the West the Eastern norm prohibiting teaching people until the age of thirty, or even raising the age limit accordingly, it was completely abolished. And thus in the West the word of the Gospel came true: children will be your judges.

Only once in these thirty years did the Lord Jesus break His silence. When He was twelve years old, at the feast of the Passover in Jerusalem, He dwelt in the temple among the teachers and elders, listening to them and asking them questions. And all those who heard Him were amazed at His understanding and His answers. For three days His Mother, the Most Holy Virgin, searched for Him with Joseph, until at last she found Him in the temple. Why did you seek Me? "Or did you not know that I must be in the things that belong to My Father?" And they did not understand this. And He went with them, and came to Nazareth; and he was in subjection to them, and increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.

Why this interruption of the silence of Jesus at the age of twelve, Theodoulos? And why is this brilliant scene described in the temple, before the teachers of the law and the Jewish elders, which has no visible connection with His subsequent teaching ministry? And why did the Evangelist Luke write this down?