The courageous ascetic Paul said about the angels: "To which of the angels did God ever say, 'Sit at my right hand?'" (Heb. 1:13.) Angels are the creation and creation of the Holy and Consubstantial Trinity, ministers of Her eternal and incomprehensible glory, they know their ranks and their dignity. And enough about that. Let us consider further the mystery of the appearance of the Holy Trinity to Abraham. The Holy Trinity, ineffable and incomprehensible, appeared to Abraham ineffably, incomprehensibly and indescribably.

Abraham, as if talking to the Same Thing, turned now to the Three, then to the One. To Odin he addressed Odin thus: "Lord! if I have found favor in Thy eyes" (Gen. 18:3); to the Three thus: "And they shall wash your feet" (Gen. 18:4). There was a mysterious meaning in the fact that Abraham, seeing the Three, called Them One Lord — this is how the unity of the Godhead is declared in the Scriptures; but when Abraham addressed the Three, he thereby showed the Triune and the Three-Person Godhead.

Realize this great and wonderful mystery that God deigned to perform then in Abraham's tent! In the beginning, God revealed to Abraham the mystery of the Holy Trinity; then he ate with him, desiring to give him the good promise of Isaac's birth in old age, which prefigures the birth without the seed of the Saviour. All this is inexplicable and supernatural: for God to be in human form, for the Bodiless One to eat, for the barren to give birth in old age, for the Virgin to conceive and give birth without a husband, preserving virginity; but wherever God descends, Who is above all nature, there supernatural things happen.

The Scripture also says, "And the Lord said to him, Where is Sarah thy wife? He answered, "Here, in the tent." The Lord said to him, 'I will be with you again at this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son'" (See Gen. 18:9-10. In the Synodal translation: "they told him", "one of them said"; in the Slavonic Bible the verb is used in the singular number: "he spoke" – but in the Slavonic editions of the Bible available to us the word "Lord" is absent in this passage. – Ed.).

Abraham remembered that God had promised him before, saying, "Sarah thy wife, thou shalt not call Sarah, but her name shall be Sarah; I... I will give thee a son by her" (Gen. 17:15-16). How could Abraham not understand that he had been visited again by the God who had promised to give him a child and was now fulfilling what he had promised? Although the Holy and One-in-Essence Trinity deigned to appear to Abraham in human form, it soon made him understand Its Divinity and power.

The Holy Scripture says: "And those men arose, and from thence went to Sodom and Gomorrah; And Abraham went with them, to see them off. And the LORD said, "Shall I hide from Abraham my servant what I will do?" (Gen. 18:16-17.) What stranger in poor clothes, who had neither soldiers nor servants in his service, could call Abraham a slave, since Abraham had many slaves and great wealth?

Further, the Lord says: "Surely from Abraham shall come a great and mighty nation, and in him shall all the nations of the earth be blessed" (Gen. 18:18). Again it became clear to Abraham that God had appeared to him, having said earlier: "In thee shall all the nations of the earth be blessed" (See Gen. 12:3, both in the Russian Synodal translation and in the Slavonic editions of the Bible available to us here: "the families of the earth." — Ed.).

And now the same God says to Abraham again, "In you shall all the nations of the earth be blessed." Why did Abraham, having already learned for certain that it was not people, but God who had appeared to him, served the Three in the same way, honored the Three equally, and washed the feet of the Three equally? Is this not true evidence that the Holy, One-in-Essence and Life-Giving Trinity revealed Its mystery to Its saint Abraham: It is One and Triune, One in Divinity and Essence, and Triune in Persons or Hypostases?

For the Scriptures say that after this "men turned from thence and went to Sodom... And the Lord went, having ceased to speak to Abraham... And those two angels came to Sodom" (Gen. 18:22, 33; 19:1). Know then that God the Father went alone, and to Sodom He sent the Son and the Holy Spirit, for no one has ever sent God the Father, but the Son Himself says of Himself: "The Father who sent Me, He gave Me a commandment" (John 12:49).

; and of the Holy Spirit the Son says: "If I go, I will send you another Comforter from the Father" (cf. John 15:26; 16:7). Originally, when the Father wanted to create man, then He called upon the Son and the Holy Spirit, saying: "Let us make man" (Gen. 1:26). When God the Father wanted to destroy the godless assembly of people who decided to build the Tower of Babel, He did not destroy it alone, but said to the Son and the Holy Spirit: "Let us go down and confuse their language there" (Gen. 11:7).

He did the same now: desiring to exterminate the vile, impure, insolent and ferocious people and to deliver the righteous from death, God the Father sent the Son and the Holy Spirit to show the one will in all things, the one authority and the one desire of the Holy Trinity. And enough about that. Now it is necessary to resolve the perplexity of many who ask: why do our holy and divine fathers and teachers sometimes write that Abraham received the Holy Trinity, sometimes that he received God with two angels, and sometimes that he invited three angels to his tent?

One might think that these statements contradict each other. No, they do not contradict each other, but agree with each other, and are confirmed by the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. St. Maximus the Great says that the entire Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments cannot be understood by themselves without a wise interpretation of the Holy Fathers, who are filled with the grace of the Divine Spirit.

Much in the Scriptures seems contradictory to us: sometimes it is said this way, sometimes it is said differently. We think this way because of our foolishness, or because of negligence, or because of obstinacy. No, it is not the words of holy men that contradict each other, but we, being carnal, cannot think spiritually and therefore cannot understand them; as one of the saints said, those who think in a carnal way understand the Divine Scriptures not according to the will of the Holy Spirit, but according to the will of the flesh.

Therefore, we will begin with the fear of God and immerse ourselves in the Holy Scriptures, so that, as the divine John Chrysostom says, we may understand each book as it should be, and receive the teaching at the proper time, and not hastily, so that the Scriptures may seem to us not contradictory, but in all things. The Holy Fathers truly said that good that does not come at the right time turns into evil, but not because of its nature, but because of the foolishness of those who accept it.