Today the Orthodox Church celebrates the Day of the Holy Spirit. The Epistle to the Ephesians reminds us that 'the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, righteousness, and truth' (v. 9), and calls us to 'be filled with the Spirit' (v. 18). The apostle Paul calls this new state of the human being 'light in the Lord'; the apostle John also turns to this image of light when he speaks of brotherly love among believers (1 John 2:10). In the spirit of love we are called to 'seek those who have gone astray' (Matt 18:10-14), to resolve problems in our relationships (Matt 18:15-18), and, finally, to receive God's grace in unanimous prayer in the name of Christ and in His presence, just as we were promised.

The evangelist connects the words about the children we must become in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven with a small parable about a shepherd and a lost sheep, and this immediately puts everything in its place. The point is not only that we become weak, defenseless, and dependent, although at times we really do need to feel like children before God; Christ is clearly speaking here about a "new childhood," that is, about a second birth - not only about feeling like children in comparison with God, but actually becoming children of the Heavenly Father (and here any childishness is out of place; this calling is too high).

Understood this way, the familiar commandment "be like children" becomes an incomprehensible call to become participants in God's life, to become beloved sons and daughters in the beloved only-begotten Son - the path opened before us in Christ's Resurrection...

Babylonian Isaiah was the first to say that the time of exile was drawing to an end, that the people had atoned for their sins and that the road to Judea, to the land of the fathers, would soon open to them again. Then a fully natural question arose before him in that situation: what is the people of God? That people, that community of Jerusalem residents deported to Babylon, with which the history of exiled Jewry had begun, no longer existed. There was a community, but it was different, new. New both spiritually and religiously. In essence, a new people, a new Jewry. A people that had received the chance to live another, second historical life. What connects it with the former people to which the Jerusalem residents deported to Babylon had belonged? Historical continuity? But is that not an illusion? What is historical memory?

What is a people, any people? Grass that dries up in the dry steppe under the rays of the hot summer sun. Here today, gone tomorrow. But can the people of God be like that? Surely God must have a plan for His people. His people cannot be drying grass in the field of history. So what makes the Jewish people God's people? The answer to the prophet was the vision revealed to him: the glory of God, the shining Presence moving through the wilderness toward Jerusalem.

Once, soon after the Babylonians devastated Jerusalem, another prophet, Ezekiel, in another vision had seen this same shining Presence leaving Jerusalem. Leaving because there was no longer room for God in Jerusalem. Not because of the Babylonian soldiers who destroyed the Temple, but because of those servants of God who had defiled it long before those Babylonian soldiers made the hidden thing visible. And now God was ready to return to the emptied city, to the ruined Temple.

The way had to be prepared for Him. The road had to be made level. And participation in that task alone could make the community born in Babylon the true people of God. Neither national features nor religion make God's people God's people, but active participation in carrying out God's design for the salvation of humanity. And witness to God, who had given His people a new historical life. A witness that all Judea would hear from Zion. And the whole world.