Speaking to the disciples about the Kingdom, Jesus describes it above all as a new life opened to those who seek it. But it can be found only in the case of absolute openness on one's own part. To live the life of the Kingdom, one must renounce one's own life. Not one's life-space as such, not that flow of life which the Bible calls the soul, but the attempt to appropriate this space and this flow for oneself, to regard it as one's inalienable property, belonging to oneself by right.

In the Kingdom everything is different. There life is shared. One life for all. It is not owned; it is given for use. And the measure of this use is limited by nothing except the spiritual potential of the person himself. As much of the life of the Kingdom as he can contain, that much he will receive. But it does not become anyone's own in the sense in which we are accustomed to use that word with reference to property relations in our world.

The life of the Kingdom is yours insofar as you can live by this life. And therefore Jesus advises surrendering oneself to the flow of the life of the Kingdom. Enter it like a river. And move together with it. Without trying, as people say today, to fix anything in place. Without trying to evaluate one's own states, achievements, or failures. Without clinging to anything that attracts and holds a person in this world. And certainly without trying to fit the life of the Kingdom into religious frameworks: the new life cannot be kneaded on either Pharisaic or Sadducean leaven. The Kingdom does not fit into any human frameworks, but it does fit into the human heart. If, of course, it becomes the person's chief treasure. For where the treasure is, there is the heart.

In the Gospel there are many parables told by the Savior about rich people, about wealth, about its meaning in life, and about life itself. Sometimes, as in this case, the parables were connected with a concrete situation: Jesus is asked to resolve what today would be called an inheritance dispute, and He refuses, declaring that such disputes are not His business. The parable becomes an illustration of His words, an explanation of His refusal to deal with the division of someone else's property. Meanwhile, the request addressed to Jesus was precisely evidence of His authority in the eyes of those who came to Him, recognition of the fact that He, Jesus, would be able to divide the inheritance justly and in accordance with the Torah. Among the Jews in antiquity, and later as well, people often brought questions to teachers of the Torah and learned rabbis that Gentiles usually resolved in courts. They resolved them, including problems connected with family, inheritance, and property law. In principle, anyone could be a judge if he knew the Torah, could make a decision corresponding to the Torah, and if the litigants trusted him. This kind of arbitration was widespread in Jewish society at all times.

So Jesus is asked to become such a judge in an inheritance matter, and He refuses. And after refusing, He then tells that very parable of what we usually call the foolish rich man. It can appear that by this parable Jesus only wants to tell us that it is better to be poor than rich, because that makes it easier to enter the Kingdom. In reality, however, everything is somewhat more complex. Different people experience poverty in different ways too.

The main point here is different: a person's real, genuine life does not depend on his possessions. A person's life, not only spiritual life but life in general, is determined not by what and how much he has, but by who and what he is. One can be poor or rich. The main question is what a person connects himself, his "I," with, where, to speak in Gospel language, his treasure is. For where his treasure is, there his heart is also. There is his genuine life.

If it turns out to be connected with what a person can easily lose, even simply by dying, then his life will end at the moment he parts with what he cannot take and carry away with him. Then the only and absolute reality at the moment of parting with earthly life will be separation, loss, and death. And the life, that life of the Kingdom which he could have lived in fullness, the person will never know. Here, however, it is his own choice. To each his own.

Speaking about relationships within the church community, Paul, of course, does not accidentally liken them to family relationships, reminding Timothy that everyone he has to instruct must be treated as members of his own family (vv. 1-2). Of course, he is speaking here first of all about that love for one's neighbor without which it is impossible to fulfill the Torah. But there was also something else in the apostle's instruction. It is no accident that the Yahwistic tradition, already from the time of Hosea, likened the relationship between God and His people to a family relationship. Of course, relationships within a family by no means always have a spiritual foundation; otherwise the Savior's well-known words about members of one's household becoming one's enemies would never have been spoken. And yet in our still untransformed world, the natural bonds joining husband to wife or children to parents are the closest, though natural, analogue of the relationships that join people in the Kingdom.

Of course, this is only an analogy, but it allows us to see the main quality that distinguishes the relationships of the Kingdom: their obviousness and unconditional character. Family members are loved, if they are loved, as a rule not for some natural or spiritual qualities of theirs, but simply because they are "one's own"; here the fact of relationship, of "belonging to one's own," determines everything and outweighs everything. In our still untransformed world such natural love can prompt a person not only to throw aside all social norms, but even to break a commandment given by God. In the Kingdom, of course, this is impossible, because for the inhabitants of the Kingdom the Torah is written on the heart; but the unconditional character of the relationship remains, now connected not with old, untransformed human nature, but with the breath of God's love that permeates the Kingdom.

Such, in Paul's thought, should also be the relationships within the church community, because for the apostle the Church is the Kingdom entering the world. That is why he responds so sharply to every possibility of profaning these relationships, especially when the matter concerns church widows ("widows"). In this case, of course, he is not speaking simply about widows who are members of one church community or another. He is speaking about widows who, after the death of their husbands, voluntarily gave up a second marriage, which the Church by no means forbade, and dedicated themselves to church ministries. There lay the danger of profanation: instead of doing God's work, the widows, especially the younger ones, occupied themselves with anything at all except church ministries (vv. 11-13).

In such a case, according to the apostle's words, it would be more honest before God and more correct to enter a second marriage, without playing at "spirituality," and to live an ordinary family life (vv. 14-15). Paul clearly considers any attempt to evade family cares and duties under "spiritual" pretexts inappropriate for a widow (vv. 4-8). And the matter here is not only the responsibility a woman takes upon herself when she enters marriage, a responsibility that is by no means removed from her by her husband's death. The matter, above all, is that playing at "spirituality" has nothing in common with genuine spiritual life; it only distances from the Kingdom those who seek it.