Orthodox readings for 30 January 2011

La Bibbia (it)

La Bibbia (it)

Timoteo 1, Capitolo 1, versi 15-17

¹⁵Questa parola è sicura e degna di essere da tutti accolta: Cristo Gesù è venuto nel mondo per salvare i peccatori e di questi il primo sono io.

¹⁶Ma appunto per questo ho ottenuto misericordia, perché Gesù Cristo ha voluto dimostrare in me, per primo, tutta la sua magnanimità , a esempio di quanti avrebbero creduto in lui per avere la vita eterna.

¹⁷Al Re dei secoli incorruttibile, invisibile e unico Dio, onore e gloria nei secoli dei secoli. Amen.

Read more:Timoteo 1, Capitolo 1

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1

1:15 This is a faithful saying - A most solemn preface. And worthy of all acceptation - Well deserving to be accepted, received, embraced, with all the faculties of our whole soul.That Christ - Promised. Jesus - Exhibited. Came into the world to save sinners - All sinners, without exception.

1:16 For this cause God showed me mercy, that all his longsuffering might be shown, and that none might hereafter despair.

1:17 The King of eternity - A phrase frequent with the Hebrews. How unspeakably sweet is the thought of eternity to believers!

Luca, Capitolo 18, versi 35-43

³⁵Mentre si avvicinava a Gerico, un cieco era seduto a mendicare lungo la strada.

³⁶Sentendo passare la gente, domandò che cosa accadesse.

³⁷Gli risposero: «Passa Gesù il Nazareno!».

³⁸Allora incominciò a gridare: «Gesù , figlio di Davide, abbi pietà di me!».

³⁹Quelli che camminavano avanti lo sgridavano, perché tacesse; ma lui continuava ancora più forte: «Figlio di Davide, abbi pietà di me!».

⁴⁰Gesù allora si fermò e ordinò che glielo conducessero. Quando gli fu vicino, gli domandò :

⁴¹«Che vuoi che io faccia per te?». Egli rispose: «Signore, che io riabbia la vista».

⁴²E Gesù gli disse: «Abbi di nuovo la vista! La tua fede ti ha salvato».

⁴³Subito ci vide di nuovo e cominciò a seguirlo lodando Dio. E tutto il popolo, alla vista di ciò , diede lode a Dio.

Read more:Luca, Capitolo 19

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18

18:35 Matteo 20:29; Marco 10:46.

NOTES

What does it take to be a good person? The answer is more or less clear even to those who have not read Scripture: do not deceive, do not kill, respect others... The healthiest...

The Savior's answer to the question about eternal life is both simple and difficult. It is simple because He offers nothing new. It is the same old, well-known path of the Torah, outer and inner, the path of keeping the commandments. It is what the questioner has known from childhood. But then...

The Savior's answer to the question about eternal life is both simple and difficult. It is simple because He offers nothing new. It is the same old, well-known path of the Torah, outer and inner, the path of keeping the commandments. It is what the questioner has known from childhood. But then comes an unexpected demand: give everything away and follow Him, his Teacher. And here the questioner stops. He is not ready for such a step. Jesus then speaks about the rich, for whom it is hard to enter the Kingdom. What kind of wealth is meant here? The questioner was materially rich. But the apostles were not rich, and yet they too feel uneasy. Who, then, can be saved?

They seem to have understood the Teacher correctly. Leaving everything is not only about material things. The concept of poverty in Yahwism, as in Judaism of the Second Temple era, was very multifaceted. Already Isaiah of Jerusalem spoke of poverty more as a spiritual state than as a material situation. And he considered himself a poor man, though he was a courtier and an aristocrat of the highest circle. Poverty means leaving everything. Jesus' question to the one interested in eternal life is this: can you leave everything? And Peter's question is: look, we have left everything; what comes next? The matter is no longer property.

The point here is to renounce one's own life. Not physical life; to renounce it means renouncing only a specific form of one's own existence. What one has to renounce is oneself, not one's life. That very self which, as most religious people believe, will not disappear even if earthly life is taken away. This is the self one has to renounce. A separate life, a separate existence. And everything connected with it, everything that defines it. Everything that can be described by the word "mine." And what remains, the true, pure "I," which one does not manage to notice right away, this pure "I" receives another, new life.

It enters another stream, infinitely more powerful and pure than the former one. There is nothing of one's own there in the narrow, earthly sense of the word, but there each "I," each one of us, begins to possess all the fullness of the life of God's great world, the life of the Kingdom. But for this, one must unclench the will by which we hold onto our present likeness of life. For it is precisely this will, clenched convulsively, that binds us to the life of this world. And unclenching it is far harder than unclenching the hand that holds a rope when you are hanging over an abyss. But otherwise nothing will work. Otherwise there is an eternal attachment to a likeness of life that will endlessly exhaust our soul and our body. And no freedom. Therefore no Kingdom either.

All the Gospels are full of stories about healings. At times such fullness seems somewhat excessive: after all, even a few stories...

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