Reflecting on the calling of the apostles, it is worth considering this. Skeptics can say that there are "charismatic" personalities whose word is so authoritative that they literally hypnotize people, and this can explain why those ignorant fishermen followed Jesus. That is the whole explanation.

How should we answer this? What can we present? Let us recall a passage from the Gospel of John: "Then Jesus said to the twelve, 'Do you also want to go away?' Simon Peter answered Him, 'Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life; and we have believed and known that You are the Christ, the Son of the living God'" (John 6:67-69).

Many want to leave Him, and they do leave, because they do not accept what He tells them. Does this happen with "charismatic" figures? Was it so with Hitler or Stalin? On the contrary, they drew crowds of people to themselves. Christ offers even His closest disciples the chance to leave if they wish. And yet something holds them. What exactly? This is what matters: in Christianity nothing is built on emotions alone, otherwise this faith would have disappeared very quickly; it has an unshakable foundation, and this foundation is the Word.

The blessings pronounced by Jesus during the Sermon on the Mount are commonly called the Beatitudes in Christian tradition, and are compared with the commandments of the Decalogue. Yet Jesus Himself did not treat them as new commandments replacing the old ones. In fact, in form they do not resemble commandments at all, but rather the series of blessings and curses with which Deuteronomy ends, or the blessings by which the Torah instructs priests to bless the people. But these blessings, of course, acquire a special meaning: they make sense only if the Messiah has already come and the messianic Kingdom is near and about to arrive.

The mention of the poor and the humble in such a context is especially significant. Historically, this refers to members of a movement that had formed even before the exile around Isaiah of Jerusalem. They came to be called 'the poor,' although in the literal sense they usually were not beggars. Sometimes they were also called 'meek' or 'humble,' with the same meaning: these are people who completely refuse to rely in life on anyone or anything except God, and who await the coming of the messianic Kingdom, where they will receive reward and consolation for the difficult path of righteousness they tried to follow. Speaking of the blessedness of the poor and the meek, Jesus thereby makes it clear that the messianic Kingdom has already come or is about to come.

Just as natural is the mention of those who thirst for righteousness: for the image of 'the poor one' was inseparable from the image of the righteous person, and already in pre-exilic hymnography these words had become virtual synonyms. At the same time, before the exile, purity of heart and mercy began to be perceived as integral traits of the righteous person. In addition, already in the pre-exilic period the image of the righteous person becomes the image of one persecuted by the authorities or the powerful of this world. Jesus proclaims the blessedness of those persecuted for righteousness, that is, following the tradition already existing at that time, for faithfulness to the Torah. And He adds: blessed are those persecuted for My sake, thereby in fact pointing to Himself as the Messiah; for the image of the suffering Messiah was known to tradition after all, although in those days it had somewhat receded into the background, and those persecuted for the Messiah and the messianic Kingdom were, of course, also understood as persecuted for righteousness.

Thus Jesus, proclaiming the nearness of the coming Kingdom, at the same time answers the hopes of those who were awaiting the Messiah and His Kingdom. He lets them understand that the long-awaited day has come - although not in the way they had imagined.

Gradually one can get used to it, but reading this phrase for the first time is unpleasant. Simply because one cannot speak about people as about fish. And in general, when one imagines it: a little fish is swimming and frolicking in freedom, and then a fisherman appears with a net, first deprives the fish of freedom, then pulls it out to where it is impossible to live, and finally simply eats it. And is it the same with people? Horror.

Now let us imagine a different picture. A little fish is swimming and frolicking in a murky little pond and does not realize that the water is poisoned by runoff from a chemical plant. Then a Greenpeace worker appears with a net, catches it, transports it to an ecologically clean place, and releases it into a clear, huge lake full of oxygen and food. Somehow everything looks different, does it not?