Human nature is contradictory. And the point here is not only the features of human thinking or human feelings. The point is above all the weakness of the human will. What is a human being? God's "breath of life," giving life to nature and turning it into that flow of human existence which the Bible calls a "living soul." The "breath of life," God's presence in us, makes us human beings, possessing will and self-awareness.

But God is unobtrusive; He will let us forget His presence altogether if that is what we want. And then He will cease to be the master of our life. We ourselves become the masters of our life, and the flow of life overwhelms us. Nature becomes self-sufficient, beginning to determine our life, if not completely, then predominantly. That is what happened at the fall into sin, and now we, fallen human beings, submit to our nature. Our will has grown weak; it is no longer able to stand against that natural flow which was given to us by God as the environment and building material for our life, but which for us after the fall became an irresistible force, often dragging us where we do not want to go at all. This weak will became the main obstacle to full spiritual life.

That is why, when making decisions vital for us and making a decisive spiritual choice, we make it with reservations. Our "yes" is always accompanied by one "but" or another. And there is an objective reason for this: in our present state we really cannot vouch for ourselves, more precisely, for our human nature, which can fail us at the most unsuitable moment. Nature in the fallen world is often not subject to the spirit, not because of the properties God placed in it, but because of the abnormal position in which it found itself after the fall. In the fall, the human being freed both his own nature and, at least in part, nature as a whole from the authority of the One who alone can govern it, and he himself took hold of controls that he proved unable to manage.

In the Kingdom of God it is not so. There everything is in order with governance. Normal human nature, unspoiled by sin, is completely subject to the spirit; therefore the Savior has only "yes" for His Heavenly Father. And in everyone who has shared in the life of the Kingdom, human nature becomes obedient to the human spirit to the extent that the person's life becomes part of the life of the Kingdom. Therefore such a person also has nothing for God except "yes." For "no" to God in any case means a break in relations with Him. And therefore this "no" becomes at the same time "no" to Christ and to the Kingdom.

It is interesting: why did God not allow the world to know Him through the wisdom that He Himself had given to the world? Why must the witnesses resort to what the apostle calls "foolish preaching" or, in the language of the Synodal translation, "the foolishness of preaching"? And does human wisdom always and inevitably degenerate into empty disputes in which the desire for self-assertion prevails? What is so bad about knowledge that it always leads to such a sad result?

If the wisdom of which the apostle speaks were only knowledge, we would not be able to answer this question. But in the Jewish tradition wisdom was never only knowledge for the sake of knowledge. The corresponding Hebrew word, and Paul, even when writing in Greek, still remains a Jew thinking within the framework of his own cultural and religious tradition, originally denoted not so much knowledge as ability or skill. At first this was skill in practical work, the work of a craftsman or artist; then it was the ability to build relationships with people, the skill of judgment and governance, whether governing one's own household or governing a state. And in the post-exilic period, wisdom came to be associated first of all with the art of righteousness, the skill of righteous living.

It would seem that not very much depends on the human being here, since righteousness comes from God, not from man. And yet the path of righteousness is a divine-human path; in a certain sense it depends on the human being no less than on God. And in order to walk this path, a person needs precisely experience and skill connected with the practice of keeping the commandments. And all the intellectual tools possessed, for example, by a "scribe" or teacher of the Torah are ultimately needed precisely to help the one walking the path of righteousness not to stray from that path. But fallen human nature often turns a useful tool into an obstacle and a burden on the path of righteousness. Instead of making an unambiguous choice in favor of following the commandments, a person begins to look for ways to evade this, either by observing nothing at all or by seeking easy paths that would allow him, so to speak, to fulfill the Torah without fulfilling it. And then the intellect becomes a tool serving not the observance of the Torah, but its violation, and wisdom becomes not so much the art of following the Torah as the art of imitating such following.

In such a situation, the preaching of the Kingdom can no longer rest on the traditional human experience of righteous life, not because it is forgotten, but because it has in fact been devalued. Then there remains only that very "foolish preaching" of which the apostle speaks. Preaching against commonly accepted opinions, contrary to the obvious, preaching that will indeed seem complete madness to any "normal" person. The preaching of the Kingdom that truly, according to the Savior's word, is "not of this world."

"We venerate Your Cross, O Christ..." What do these words mean for us? Boundless compassion for the innocent, beaten, naked righteous one hanging on this wood. Love for Him, limitless gratitude. And also the understanding of how infinitely lighter our own cross is. All the problems that seem impossible to carry are nothing compared with the measure of suffering He took upon Himself for our sake. "You, who so loved Your world..."

And there are other words: "Then He says to the disciple, 'Behold your mother.'" On these words the Church is built, the strongest of strongholds. We have all been made sons and daughters, and therefore we can never be orphans. Orphanhood is a word from some other life. We often enter prayerfully into the Passion of Christ, but it is much harder to enter into the passion of Mary. His inconceivable physical pain and her inconceivable pain of soul. The whole world is embraced by this pain.