We love Christ very much, and often because of this love we feel so sorry for Him in His sufferings that we want so badly for Him to avoid them by some miracle. In a way, we become like Peter when he said, "This shall never happen to You" (Matt. 16:22), only we cry out: if only You could avoid such suffering. And in those moments it seems to us that if Judas had been stopped, nothing would have happened. Judas becomes the object of our involuntary desire for revenge.

But we must not forget the main thing. Christ's suffering was voluntary. In the whole drama, Judas played no decisive role; he was simply a victim, a victim of his own weakness. Therefore it is wrong to see him as the embodiment of world evil or anything of the kind. If Judas had not been there, everything would have happened according to another scenario, but the meaning of the Redemption, as the greatest event in human history, would not have changed.

Another question that often arises in connection with Judas concerns his free will. Was he merely an instrument in the hands of providence? After all, Christ says that he was the "son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled" (John 17:12). Of course, this is not so either. A person is never merely an instrument in God's hands; each person whom He created "in His image and likeness" is too precious to Him. Some exegetes believe that when Christ dipped the morsel and gave it to Judas, He did so not in order to amaze the disciples with His omniscience, but to give Judas a chance to come to his senses, since the conversation was quiet, as we can see if we read the text carefully (John 13:26).

Besides, Judas could have repented as Peter did. But he would have had to repent exactly as Peter did, by bearing worthy fruit of repentance. Judas does not manage to do this. And that makes him deeply pitiful. Pity is the feeling that should arise in us toward this man.

The parable of the vineyard, like all parables of this kind, concerns above all the people of God: in the prophetic tradition they are usually symbolically called the vineyard. In this context the meaning of the parable becomes entirely clear, and everyone listening to Jesus understands it. More than that: those whom what He said directly concerned understood perfectly that it concerned them; the cry "May this never be!" is the best proof.

The Savior's answer to this "May this never be!" is also unambiguous enough: He reminds those listening to Him about the cornerstone. The image of the cornerstone appears constantly in Jesus' parables, and its meaning lies in the fact that such stones, used in building a house as the corner elements of a strip foundation, were good for nothing except the purpose for which they were intended. There is no doubt that, in speaking of the cornerstone, Jesus has Himself in mind, thereby making His listeners characters in the parable He has told. As we can see, He wants to make those listening to Him understand that each of them stands before a choice from which there is no escape.

Many people would have liked Jesus to turn out to be one among many - prophets, preachers, teachers of the Torah - in short, an ordinary man. Then He could be listened to without really heeding Him, and accepted without truly accepting Him, as we always do when inwardly we disagree with the speaker. In that case, polite, formal acceptance means only agreement with the other person's right to have his own opinion, a point of view different from ours, one that at times is, in essence, of no concern to us. But the one putting forward that point of view must then also recognize our right to our own understanding of truth, different from the one he proposes. He must allow what today is called pluralism, acknowledge the relativity of every truth and every opinion, including his own, and then in turn he will be allowed to speak, like everyone else.

Had Jesus agreed to such rules of the game, He would perhaps not have had to die on the cross. But that is precisely the point: He could in no way agree to them, not because He absolutely had to prove something to someone and win all the disputes into which His listeners drew Him, but because accepting such rules would have been false testimony for Him and the collapse of His mission.

After all, He brought the Kingdom into the world and revealed to the world the fullness of God, and this was no longer simply one opinion among many, or even one revelation among many: He truly revealed to the world the whole fullness of truth and the whole fullness of revelation. All the great sages and prophets who came before Him asked questions and expressed opinions; He did not ask questions, He answered them, and He Himself became the answer to every possible question. And He could be accepted only as such: any other attitude toward Him would be deceit.

Of course, if a person truly does not realize Who is before him, the matter can still be set right: what is not realized today can be realized tomorrow. But if the issue is an unwillingness to accept the obvious, an unwillingness to give up one's own right to an opinion in the face of the living Truth, the situation is a dead end: the Truth cannot stop being truth, no matter how much someone may want it to. What remains is either to accept or to reject. Either to regard this strange Teacher as the One He Himself considers Himself to be, or to treat Him, at best, as a madman, and at worst, as a conscious apostate and blasphemer claiming what no human being can claim. A choice had to be made: there was no third option.

Reading in Paul's letters about the life he proposes Christians should lead, one cannot help recalling wisdom writings, examples of which are easy to find, for instance, in the Book of Proverbs. The call to chastity, to responsibility in household matters, and to respect for elders (vv. 1-6) was by no means something new. In a certain sense, the call for slaves to obey their masters not out of fear but for conscience's sake (vv. 9-10), which in the letter to Titus is not heard for the first time, could be considered new. This, however, is not surprising: ancient Israel never knew the mass slaveholding that characterized Egypt, Greece, or Rome. But the apostle, it is clear, applies the principles of social relations reflected in the tradition of wisdom writing to the realities of the Greco-Roman world. He evidently considers, if not the recommendations of the ancient sages themselves, then at least the logic that produced them to be universal enough.

Of course, such calls and exhortations were connected not least with political messianism, which at that time was widely spread in the Synagogue and was probably also entering church circles, above all, of course, the Judeo-Christian milieu, which then largely determined the life of the Church as a whole. Paul was a determined opponent of such ideas and views. And, as is clear, not only because political messianism was for him an obviously false messianism that could lead to nothing but senseless uprisings and subsequent reprisals. The main point was elsewhere: the apostle never forgot the Savior's words that His Kingdom is "not of this world." Social reforms, political struggle, or uprisings by themselves could not bring the triumph of the Kingdom nearer, as the apostle knew perfectly well. For Paul, society was only a means and an environment: a means for witness to the Kingdom and an environment in which witnesses must live temporarily, until the complete transfiguration of the world. And he wants this environment to hinder as little as possible the main task for Christians: their own spiritual formation and witness (vv. 11-14), in which the meaning of the Christian life consists.