To put it plainly, David threw everything aside, slept with a woman he liked, and sent her home. When it became clear that she was expecting a child, the king first tried to get her husband home as quickly as possible, so he could cover his tracks. When he did not manage that, he sent the devout and faithful warrior to his death, and even gave orders confirming that it was to be carried out. This was the very same David who sang and danced around the Ark, David who defeated Goliath, David anointed as king, David from whose line the Messiah was to come.

Among Jesus' relatives, David is the one we understand best. Rejoicing in God, yielding to all our desires, trying to hide the consequences by any means. More than anything in the world, David wanted to hide his sin. He wept and accepted the prophecy about the child's death and about the fact that such a thing cannot be hidden and will always be more obvious than obvious. Simply because the Lord will give him and Bathsheba a son, they will name him Solomon, and he too will enter the genealogy of Christ. So in Christ's genealogy we will always see the basest and lowest deeds, the most terrible sins, betrayal and murder. Jesus will still take all this upon Himself through His blood relationship with us, die on the Cross, and rise again to give us life.

Today the Lord addresses to us one of the most important questions: "How do we listen?" We regularly read the Bible, and even visit Bible sites on the Internet, but do we have ears to receive the Word, let it take root in our heart, and bear fruit?

The Lord says: "With the measure you use, it will be measured to you, and more will be added to you who hear." In essence this means: what a person wants to find in Scripture, and in God's revelation in general, is what he will find. The Bible can provide us with the richest material for history, literature, philology, mysticism, and so on, but only the one who seeks in it the knowledge of God, that is, living personal relations with Him built on trust and love, will be able to find God in reading Holy Scripture.

And here the words that "to the one who has, more will be given" acquire their meaning. In listening to and understanding the Word of God, we can only deepen and multiply what we already have; that is, we must approach it from within an already existing bond with God, in faith and prayer.

The Savior's words about the Kingdom sometimes appear contradictory. Sometimes He speaks of the Kingdom as a reality of universal, cosmic scale, and sometimes as something almost unnoticed, something that grows in silence and darkness, like a seed in the ground.

Meanwhile, in reality there is no contradiction here. The Kingdom truly is a reality on a universal scale. It even exceeds our universe: after all, we live in a fallen world, and the Kingdom is much greater than it is; the Kingdom includes it within itself, transforming it and making it part of another, new reality. At the same time, the Kingdom does not simply descend into our world from somewhere in heaven; it grows from within our fallen world. Of course, by itself, out of nowhere, it will not grow: the Kingdom is a precious flower, and as everyone knows, only weeds grow well and quickly all by themselves.

Hence the need to sow the proper seeds and care for them; otherwise there will be nothing. The point, however, is not only that the seed needs time to sprout. The point is also that the seeds of the Kingdom grow in human hearts, and this constitutes the main hope while at the same time being the main problem. When we speak of the Kingdom growing from seeds cast into the soil of our world, it is important to remember that we ourselves are the soil. It is in us that the seed of the Kingdom cast by God can either sprout or rot. Here begins the very thing that ultimately determines the timing of the final triumph of the Kingdom.

We live in the age of the approaching Kingdom, but when it finally arrives and is revealed in all its fullness depends precisely on us. The date of Christ's return in glory, His second coming, is known only to the Father not because the Father is hiding something from the Son, but because it has not yet been determined and perhaps cannot be determined exactly: it depends on the choice of each of us, and therefore it is bound to change constantly, changing with every choice that is made.

This slows the matter greatly, but only in this way can each person be given the opportunity to take part in the process of the Kingdom's entry into the world. Human participation is necessary here because otherwise that person will not be able to enter the Kingdom. At best he will then be able to share in its life, but he will not be able to change so that the life of the Kingdom also becomes his own life; and then all efforts will be useless, for in the Kingdom the main thing is the people of whom it consists.