Main news for 27 June 2022

As we can see, readiness to grant good to the one who asks is presented as a distinctive feature of God, to which Jesus draws His listeners' attention. Of course, Hosea had already spoken of God's readiness to do more than deserved for His people, as well as for each individual person. The only thing required of the people for this is to turn to God and ask forgiveness for the sins they have committed. And the pre-exilic prophets already connected this readiness of God for undeserved benefactions with the very possibility of justification on the day of Judgment, whether for the people or for an individual person.

Jesus, as we see, connects with it the very possibility of the Kingdom as such. He says to the people listening to Him: you are able to do good deeds for those you love, for example for your own children, although in general goodness is contrary to your fallen nature; yet sometimes you are able to build concrete relationships with concrete people, even if only a few, despite your nature. But for God a good attitude toward every person is the norm; doing good does not contradict His nature. It is enough only to enter into relationship with Him in order to receive good, for there can be no other, non-good relationship with Him. And this in turn opens the road to the Kingdom for everyone: for the fullness of relationship with the Father and with Christ is precisely what brings a person into communion with it.

And Jesus bears witness that God is always ready for such relationships, so now it is up to the person. For Him, loving a person is no labor: relationships of love are the only relationships natural to Him. But in order to love, a person must always step over himself and build a relationship with another, whether God or neighbor, against his own fallen nature. Yet for a person the matter is made simpler by the fact that God is always ready to take a step toward him. And not only one step, but many steps in response to the one step taken by a person seeking relationship with God and the Kingdom.

Today's reading is devoted to two themes that, at first glance, are not directly connected. On the one hand, it speaks about judgment and about the fact that Christ's followers would be better off not acting as judges (vv. 1-5). On the other hand, Jesus directly advises His disciples to ask the Father for everything they may need (vv. 7-11). And this advice is introduced by words about a careful attitude toward what is holy (v. 6). At first glance, these are completely different things; but if we think carefully, we can notice that here too Jesus is again speaking about the Kingdom. Indeed, if a person can "not judge," it is only and precisely in the Kingdom.

In our fallen world, any evaluation almost automatically becomes not only a judgment, which is permitted to us, but also condemnation, which is forbidden. Evaluation without condemnation is possible only in the Kingdom, where the very environment in which communication takes place is different. In such an environment one can compare oneself with others without at the same time determining whose step on the hierarchical ladder is higher. And not because everyone in the Kingdom suddenly becomes the same, but because the ladder itself loses its significance there. In the fullness of the Kingdom each person receives his own fullness given by God, and then the comparison so familiar to us in our world becomes meaningless.

But how can such vision be attained in our fallen world? Obviously, only by preserving the Kingdom that is already given to every follower of Christ now, in this world. It is no accident that the Savior reminds us of the need to keep what is holy pure, without defiling it with anything unclean (v. 6). "Dogs" and "swine" are mentioned here for a reason: they are unclean animals that in the Bible often become symbols of uncleanness as such.

And the call to treat people as we would want them to treat us (v. 12) also reminds us of the Kingdom. It would seem that before us is only the well-known "Golden Rule" of ethics, but that is still not exactly so. The point is not to treat people the same way they treat us, but to treat them as we would want them to treat us. In that case it becomes clear that we can treat people only with love and certainly without condemnation: it is hard to find anyone who would not want to be loved, or would want to be condemned, even if that person understands that there is not much to love him for and that there is plenty to condemn him for. Here it becomes clear that in our fallen world this is impossible. But what is impossible here becomes possible in the Kingdom.

If we relate to our neighbors exactly as Jesus commanded us, then the Kingdom has already become reality for us, and then we can ask as people ask in the Kingdom, where God gives without measure. The point is not that while we are here He cannot give us everything He could give there. It is simply that in the Kingdom, having learned to give without remainder and in fullness, we will also learn to receive in fullness - as people give and receive in the Kingdom.

Here we are again invited to come out of the captivity of our own egocentrism. How easy it is to revel in our own limitations, to regard our judgments about people, and about the world around us in general, as infallible. But Jesus lets us see the limits of our horizon. And although understanding another person can be very difficult, it is precisely by seeing the boundaries of our own understanding that we begin to overcome them, and therefore draw closer to understanding other people. Then we find ourselves in the place of the person we recently judged, and we begin to understand another person even better... The words about the speck and the log have been familiar to us since childhood; fortunately for us, this gospel wisdom turned out to be one of those things acknowledged even by many hardened atheists. True, there is a great temptation to poke at one's neighbor: "but you have a log sticking out," yet in substance there is nothing to object to here.

It is harder to notice that immediately after these words comes the warning about the inadmissibility of giving holy things to dogs and pearls to pigs. Let us recall, by the way, that in another place in the Gospel the Kingdom of God is compared to a priceless pearl. What unites these sayings? It appears that here Jesus is warning us about the danger of a hasty desire to become teachers. After all, even the preaching of truth can be turned into a way of self-assertion, when admiration for one's own eloquence hides from the speaker those to whom he is speaking.

But we should not amuse ourselves with illusions, even ones that look outwardly pious. Reality will inevitably break through the illusions, and it will be good if that happens without tragedy.