Main news for 4 January 2024

As he concludes his letter to Timothy, Paul reminds his disciple of the main task of a servant of the Church. It is also, however, the main task of every Christian: the task of bearing witness to the Kingdom so that the world may see it, and so that everyone seeking new life may know where to look for it (vv. 11-16).

Returning to the theme of wealth, the apostle, adding to what he has said already, by no means closes the door of the Kingdom to the rich, just as the Savior Himself did not close it when He said that it is hard for a rich person to enter the Kingdom, but never claimed that it is impossible. The apostle, as we can see, explains what the difficulty consists in: in order to receive the Kingdom, a rich person must stop thinking of his wealth as something on which he can lean in life (vv. 17-19). The point is not only that, when he dies, the richest and most influential person in the world can take no more wealth with him than a beggar who has lived all his life on alms. Many understood this and spoke about it long before the Savior came into the world. The point, above all, is where the rich person's spiritual attention is focused, toward what his will is directed, or, in Gospel terms, where his treasure and his heart are.

Wealth really does provide support and power in our world that is being transformed, but it provides them precisely to the extent that the world has not yet been transformed. The habit of relying on such support, as well as using such power, can play a cruel trick on the possessor of wealth when it comes to spiritual life in the proper sense of the word, to life in the Kingdom and the relationships that define it. On coming into contact with the Kingdom, everyone discovers his own unreadiness and inadequacy. Yet a person who has already had to experience something similar, a person with the relevant experience, finds it easier to pass through the disappointment, inevitable for fallen human nature, that usually accompanies such an experience, and perhaps even through resentment. Meanwhile, both disappointment and resentment, though not fatal in themselves, can easily drag on and become, at the least, a serious obstacle on the spiritual path, and at the most, turn a person away altogether from the Kingdom and from spiritual life. Paul warns the rich against this mistake, a mistake that can cost them the Kingdom and eternal life.

As he concludes his letter to Timothy, his testament, the apostle Paul urges his disciple to “keep the commandment.” He does not specify which one, because it is evident to him that there is only one commandment. It can be expressed in different ways: one can speak of love for one another, of love for God and neighbor, or of the good confession like Christ's confession before Pilate... In one way or another, it means living—living a genuine Christian life (“not I, but Christ in me”), living in constant communion with God, living by the power of the Holy Spirit. Such a life extends beyond earthly life toward the appearing of the Lord Jesus Christ, when the entire fullness of the Kingdom of the One who is “King of kings and Lord of lords” will be revealed, as Jesus Himself also said.

In instructing Timothy, the Apostle Paul uses a very characteristic expression in today's passage. Unfortunately, the Synodal translation renders it imprecisely as "hold on to eternal life." The Slavonic "take hold of eternal life" corresponds more closely to the Greek original: "seize, hold fast to the eternal life to which you were called." The Apostle says that the faith granted to us by the Lord Jesus can be a support to which we can cling and thus escape from the abyss of hell and death. It is significant that we read this passage as the celebration of the Nativity of Christ draws to a close. In a text dedicated to the Presentation, St Cosmas of Maiuma expresses this thought very vividly. He places these words about the elder Simeon the God-receiver on the lips of the infant Jesus: "It is not the elder who holds Me, but I who hold him, for he asks Me for his release." When we receive the infant Jesus, we discover in Him, in a wonderful way, not a burden that we are called to carry, but a support to which we should hold fast.