There are many "financial" parables in the Gospel that speak of reward in heaven, of acquiring the Kingdom of God like a field with treasure, or of capital that must be multiplied. Today's parable reveals another side of "heavenly accounting": those who have labored for God all their lives will receive the same reward as the idlers who barely managed to jump onto the departing train.

The paradox of this approach may cool the zeal of some "acquirers of the Kingdom" who are ready to labor for the sake of reward. But in reality this parable simply transfers the idea of value and reward from the result to the process itself. The result, the final outcome, may be the same for all: "God all in all" (1 Cor 15:28), especially since it cannot be earned, but can only be received as a gift. The special reward for those who are ready to labor is that they are already cooperating with God now, while others are still only waiting for an invitation.

In mastering a science, everything is based on many years of labor, constant labor, labor that accumulates knowledge in you. You cannot understand higher mathematics without studying arithmetic and elementary algebra. You cannot understand quantum mechanics without studying the basics of optics, and so on. The same applies to any sphere of human activity, whether a craft, an art, or a technology. This makes up our life, and we become used to such an order. But this structure of existence is very earthly. The law of gradual growth is extremely harsh: if you do not meet a series of formal parameters, you are not needed. This is inevitable, because here it is not the person that matters, but the progress of the field.

And there is an opposite law, the law of love, love for the person. Here everything is different. Instead of gradual accumulation, there are sudden revelations that turn one's whole life upside down. Here such paradoxes can occur, one of which is described by Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh, when yesterday's seminarians asked him how they could regain the sense of God they had had when entering the seminary. In other words, everything had happened to them in the opposite direction: instead of the gradual growth that was expected, there was a feeling of distance from God. Because there is no method for coming to God, however many methods may be found in the writings of the saints. God reveals Himself to whom He wants, and in the way He Himself finds necessary.

At the turn of the century there was a happiness helped along by the misfortune of the Soviet era: to see human souls that found God only in old age. And how much wondrous purity there was in them, how much burning ardor, how much truth...

Today's reading offers us one of Ezekiel's messianic prophecies. The "David" mentioned here, who is to become the shepherd of God's flock (vv. 23-24), was unambiguously associated by the prophet's contemporaries with the coming Messiah. The prophecy clearly sounded in Babylon, where the prophet ended up with the first group of Jerusalem residents deported from Judea, although Jerusalem itself had not yet been finally destroyed. The most terrible thing, the complete destruction of the city and the Temple, still lay ahead of the people. And Ezekiel, as we can see, explains to his fellow tribesmen the spiritual meaning of the events of which they had become witnesses and participants.

It appeared to many at that time that everything happening was only a misunderstanding, the intrigues of the enemies of the people of God, to which God would soon put an end, and then everything would again be as before. The prophet, however, points to the spiritual problems that led to the catastrophe: the absence of true shepherds (vv. 2-6) and the abnormal relationships within the people, who, according to God's design, were to become a people-community, but in practice were very far from this ideal (vv. 17-19).

For Ezekiel, the Babylonian devastation turns out to be only a stage on the way to the triumph of that messianic Kingdom to which Isaiah of Jerusalem had already borne witness. And Ezekiel sees in precisely this triumph the only possible way out of the situation that had developed. It is pointless to replace some shepherds with others; only God Himself can be the true Shepherd for His people (vv. 7-16). And only God Himself, through the Messiah He sends, can renew relationships within the people-community (vv. 17-24).

At first glance, such an assessment of the situation appears excessively harsh. Of course, if matters had reached a national catastrophe, the spiritual situation truly had to be extremely serious; but was there really not a single true shepherd left among the people of God who had kept faith with God and with his calling? In that case, clearly, this people would have had no future at all. The point is rather something else: in order for the Kingdom to become reality, the relationships between God and His people had to change in quality. Now each person had to learn to build his own relationships with God and with his neighbors, and to bear responsibility for them himself, without shifting it to a neighbor, a mentor, or a temple priest. For the Kingdom is above all relationships, relationships with God and with one's neighbor. And each person must build them himself, entrusting this building to no one else, whoever that other person may be and whatever he may say about himself.