Today's reading is entirely devoted to describing the spiritual state of those who come into contact with the Kingdom. It is no accident that it begins by affirming human spiritual freedom (vv. 1–2). Of course, in a world lying in evil there will always be sinners, until its complete transformation, but this in no way excuses those who choose the path of evil and sin: each person is answerable before God for his own choice. Yet in the Kingdom a choice, like repentance for any sin, remains possible until the end of time, when the Kingdom is revealed in all its fullness. That is why Jesus commands us to forgive a brother who has sinned if he repents and asks forgiveness for what he has done (vv. 3–4).

But genuine repentance is impossible without the inner spiritual wholeness that the disciples have in mind when they ask Jesus to “increase our faith” (v. 5). In reply, Jesus not only points out what the faith of a spiritually whole person can do (v. 6), but also explains how such faith can be acquired (vv. 7–10). He compares His disciples with slaves not in order to belittle them, but to explain how a person seeking the Kingdom must regard his ministry. Just as it does not occur to a slave that by carrying out his master's command he has earned something or may lay claim to something, so a person who has fulfilled what God entrusted to him must under no circumstances think that he has deserved anything or has a right to anything. Such an attitude is evidently possible either out of having no alternative, as is usually the case with a slave who has nowhere to go and knows that he will receive no reward for his work, or out of the fullness of trust, when the relationship with God and with people is so deep that His will is fulfilled as something self-evident and a person does not even think of demanding any reward for his labour. Such relationships require a person to surrender himself completely to God's will, and if he resolves to do this, he truly acquires the spiritual wholeness that makes faith able to “move mountains.”

But what comes to the fore here is, of course, neither the possibilities that open up nor even the spiritual state in itself, but the relationship with God and with the One Whom He sends into the world. It is no accident that Jesus pays such attention to one of the people He healed, who returned to thank Him (vv. 12–19). Of course, Jesus recedes into the background here: the healing itself takes place on the way, as though without His direct participation. But perhaps He acts in this way so that those who were healed will look upon Him not as a wonder-worker, but as the One Who brought the Kingdom into the world. He leaves them free: anyone who does not wish to thank Him need not do so, and will not fall ill again. It then becomes clear that a relationship with Him mattered to only one of the ten. Ten people came into contact with the Kingdom, but only one entered it: the one to whom not only health mattered, but also the One Who brought this Kingdom into the world.

As the Savior's words show, the question of faith is directly connected with the question of spiritual life as such. What does it mean to increase faith? How did the disciples themselves understand an increase in faith? They must have meant something connected with the confidence they experienced when, at their Teacher's command, they preached the Kingdom and joyfully saw that not only people, but also spirits obeyed them. In those days, this sense of power was usually associated with faith, with its presence or absence. Jesus, however, is speaking of something somewhat different. He speaks of faith as a spiritual state. Precisely and only a spiritual one. After all, any manifestation of inner strength in a person is a natural phenomenon as much as a spiritual one. Here there is not only the spiritual impulse as such, not intention alone, but also nature and the psyche, which also respond to spiritual influence. But Jesus speaks only of the spirit. Only of the will. Only of intention.

Spirit is not nature. Quantitative measurements are impossible here. Spirit, or will, does not come in larger or smaller amounts. If the will is not fragmented, if it is not scattered through inner, psychological space or outer, physical space, it has absolute force. Not in the whole universe created by God, of course; only the will of the Creator Himself has that kind of power. But at one concrete point, it certainly does. That is why faith the size of a mustard seed is enough to move a mountain from its place. Faith here is not inner strength, and certainly not conviction about anything at all, but the fullness of relationship with God. It is that same fullness which, when directed toward creation, becomes the source of an infinitely powerful force, if only it is fully concentrated on something specific. But reaching that kind of concentration is not easy. No psychological techniques will help here.

This concentration is a derivative of that fullness of the life of the Kingdom which, in principle, has been opened after Christ's coming to everyone who seeks. It is the same fullness whose experience lets a person serve without counting merit: we have done what we were supposed to do; we are only servants who do not deserve a reward. It is the fullness in which one understands that every sin is absolutely destructive, and that, although sin is inevitable in the fallen world, complicity in it is always an existential catastrophe for a resident of the Kingdom. It is the fullness that is possible only in the Kingdom and without which there is no Kingdom. The fullness for which alone it makes sense to live.

"If your brother sins against you, rebuke him..." the Lord tells us today. To an unbeliever, someone not living in God but reading the Gospel with a certain external interest, these words can appear to contradict other words of the Gospel. "Why do you see the speck in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when there is the log in your own eye?" (Matt 7:4). How can you rebuke someone for anything if you yourself are no better?

In reality, this visible discrepancy reflects a very serious and deep problem of the soul, or a tension of the soul, in every real Christian. It is very rare for someone to offend us consciously and seriously while we are completely innocent. Of course, that happens, but it happens rather rarely. As a rule, we are dealing with ordinary conflicts in which each side is guilty of something. And of course each one considers it his "sacred" duty to call the opposite side to repentance. He rejoices at the thought that now he will forgive. This only leads to an escalation of the conflict.

This is not what the Lord wants from us at all. It appears to us that these words of Jesus contain a very serious warning to people of a very different kind. The point is that among Christians there are very often vulnerable, kind people who are, however, inclined toward depression and excessive self-abasement. If someone offends them, the first thought that arises in their head is, "It is my fault; I did something wrong." In reality, these are people with a huge deficit of love directed toward them, lonely people. If one looks closely, among physically healthy young people who attend churches, they are the overwhelming majority. Because of this kind of self-perception, their sorest spot is often the fear that they will be loved even less. Therefore, if someone around them offends them, they will never "rebuke" him, because they are afraid of bringing that person's displeasure on themselves, of losing some part of his love. That is the essence of it. But in their minds they cover this fear with pious exhortations to themselves about their humility, about their Christian love capable of enduring humiliation, and, in the end, with those words from the Gospel of Matthew that we cited today in an antithetical key. Such people remember small offenses for years. But not because they are vindictive; it is because passing through these offenses was connected for them with the layering of many different fears and pains.

And this is what the Lord does not want. He wants us to understand soberly that we, that I, am not the last and most terrible sinner in the world, and that the people around me can also make mistakes and sin. He wants us to overcome our own egocentrism and remember that our goal, in working together with God, is to lessen evil, and that we must recognize the responsibility of this work together with Him. He wants us to perceive both our own repentance and another person's repentance as the joy of renewed mutual love. It is something like the moment in childhood when we made peace with our parents after punishment. Joy and love are what God wants. He does not want tears and sufferings, and still less does He want tears and sufferings to be covered with piety and placed on a pedestal, as became customary in the great psychological literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a custom that comes from the traditions of eighteenth-century Romanticism. "Suffering ennobles the soul," how often one hears this in half-educated circles... They simply have not seen people whom suffering crushed and twisted so badly that one can barely make out the person's personality. The Lord certainly does not want that.