When asked when the Kingdom He preaches will finally come, Christ answers in a very strange way. On the one hand, it "will not come in a visible way"; it is "in your midst"; it is already growing in those who share in it. On the other hand, Jesus paints apocalyptic pictures of the end of the world, the day when the Son of Man, like lightning, "will flash from one end of the sky to the other."

What does He want to say through this contrast? How can the hidden coming of the Kingdom be reconciled with the thunder, lightning, and fiery rain of the Second Coming? Before us, it is not simply two different pictures of eternity entering our world, but also two ways of life: one can live in vain, "selling, buying, planting, building," drowning out with one's bustling activity the signs of the coming Kingdom; or one can already live in it, or rather bring it into being in life, in relationships with people and with God, cultivating the Kingdom "in our midst."

In the description of how the Kingdom of God comes, the word "left" looks unfamiliar. It is clear that the life of humanity bears little resemblance to what we know from Jesus' words about the properties and manifestations of the Kingdom. But it turns out that the choice for us will be exactly this: either to go into the unknown, or to remain here, but now forever. Enmity, wars, grief, sickness, and death will be eternal, which will please very few people. And one has to choose one of the two.

It seems that only in this way can today's Gospel reading be understood. But the mention of Lot's wife gives us a kind of instruction about how we must leave. Why did she look back then, despite the prohibition? Perhaps it was simple curiosity: what is happening there after you have left, how do they live, how do they die, what do they cry out when fiery rain falls on them? Perhaps it was one last look at the city where she had lived her whole life, with which so much was connected: home, family, children - everything was there, and she was sorry for everything good that had been there. Or it was the ordinary human desire to experience the past one more time, to replay in one's head several times all the fights after which one still wants to wave one's fists and come out the winner. Perhaps there are other reasons as well, sufficient from our point of view, for turning around and looking at what you will never see again. But walking with your head turned back is practically impossible: even if you do not become a pillar of salt, you will break your legs, or even your neck.

For Paul, his apostolic ministry truly was not simply the chief work of his life, but life itself. In this, however, there was nothing surprising, if we remember what the life of a Christian in general and the life of an apostle in particular are.

The life of every Christian becomes witness from the very moment he becomes a Christian. Strictly speaking, it cannot be otherwise: a Christian is a person of the Kingdom, and it is impossible to live in the Kingdom and hide it. But the ministry of an apostle consists in the fact that he is not only a person of the Kingdom, but also a person of the Church. Of course, this can be said of every Christian, but the chief and only task of an apostle is precisely the building up of the Church as the body of Christ. And such a task is inseparable from constant communication with the people who came into the Church through you. This, as we can see, is what Paul does throughout his life. He does not stay anywhere for long, because the task of an apostle is not the task of the one who presides over a church assembly or of a church administrator; the task of an apostle is spiritual support for individual people and church communities that need such support.

At the same time, the ministry of an apostle is also a visible manifestation of the unity of the Church, not only at the level of a particular church community, but also at the level of the Church as a whole. As is known, in the earliest Christian period, as also in the early Christian period, the Church was a community movement and managed quite well without a rigid centralized structure. In the earliest Christian period, the Church had a council of elders, or presbyters, which handled church-wide matters. But the connection between separate church communities at the grassroots level was carried out precisely by the apostles. Strictly speaking, the Church, for example at the first council in the history of the Church, was represented by apostles and presbyters: the former as people who knew the church situation, as people say, firsthand, and the latter as the most authoritative representatives of church communities. It is no accident that Paul speaks of his desire someday to come to his fellow believers and bring their faith to fullness: for an apostle this was the most natural task. This is how the early Christian Church lived, relying not on structures created by human beings, but on ministers sent by God, who helped it remain the body of Christ.