In today's reading, the apostle John offers us criteria for determining the truth and acceptability of a given teaching or statement concerning the relationship between a person and God. The first criterion is given in verse 24: "Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you too will abide in the Son and in the Father." In other words, the first condition for remaining in communion with God is faithfulness to the Gospel teaching. But there is also a second criterion, which John mentions in verse 27: anointing. What is this? In Jewish terminology, anointing was an outward sign of God's election and blessing. Here the anointing probably means not only blessing, but also the living presence of the Holy Spirit in the heart; it is no accident that this "living" anointing, as John says, "teaches us about everything." So the first criterion is the Gospel teaching, and the second is our living relationship with God. At the intersection of these criteria stands the teaching of the Church, which is created precisely on the basis of Scripture and the living experience of relationship with God.

And in the evangelic time, and in the ancient times in the synagogue and in the environment around the synagogue, one of the most popular and the most controversial questions was the question on what we can and has to do in order to have the right to enter the messianic Kingdom, or, in other words what to do "to inherit eternal life", as formulated it one seeker of the right way who addressed Jesus. Such question supposed that we can deserve somehow or other the Kingdom, that man is in principle capable if it is not to create this Kingdom by his own strengths (nothing similar could come of course in the head of a normal Jew), then at least, to bring his part of contribution to its creation, when the Messiah will come. But it turns out that it is not at all the case.

It turned out that nobody can help at all the Messiah in the edification of His Kingdom. And not only because it is prevented by the human sinfulness, but also because it is impossible to build the Kingdom by the laws of the not transformed world, and by no other law, we, living completely the life of this world, can build it. On the other hand we can another thing: accept the Kingdom brought to the world not by us, and carry it further.

By the way, it is for this that John calls the addressees of his message: he says to "abide in Him", meaning of course that the Savior. Indeed: because the Savior carries the Kingdom in Him and with Him, in Him all its plenitude, which He can and is ready to share with us. In this regard, we have nothing to bring in the construction of the Kingdom, we can not complete it at all, we can only accept it, as a gift, which it is impossible for anybody of men to deserve. Even our righteousness, which, in fact, is only a reflection of God's righteousness, does not complete the Kingdom: because it is in fact also not ours, it does not belong to us by nature, if we are righteous, then it is not by our strengths and in spite of our own sinfulness.

But well, in order to bring the Kingdom further in the world, we can be useful, and here our righteousness will not be superfluous. Of course, for that it is necessary to join at first the Kingdom and its life so that will be what to carry. But, on the other hand, once having joined, it is already impossible to stop: because in our world being transformed, but not yet transformed, the Kingdom can exist only in a dynamism, either it widens, spreads in the world, taking more and more new hearts, or disappears, becoming invisible.

And we, as inhabitants of the Kingdom living on the border separating it from the not transformed world, are on the wave of this transformative breath which penetrates the world. And, if we want to remain inhabitants of the Kingdom, it is impossible for us not to breathe it, and thus, not carry it forward. Only in this way, according to the idea of the apostle, abiding in Christ and living His life, we can appear in the day of the return of the Savior before Him, as his, as participants of this work, that He began and that He allowed us to participate. The works, due to which appeared to us the possibility to live the life, which otherwise would remain for ever inaccessible for us.