What is most important about the meal Jesus arranges for the people listening to Him? One could say the miracle, and that would be true. But what is a miracle? One could also say the manifestation of the Kingdom, and that too would be true. Yet the Kingdom is the breath of God, the power of God, and the love of God acting in a particular way. What way is that? The evangelist explains by mentioning that Jesus blessed the food.

One might think that such an ordinary feature of Jewish life as a blessing hardly needed special mention. Yet the evangelist mentions it, and most likely not by accident. What, after all, was this customary Jewish blessing of food? In essence, it was nothing other than an invitation to God to sanctify the table and join the meal, where He was always awaited as the dearest guest. Jesus apparently does the same: He invites His heavenly Father to join the meal He arranges for the people listening to Him. But God's presence always gives the gathering itself a new quality. God's people are a people-community; that is how God intended them to be. Every sacred gathering, including one in a home, reveals and actualizes this quality, making it a reality wherever and whenever those assembled call upon God to bless their fellowship. The place where those who call upon God gather then becomes sacred space; it is no longer merely the meeting place of the community but the place of God's presence.

And what if the meal is blessed by the One who brought the Kingdom into the world in all its fullness? How great must the fullness of God's presence be in that case? Clearly, we must speak here not simply of sacred space as a place of God's presence and His meeting with the faithful, but of the Kingdom, which is precisely such sacred space in all its possible fullness. There God's presence is revealed as nowhere else, and the meeting becomes not merely an episode but the norm of life, for life in the Kingdom is life in God's presence, without which there is no Kingdom. When Jesus blesses the food, everyone nearby becomes, at least for a time, an inhabitant of the Kingdom.

Of course, such participation in itself guarantees nothing; it can be regarded as a kind of spiritual advance. But that advance can also become the first step on the path to the Kingdom, and therefore on the path to salvation.

When you prayerfully reflect on the image of John the Baptist, as though focusing your gaze on his icon, you understand that he is some entirely special person. After all, the Gospel contains many remarkable people, kind and sincerely loving the Lord... But in John there is something that seems to separate him from everyone, to set him a little aside. “Among those born of women there has not arisen anyone greater than John the Baptist...” (Matt. 11:11) — perhaps precisely here lies the reason for this feeling of inaccessibility, of remoteness.

And yet he was only a human being. There is one other human being before whom we have a similar feeling of inaccessibility: Mary. She is simply a woman, and at the same time She is far greater than any woman, for She carried in Her womb the Son of God Himself. This is what unites these two people, apart from blood kinship. But not only this: both became those through whom the birth of Christ was accomplished, in the flesh through Mary, and in the Spirit through John. And both at the same time felt themselves to be humble, unworthy witnesses of the miracle taking place before their eyes.

This is probably why these three icons stand at the center of the Deesis row: Mary, the Savior, and John. And the words of the prayer become somehow especially understandable: “As by natural kinship and by prayerful concord you are one, Mother of the King of all and divine Forerunner, offer together a supplication for the servant who has greatly angered the All-merciful One, that He may show mercy and save, bowing to your intercessions, and change me from my fiery kinship.”

The story of the quails is interesting in many respects, and first of all because it is a story of God's action. What connection, one might think, is there between quails, the outpouring of God's breath, and people prophesying in the camp? Everything seems mixed together. And Moses himself asks to find helpers for him, directly asking God, "Did I give birth to all this people?" There are many questions, many problems, but God's breath, God's action, sets everything in its place.

Those who were rushing back to Egypt receive meat. Moses receives helpers, and with them criticism and demands from "faithful" supporters to forbid unauthorized prophesying. Everything happens rapidly, one thing after another. God simply acts; He simply breathes with His Spirit. He neither punishes nor rewards anyone; each simply receives what he so wanted, but always together with the consequences.

Some were longing for Egypt precisely because there was plenty of meat there. Those who wanted meat received it, ate their fill, and died of some infection: the birds, judging by everything, turned out to be sick. Is this punishment? Not at all; it is simply the desire of those who craved their own way at any cost carried through to the end. The desired thing has been received, and the fact that one had to die because of it... well, no one asked God about the consequences.

Moses wants helpers, but where can they be found? God solves the problem simply: He blesses those whom Moses and the people choose, lets them feel His breath, and makes them prophets, at least for a time. After that each one uses the opportunity presented to him on his own: out of the seventy, only two become prophets. Divine stinginess? Of course not; rather, human irresolution. One can remain what God has made one, but then one must change completely, and one's life will also change irrevocably; not everyone has enough resolve for that.

Moses receives helpers, such as they turned out to be. God did everything possible, and people made use of the gift according to their own readiness. And envy immediately made itself known as well: why is someone suddenly prophesying without permission? Moses is sincerely glad; he would like the whole people of God to consist of prophets, but those around him... those around him are clearly not ready for this. So, then, the people of God will not consist only of prophets.

God's possibilities are boundless; only the human person is limited, at least where his own capacities are concerned. With desires, however, everything is different: here human potential is truly inexhaustible. Thus flows the life of individuals and of the whole people: between God's possibilities, the limitation of their own aspirations, and the boundlessness of their own desires.