"As a mother comforts someone, so I will comfort you, and you shall be comforted in Jerusalem..." Sergey Averintsev has an article about the word "blagoutrobny," which in modern Russian is translated as "merciful," "compassionate." In classical Greek this word had an exclusively medical aspect in the sense of a healthy belly. But when it enters biblical culture, it suddenly acquires a new meaning. "One question remains: do the authors of the Old and New Testaments really see in God's love for people, in Christ's love for people, and in Christians' love for one another the features of such a specific kind of love as 'womb-like' maternal pity? Does the image of YHWH, which so often appears to us as the absolute embodiment of a strictly fatherly principle, have something maternal in it? This important question should be answered in the affirmative."

And then Averintsev turns precisely to the text of Isaiah that we are discussing with you today. Often a person of our day, accustomed to various kinds of "gender studies," asks us and himself a crafty question: why is our, or your, God male, and things of that sort? Further on this quite often leads such people to call the Mother of God a goddess. But in reality today we see the very important fact that everything is much more complicated. And we should not, in an ecumenical impulse, search Christianity for yin and yang, for genuine ecumenism is not so simple either.

Further on Sergey Sergeyevich recalls another passage from Isaiah. "'Zion says: YHWH has forsaken me, and my Lord has forgotten me. Can a woman forget her nursing child? Will she not have compassion on the son of her womb? Even if they forget, I will not forget you' (Isa 49:14-15)." "Thus, God is more mother than mother herself," says Averintsev. Let us never hurry in Holy Scripture; let us truly strive in our study of it for the spirit of "chastity, humility, patience, and love."

We have read many times already that Christ's Kingdom is not like all our human "kingdoms." It is like salt in food, like yeast in dough, like a seed in the ground that has not yet sprouted. It is real, but not visible to the "naked eye." It cannot be defined by our concepts, but its presence irreversibly changes this world.

That is exactly why it is so hard to limit "membership" in this Kingdom, however much "chosen ones" of every kind try to do so. The question asked of Jesus about the number of those being saved, that is, the participants in God's Kingdom, in essence means a demand to mark the boundaries of salvation: "who is inside, and who is outside?"

This question remains unanswered: instead of a limited sect, there is a call for everyone. Yes, entering by the "narrow gate" is hard, and the chance of being left out is quite real. But the gate is not closed; it is merely narrow. And everyone for whom this is truly important and necessary can find himself at Christ's feast with those who have also passed along this path.

Continuing the discussion of Christian life, the author of the letter draws his readers' special attention to the need for no "bitter root," as he puts it, to take hold among them. By "bitter root," taking traditional Jewish usage into account, what was usually meant was a "root of sin," that is, sin that had taken root in the human heart or in some human community. And the issue here is not only the desire, as people say, to keep the ranks pure. Nor is it even only that bad company, as even pagans knew, corrupts good morals.

The issue is that every sin that has become the norm and is perceived as the norm disrupts the normal existence of the Church as the body of Christ, whether the members of the Church notice it or not. In fact, even in pre-Christian times it was already known that sin defiles, and not only those who sin, but also those with whom the sinner is in communion. Of course, there was much that was archaic and magical in this view, especially if we are speaking about the mass religious consciousness of the pre-exilic era.

But there was also something else, something no longer so archaic, connected with the perception of the people of God as a single spiritual whole, as a kind of spiritual body. In that case it was obvious that the sin of a specific person belonging to the spiritual body turns out to be more than only his personal problem. His sin becomes a problem for the people-community to which he belongs. And all that has been said is even more true of the Church as the body of Christ, for here we are speaking of people called to the life of the Kingdom, with which no sin is compatible.

And if sin takes root in such a community and becomes the norm, then all who share in it actually cease to be part of the body of Christ. The Church then actually disappears, preserving only the appearance of its true self. Such a substitution is all the more dangerous because often, especially at first, it is barely noticeable, so that many may think everything in their church is in order. It is this danger of unnoticed spiritual corruption of the church body that the author of the letter reminds his readers about.