Most Christians usually understand the parable of the minas precisely as a parable about minas - perhaps not about money in the strict sense, but certainly as a parable about the gifts God gives a person. About the fact that the talents God gives cannot be left undeveloped: after all, on the day of Judgment one must return everything to Him with a profit. But this is only one, outer side of the situation described by the parable. It also has a deeper layer of meaning. And it is no accident that the Savior uses money as the central image of His parable, money entrusted to different people so that they would put it into circulation. Everyone knows that money must work. It must be in circulation. In constant motion. Otherwise, in one way or another, it loses value.

The value of money is maintained by the dynamics of its circulation. And it is precisely this, paradoxical as it may sound, that makes money most resemble that breath of the Kingdom which we call grace. What they have in common is precisely dynamics. As money can function normally only while in circulation, so the breath of the Kingdom, grace, can exist only in constant movement. A person receives this breath from God freely, but its further existence is determined as much by God as by the person. This is understandable: breathing is a process; it cannot be limited to one inhalation and exhalation. And this process cannot be sustained without human participation.

Meanwhile, a person's spiritual life depends on the intensity of this process. Or, more precisely, this process itself is spiritual life. A person's participation in it gradually turns the participant into a bearer of the breath of the Kingdom, turning his heart into a vessel that contains this breath. And it determines what a person will bring to God on the day of Judgment.

It is no wonder that the one who returned the whole sum to his master without profit lost what had been given to him. He had not changed. He remained the same. There was no merit of his in the breath of the Kingdom that breathed within him: he had received it freely. And he did nothing so that it would touch him in any measure. So that it would in some way change his own life. By the end of the path this man remained just as he had been at the beginning. And he was left with nothing. A sad but fitting outcome.

Paul briefly mentions one institution characteristic of the early Christian church: the institution of presbyters, or elders. Judging by the fact that alongside the laying on of hands there is a mention of "prophecy" as a gift, or "prophesying" as a special spiritual state characteristic of a prophet at the moment when he experiences revelation (the corresponding Greek word can mean both), one may suppose that the community of "elders" (presbyters) was, at any rate in the Church of the earliest Christian period, a charismatic community. In any case, the laying on of hands involved prayer for God to send down the Spirit who was to renew the one for whom they prayed; and the whole Yahwistic, and later synagogue, tradition, as well as the tradition of the Jewish religious brotherhoods that existed in the Gospel era, connected such renewal with the gift of prophecy.

Of course, someone who had undergone this kind of experience did not necessarily become a prophet, but he experienced in himself the action of God's breath that, properly speaking, makes a biblical prophet a prophet. Among the people of God, certain ministries had long presupposed the need for such an experience; a well-known example is the first kings of Israel, who could not claim authority without passing through prophetic consecration (a typical example is Saul's consecration, 1 Sam. 10:1-12). However, Saul's example is also the best proof that no consecration in itself changes a person automatically, apart from his will and spiritual effort. That is why Paul urges Timothy to care for the gifts received from God during the laying on of hands, gifts that otherwise can easily be lost.

As for the community of "elders" (presbyters), it was apparently a charismatic community not in the sense that all its members were prophets, but in the sense that all of them had undergone the experience of the Spirit's descent, just as Timothy had. Probably after such a laying on of hands the one who had experienced spiritual renewal himself became a presbyter, as happened with Timothy, who before, judging by the context of the letter, had probably been an ordinary deacon heading the community. Now he became a deacon-presbyter, and, as one can see, unusually young from the standpoint of church practice that existed at that time; judging by the encouragement Paul sends his disciple, this caused some people to feel perplexity and contempt toward the young "elder."

As one can see, the apostle remembered what some of his fellow believers forgot: spiritual age and physical age are not the same thing. Physical age is determined by the number of years lived; spiritual age by the intensity of spiritual life and the measure of rootedness in the Kingdom. And Paul, as one can see, advises Timothy to care above all for the second, without giving great importance to the first.

Sometimes, in order to see Jesus, we have to do something that seems impossible to us. This is not because God wants to punish us. God wants to show us that He created us for more, for eternity, for love. God cannot simply gather all perishing sinners and change them - that would be coercion. God helps those who are ready for it, who want to change, who want to give something up, to become different.

Perhaps Zacchaeus, the proud chief tax collector, would never have dared to promise what he promised Jesus ("Half of my goods I will give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will restore it fourfold") if beforehand, overcoming his pride, his shame over his short stature, and his awkwardness, he had not climbed a tree in order to see God. Jesus saw him in the sycamore tree, and while sitting there, blushing with shame, Zacchaeus had already changed something so important in himself that it was not hard for him to change his whole life completely. Zacchaeus took a step toward humility, and the Lord moved him to step into love.