Main news for 4 August 2026

These words are addressed not only to those who are just setting out to follow Jesus, but also to the disciples themselves—and to us. Does the thought never “occur” to us as to which of us is the greatest? Or do we never feel the urge to “forbid” someone who thinks differently? Or to ask God to send fire from heaven upon our enemies, “as Elijah did”? Do we always know what spirit we are of? Many of us have not only “put a hand to the plough,” but have already ploughed half the field. And yet are we looking back again?

As can be seen, Jesus keeps explaining to His disciples, through different examples, what the life of the Kingdom is and what it is like. And the Evangelist gathers these examples together, making a kind of digest that contains short descriptions of them. Here are the disciples arguing over who is the greatest in the Kingdom. Well, after the Teacher, of course. Here are the same disciples eager to call thunder down on a Samaritan village where they are not received. Not for their own sake, of course, but for the Teacher's sake. And for the truth, naturally.

And here are people they meet along the road. One is ready to go, but Jesus tells him: I have nowhere to invite you. To another Jesus Himself says: Follow Me, and that man asks permission to bury his father, and receives an answer that sounds merciless. As does another one: the answer is softer outwardly, but in substance it says: leave it, forget everyone, or else you will have to forget the Kingdom.

What is this: a particular kind of selectiveness? Yes, of course: Jesus sees every person's heart; it is as transparent to Him as it is to His heavenly Father. But there is also something common here. The Kingdom is open to everyone. But on one condition: it must be first in the life of the one who wants to reach it. In the Kingdom people do not live out their remaining days; they live. And those who refuse to go, in one way or another, want to live out what remains. To stay with those who are living out what remains. They do not understand that one can go on living out what remains, alone or with others, endlessly. In the fallen world there is no real life; here there are only its remnants. And one has to choose: either gather up these remnants and try to squeeze the last out of them, or go where there is life in abundance. Without trying to drag along the remains of that imitation of life that can be found in the fallen world.

But there, in the Kingdom, the laws are different. There are no bosses and subordinates there; there are ministries that must be carried, and whoever knows how to do this better is the greatest. The one who is greatest in the Kingdom does not receive the best places, but the more responsible ministries. And there is no need there to prove anything to anyone. In this world too, the Kingdom does not need to be proved to anyone.

It can be shown, of course. But proving it is pointless. For proof, especially with heavenly thunder involved, always presupposes a desire to persuade by force. To make someone accept, to make someone believe. And then it no longer matters what the irresistible arguments will be: in any case they presuppose that a person yields before the inevitable, whether it is a force from which there is no escape or an obviousness that cannot be evaded. The Kingdom, of course, is both force and obviousness. But it is a force one can walk away from, and an obviousness one can choose not to notice. God does not impose Himself, and the person is free. To the free, freedom; to the saved, paradise.

It is striking that Christ's disciples, until His very Resurrection from the dead, are held captive by common Jewish ideas. Faced with the Samaritans' refusal to receive Him, they are already ready to pray for fire from heaven and cite the prophet Elijah as an example to imitate.

It must be admitted that for many Christians over the centuries such a form of preaching appeared optimal. In one empire, a special theological theory was even devised according to which the emperor had to be converted to Christianity, and then by fire and sword he would conquer the whole world and drive all subject peoples into the faith. Everything would have been fine; it is only a pity that the empire fell before it managed to fulfill the mission laid upon it.

Christ's words in response to this strange thought of the disciples are simple and stern: "You do not know what spirit you are of". Though empires nowadays seem to have disappeared (perhaps fortunately), this temptation, and this rebuke by Christ of our inclination to violence, remain very important in the lives of individual people as well. It is not fitting to defend truth by force, because Truth conquers on the Cross.