NOTES for Mar 12:1-12

Let us recall the beginning of a well-known prayer: "O Theotokos, you are the true vine, who brought forth for us the fruit of life..." Let us also recall the words from the Gospel of John: "I am the true vine..." (John 15:1). The image of the Lord that these lines draw is very clear. But today He appears before us not as the vine but, on the contrary, as the Owner of the vineyard. And this opposition, which in reality is mutual complementarity, is a very characteristic feature, as it appears to us, of the Gospel proclamation and perhaps of biblical theology as a whole. The Lord and Shepherd, the Lord and Lamb. The Lord embraces us from outside and is within us ("whoever eats My Flesh and drinks My Blood abides in Me, and I in him" John 6:56). One could give many similar examples of definitions that are "mutually negating" from the point of view of "objective reality." But most important of all: the Lord and Father, the Lord and Son. We must somehow feel with all our heart this most complex logic of mutuality that generates fullness. For if we act only with the mind, then whatever path we take, sooner or later we will arrive at something like Hegel's formula of thesis and antithesis. That is not bad, but as the history of thought has shown, it cannot always serve as a support for faith.