NOTES for Luk 4:16-44

Today's reading prompts us to reflect on the truth expressed in a well-known saying whose Gospel origin, however, is far from universally known today: no prophet is accepted in his own country (v. 24). By quoting a messianic passage from the Book of Isaiah, Jesus quite plainly identifies Himself as the One of whom the prophet spoke (vv. 17-21). At first glance, His listeners' reaction seems paradoxical: on the one hand they agree with Jesus, but on the other they immediately begin to doubt. How could their fellow townsman, whom they had known since childhood, make any claim to be the Messiah (v. 22)? They demand miracles from Him not as signs of the Kingdom but as proof of His messiahship (v. 23). It is then that Jesus speaks the bitter words about a prophet in his own country (v. 24).

Yet the paradoxical reaction of Jesus' listeners was actually quite understandable, and not merely because “great things are best seen from a distance.” The issue here was ordinary familiarity, which often proves to be one of the most serious obstacles on the spiritual path. Their doubts are justified, not by chance, with the thought that they have known Him since childhood: “Is not this Joseph's son?” So how could there be any question of messiahship? Of course, if Jesus had been recognized by respected people or official authorities and they had directly identified Him as the Messiah, He would undoubtedly have been welcomed with joy and celebrated as a famous fellow townsman. But there was no official recognition, and the townspeople had to decide for themselves. The force of habit weighed upon them.

Fallen human beings tend to see reality not as it is but as they are accustomed to seeing it. Clichés are common and widespread, and they arise for a reason: reducing reality to patterns and using ready-made models to describe it form a kind of psychological mechanism by which human beings adapt to the world—a mechanism without which, after the Fall, they can no longer manage. Yet this same adaptive mechanism often prevents a person from seeing what is new and unusual. It offers ready-made patterns and models where they do not apply, where the realities involved fit no pattern and can be described by no model.

The Kingdom to which Jesus bears witness is just such a reality. It fits no familiar framework. Yet Jesus' fellow townspeople do not want to lose that framework; they are prepared to defend it at any cost, and Jesus simply will not fit within it: an unrecognized Messiah, a disturber of the peace, someone passing Himself off as no one knows whom and claiming what no one in their small town had ever claimed or would ever have dared to claim. This is how He appeared to the people of Nazareth. They were left with only one remedy: to rid themselves of their excessively troublesome fellow townsman. And they would have done so if they could (vv. 28-30).

As we can see, it is not only the hatred of religious rigorists and the maneuvering of politicians that lead Jesus to the cross. He is driven there also by the narrowness of fallen human nature.

In Christ the prophecy was fulfilled. But whom is it speaking about? It is still possible to understand why healing is given to the broken, release to captives, and sight to the blind. But why is joy promised only to the poor, and freedom only to the oppressed? And what does that have to do with me? Of course, I am sometimes oppressed, but not all the time!

It is no wonder that not everyone in the synagogue reacted properly... Or should we still try to reread this passage once more and try to enter into the meaning of these words, to discover in ourselves the need, the thirst for freedom and healing? Otherwise Jesus will have to go to another town again...

In the ancient world, “to proclaim good news” meant bringing news of victory over an enemy. By choosing this word to describe His mission, Jesus tells His astonished fellow townspeople that God has sent Him as a herald of His victory, of the coming of His eternal Kingdom. But He goes beyond referring to the biblical prophecy—and this is especially shocking to His listeners: when quoting Isaiah, Jesus omits the words about “the vengeance of our God” (Isa 61:2) and denies the Israelites' superiority over the Gentiles in the coming Kingdom. In addition to victory over the forces of evil, manifested in the healing of the possessed man, Christ brings news of victory over vengeance and hatred. This victory was won by the Lord Jesus Himself and must be won by everyone who wishes to be His disciple.

The Lord proclaimed the fulfillment of the prophecy. The acceptable year of the Lord had come. But where is it? Why do we see the opposite, that the world still lies in evil, that the unjust are exalted and the just are trampled down? Then it is not so. The prophecy did not come true. How can we accept the thought that the Lord's prophecy did not come true?!

Two things can be said in response to these doubts. The first, and apparently very important, is that the concept of "prophecy" must not be understood narrowly or in a utilitarian way. Fortune-tellers claim to tell you your fate, "what will happen." It would be more accurate to call prophecy a revelation of God's will. But there is also human will. God is not a conductor, and the world is not a stage, because everything happens in the complex interaction of two wills: the human and the divine. The Lord took His step and fulfilled what He had promised; after that, it was up to our will to accept it or not accept it. We did not accept it. And if we had accepted it, without question everything described in Isa. 61 would already have reigned on earth for two thousand years. But we did not accept it; we ourselves did not want to, or more precisely, we were not yet ready.

And second: there were people who did accept it. Yes, and precisely for that reason the prophecy did come true after all. That is why Theophan the Recluse writes: "The Lord came not only to announce the acceptable year, but also brought it. Where is it? In the souls of believers."

The year of the Lord's favor, or the year of the Lord's mercy in another translation, is what Jesus came to announce to us. Under the pressure of difficult circumstances in life, we often forget that the true purpose of His coming is precisely this. And that this year has already been brought into the world by Him, although for now it remains hidden. What is it? Where can it be seen?

Perhaps today's Gospel passage itself serves as the answer to this question. Christ passed through the hardest trials in the wilderness, endured them, and came to possess some special power, some special peace, radiating uncreated light. We understand this from the reaction of the people in the synagogue, who had come to an ordinary Sabbath gathering. The reaction was unexpectedly fitting, which was rare with Him in the synagogue, at least at first. Yes, later they were filled with rage, but at first they "bore witness to Him." Perhaps in that brief opening moment He in some especially obvious way manifested the year of the Lord's favor in Himself.

Yes, but that is Him; what about us? Let us remember a time when we honestly prepared ourselves, fasted, prayed with some special strength, then came to the liturgy, brought our repentance to the Lord, received the Holy Mysteries of Christ, and... do we not feel the year of the Lord's mercy in our soul at that time? Perhaps it is exactly like that.

In the Synagogue, already in the era of the Second Temple, a custom had developed: every believing Jew could read and comment on the Torah during worship. This custom later passed from synagogue practice into church practice, so that both in the earliest Christian and in early Christian times there were church preachers who were neither deacons nor presbyters nor bishops, but belonged to that active core of the church community without which the Church in those days was unthinkable.

There was such an active core in the Synagogue as well. In Judea, and in Palestine generally, in Gospel times it usually consisted of members of the Pharisaic brotherhood, to which many synagogues belonged. In such synagogues, the brotherhood included the overwhelming majority of the parishioners, and naturally the council of elders and the synagogue rabbinate as well. The Pharisees were active preachers and missionaries, and preaching was constantly heard in their synagogues; if not everyone preached, then very many did. But in general, any believing Jew could give a sermon if he had something to say.

It appears that Jesus made use of this opportunity. He, of course, immediately spoke about the Messiah and the messianic Kingdom, since in the synagogues at that time the corresponding passage from the Book of Isaiah was being read. His speech consisted not in words, but in eloquent silence. After reading the text, He said nothing more and simply sat down. In doing so, He was letting those present understand that He had nothing to say: He is here, He has come, and that is all He wanted to communicate to the people gathered there.

In fact, very often an encounter with Christ happens just like this: He simply stands before a person and is silent. He lets Himself be seen, determining nothing in advance, demanding nothing, insisting on nothing, and trying to convince no one of anything. A person is free to choose, and he must choose for himself. Face to face with the Messiah who has appeared to the world. As then in Nazareth.

We can attribute to respect, worship, and even complaisance the fear that inspires us how to live in the presence of the Lord. Unfortunately, it is mostly our will to consider God equal to us, by saying " I feared thee, because thou art an austere man: thou takest up that thou layedst not down, and reapest that thou didst not sow." (Luc 19:21). We portray a horrible, abominable, vindictive, and at the same time impersonal “being”, from whom it is necessary to run away without looking backward when we try to justify ourselves of our own passivity, our laziness, our unwillingness to give everything back to this “being”. And quite as Adam, we realize at this moment our nudity, our weakness and our solitude in an unknown and horrible world (see Gen 3:10). A dire poverty stifles in us the will to live. We lament and tumble, we cry and we are distressed of the impossibility or the incapacity to bear the horror which surrounds us. We understand that we are enslaved by this fear, in a way that we cannot even move. We are tormented and led until the ultimate limit of despair. Being thirsty of deliverance, we turn out to be subject of sin and death; and no one knows how to get out of this trap: even being aware of all this, we do not find a solution for oneself, let’s not talk about finding it for somebody else . It is impossible to a man to surmount this terrible rupture by his own strengths. It is possible only for the One who can say that He came to preach the Gospel to the poor, to heal the broken hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised. The favorable summer of the Lord begins for us from the moment we are conscious of these facts and receive into our life the One who gives all this.

We can attribute to respect, worship, and even complaisance the fear that inspires us how to live in the presence of the Lord. Unfortunately, it is mostly our will to consider God equal to us, by saying " I feared thee, because thou art an austere man: thou takest up that thou layedst not down, and reapest that thou didst not sow." (Luc 19:21). We portray a horrible, abominable, vindictive, and at the same time impersonal “being”, from whom it is necessary to run away without looking backward when we try to justify ourselves of our own passivity, our laziness, our unwillingness to give everything back to this “being”. And quite as Adam, we realize at this moment our nudity, our weakness and our solitude in an unknown and horrible world (see Gen 3:10). A dire poverty stifles in us the will to live. We lament and tumble, we cry and we are distressed of the impossibility or the incapacity to bear the horror which surrounds us. We understand that we are enslaved by this fear, in a way that we cannot even move. We are tormented and led until the ultimate limit of despair. Being thirsty of deliverance, we turn out to be subject of sin and death; and no one knows how to get out of this trap: even being aware of all this, we do not find a solution for oneself, let’s not talk about finding it for somebody else . It is impossible to a man to surmount this terrible rupture by his own strengths. It is possible only for the One who can say that He came to preach the Gospel to the poor, to heal the broken hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised. The favorable summer of the Lord begins for us from the moment we are conscious of these facts and receive into our life the One who gives all this.

The prophet's words that he is sent to testify to "the year of Yahweh's favor" ("the acceptable year of the Lord" in the Synodal translation), Jesus plainly applies to Himself. The corresponding prophecy was obviously messianic for everyone, and the "year of favor" was understood as the year of the Messiah's coming. Jesus applies what was said to His own coming, thereby hinting at His own messiahship, about which He almost never spoke directly. Such hints were apparently connected with the fact that His messiahship plainly corresponded neither to popular messianic ideas nor to the expectations connected with them.

On the one hand, Jesus had to let those who listened to Him understand that the messianic age had arrived and that He Himself was the expected Messiah; but at the same time His plans certainly did not include becoming the leader of a mass messianic religious-political movement, to which everything would inevitably have been reduced had He declared His messiahship directly and openly. The hints and the corresponding messianic Old Testament texts were meant not only to make the listeners suppose that the speaker was bearing witness about Himself as the Messiah, but also to make them think about why He was not saying this directly.

In this way Jesus wanted to cut off the idly curious and those who were satisfied only by traditional ideas, or by their own ideas, about the Messiah and about what He should be like. He wanted to attract the attention of those who understood the language of subtle hints and were ready to see a completely unexpected Messiah, whose image did not fit into the usual frames and traditional schemes.

Besides cutting off those who were eager to begin a messianic war immediately, there was another goal here. A person following Jesus had to be ready for surprises, precisely there and then where and when they would least be expected. Both His own path of the cross and resurrection and the path of those who followed Him were unlike anything known and familiar.

Here it was often necessary to act in a situation where logic and traditional models failed completely and could only get in the way. And it was better to prepare His disciples for this from the very beginning, from the very beginning to make them see the traditional and familiar in an unexpected and unfamiliar way. Sometimes such a look could even shock, but it was better to go through the shock at the beginning of the path, so as to become used to it and in the future, when there would be much more that was shocking in life, already accept it as a natural and inevitable part of the Christian's path.

The Lord comes to the one to whom He Himself wants to come. God's coming into a person's life is not a reward for one merit or another, whether ascetic feats or perfect piety. The Lord comes to those who need it as a matter of life and death. But there are many who are in need. Or does He choose the most humiliated among them? Perhaps that applies in some measure to the widow of Zarephath in Sidon, but hardly to the commander of the Syrian king's army. So the Lord chooses in some way unknown to human beings. No one will ever find a pattern here. The Lord is living, and everything living cannot be fully fitted into laws. For us, however, law is the mind's only support, the only thing that gives us any confidence. Yet that very confidence is what fails us. How sure the people of Nazareth were that they knew, knew well, this man, Jesus. But that confidence kept them from seeing God in Him.

We should not think that the Lord is somehow playing with us, or simply trying to surprise us, because everything here is far too serious. Human lives are at stake. Of course, that is not what this is about. It is simply that we, precisely we, do not understand God's providence or the whole complexity of His ways. "My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, says the Lord" (Isa 55:8). This mismatch is what sometimes makes us wonder why grace came down on this particular person, why in just this way, just at this time, when it is obvious to us that there are people around who are much more worthy or more needy. We simply have to try to believe that everything that happens by His will happens in the way most needed for the paths of grace.

People have different attitudes toward their illnesses: some think about them all the time, while others try to forget about them. Some complain, while others keep silent and pretend they are not sick. But almost everyone still wants to be healed. True, that desire also takes different forms. Naaman was deeply eager for healing. He longed for it and believed it was possible. It was this faith that opened his ears to the words of a young servant girl. He not only heard her words about the prophet; he believed them and dared to speak about it with the king.

Yes, he was "a great man before his master." But the higher you stand, the more frightening it is to make yourself look ridiculous, to be disgraced. And when he reached Elisha, Elisha did not even come out to the threshold to meet Naaman, but sent instructions through a servant. Naaman was disappointed, became angry, and refused to accept the way the Lord had decided to act in this situation.

How often we have a similar reaction when our carefully thought-out plans do not come to pass. But, fortunately, God gave Naaman the gift of listening to the people around him. Even though they were only servants, the desire to be healed and trust in God lead Naaman farther. And the Lord rewards the trust of His children with healing of body and soul.

That this is true is beyond doubt: everyone can remember relationships with close relatives. But why is it so? Perhaps because we expect a prophet to be something unusual, almost superhuman, while God gives the gift of prophecy to completely ordinary people. If we do not know such a person closely, then that person is unusual to us and we are ready to take him for a prophet. But in someone close to us, what is unusual? So we easily accept all kinds of ideas that come from outside as prophecies, while our own prophets, all those Vernadskys, Vavilovs, and Solzhenitsyns, we mock, let rot in camps, and drive out of the country. After all, perfect pitch is also a gift, but it does not depend at all on whether we accept it or not; prophecy, however, if it is not heard, is as though it does not exist. And just as well, since a prophet rarely says things pleasant to us!

And now the main question: what should we do with this? The answer must be sought in the Gospel. We are called to love, both the near and the far, seeing in each person the image of God and therefore a mystery that can never be fully comprehended. Then every person is astonishing to us, and through every person God can say something very important to us.

What is said in this verse is indubitably true: each of us can remember his relationship with his most immediate family. Why is it so? May be because we have illusions? We think that a prophet must be extraordinary, even a superman, while God bestows the gift of prophecy to common people. If we don’t know closely the person to whom God bestows the gift of prophecy, then he is for us extraordinary and we are ready to agree that he is a prophet, but what happens when it turns out that this person is close to us, is familiar to us - is there anything abnormal in him that makes him not to be a prophet? Voila! We take easily for prophecy any sorts of ideas coming from outside, but we laugh and let moldy our prophets in camps, we even expel them sometimes out of the country. Is it not an absolute hearing also a gift? But this gift completely doesn’t depend on us - whether we accept it or not - it exists - while the gift of prophecy seems to not exist if it is not heard and received. Oh that’s great, since prophets seldom talk about things that please us, isn’t it?

But here is the main question: what should we do? The answer must be sought in the Gospel. We are summoned to love – our neighbor and stranger, seeing in each the character of God, and this means secret cannot be apprehended till the bottom. So, everyone should be amazing for us, and God might say something very important for us through anyone.

Sometimes the fullness of God's life in Jesus manifests itself unusually and unexpectedly. The crowd is ready to seize Him, but He somehow passes through it. Either unnoticed or invulnerable. Or perhaps both together. The evangelist does not explain exactly how He manages to pass through the aggressive crowd. Most likely, He simply passed right beside it.

Moving in another dimension, in another space, in the space of His Kingdom, which was never closed to Him, even when outwardly He was no different from other people. They did not see Him not because He used some special methods of hiding Himself, like a fairy-tale cap of invisibility, but because He moved where His pursuers could not penetrate, even though they continued to see Him.

Somewhat as, after His resurrection, He was visible to His disciples walking to Emmaus while being in the Kingdom, whose boundary with the untransformed world ran along the very road on which they were walking, so that He was on one side of the boundary and they on the other. Once He moved away from the boundary into the depths of the Kingdom, He vanished from the apostles' eyes. Yet near the boundary He could be seen even by those who had not yet entered the Kingdom. So too the crowd could see Him without entering His Kingdom. But to touch Him, to seize Him, was impossible.

Such invulnerability seems strange against the background of everything that happened later, when He was nevertheless arrested, tried, and executed. If He could become invulnerable to the crowd then, what kept Him from doing the same later? Technically, nothing. The words He spoke in the Garden of Gethsemane about legions of angels were not an allegory at all; they were a statement of fact, an indication of a fully real possibility, which, however, He could use only if He decided to violate the will of His heavenly Father.

There was nothing forced or inevitable in Jesus' life in the sense in which such things exist for us. His life was determined only by His choice and by the decisions of His Father, which He accepted and perceived as His own. He could not avoid going to the cross not because He had nowhere to go, but because otherwise He would not have carried out what He came into the world to do. But then, in Nazareth, it was still too early for Him to die. And He left. He left the crowd, walking by the road of His Kingdom. The road that, passing through our fallen world, then helped Him avoid the hands of a hostile crowd. And later led Him to the cross.

It is interesting that the more religious a person is, the more often he suspects the people around him of being possessed. Most of these suspicions are unlikely to be justified, but possession certainly does occur. It happens that damage to the sphere of the will, which can already be regarded as mental illness, is accompanied by the intrusion into a person of an alien will which at certain moments takes control of him. The Gospels describe quite a few encounters between Jesus and such sufferers, and in most cases the possession manifests itself when the bearer of that alien will, the demon, cries out upon recognizing the One who is approaching. Jesus never rejoices in such recognition or in such testimony about Him—for can the testimony of a demon be accepted? Instead, He forbids the evil spirit to speak or act and drives it out of the person. This would seem to be an unequivocal victory of good over evil, yet people's inner corruption is such that they fail to recognize good even when it is plainly casting out evil.

Is it possible to distinguish an unclean spirit from mental illness? Unfortunately, this question comes before us again and again too often. But let us ask another question: do we need to do this? Yes, you will be told, it is necessary in order to know whether to take a person to exorcism prayers or to a psychiatric hospital for the strongest medications. We will not be able now to give a general rule that fits every case in life, but we know with complete certainty that among people whom doctors have recognized as ill there are good poets and deeply believing people. And today's fragment of the possessed man's confession also sounds like a certain testimony in favor of this.

But perhaps these are only flashes against the background of madness? In some cases, yes, and then the person must be drawn both to Christ and to medical treatment, because madness is dangerous both for the person himself and for those around him. But let us think about another kind of "madness." Let us remember Blessed Xenia of Petersburg. Truly, the beginning of her path of blessedness, marked by her husband's death, can be understood as real madness. She dressed in his clothing, said that she was the one who had died while her husband had not died, and asked to be called by his name. But, as is sung in the kontakion of Blessed Xenia, tone 7: "having exposed the madness of the world by supposed madness, you received the power of God through the humility of the cross." And this is no longer madness, but blessedness. How can one distinguish it? Very simply: by its fruits. In Petersburg it was considered a good sign to give something to Blessed Xenia; people were drawn to her. But if the fruits of madness are sin and temptation for others, then this is a genuine unclean spirit, even if it dresses itself in the garments of reason.

So is it necessary to distinguish an unclean spirit from mental illness? The point is not to distinguish those two, but to distinguish the fruits of the spirit. And if they are poisonous, then psychiatry and spiritual means of struggle should both be brought in, for example exorcism prayers, or better simply frequent participation in the Divine Liturgy. But if their fruits are sweet, then here is truly a treasury of the spirit, even if it is clothed in the form of madness; let us not be afraid of this.

The evangelist notes an interesting nuance in his account: at the sight of the possessed man's healing, his release from the power of dark forces, the people around Jesus are seized by terror. Not joy, not delight, not reverence, not the fear of God, which still presupposes reverence first of all, but precisely terror, terror before a strange, incomprehensible, and therefore frightening power. It would seem that when we are speaking of the manifestation of the Kingdom, of the breath of the Kingdom, and even of the power of the Kingdom, which showed itself in the healing of the possessed man, there should be no question of terror. And yet terror is present; that is the reaction of those who saw the healing. What is the matter? The answer to this question may be found in the talk among those around Him, mentioned by the evangelist: Who is He, that even the forces of darkness fear Him? Evidently, the people seized by terror at the sight of the healing see nothing in what is happening except power, a power surpassing even what was considered irresistible: the authority of the spirits of darkness.

Of course, those around Jesus were religious people; no others were to be found near the synagogue. But, as we can see, religiosity by itself guarantees nothing when it comes to the spiritual world and spiritual life. It is no secret that in every age religious people have often feared the manifestation of dark forces in their lives even more than their nonreligious contemporaries. And one can understand them: unlike nonreligious people, or people who do not believe at all, religious people know something about the spiritual world, at least by hearsay, and sometimes from their own experience. They also know about the existence of dark spiritual forces and have no reason to doubt their reality. But religiosity by itself does not guarantee firm and stable personal relationships with God.

Then the forces of darkness become a reality for the religious person, while God becomes an abstraction. Perhaps the people around Jesus understood the matter in just this way. And in Jesus Himself they saw not the Messiah who had brought the Kingdom into the world, but only the Possessor of a power greater than the one they already knew well: the power of the spirits of darkness. The reality of the Kingdom remained foreign to them; they never sensed either its breath or its love. But they did notice its power.

Without love, however, that power really does become frightening for a person. For a human being, there would perhaps be nothing more terrible than a God who suddenly stopped loving him, if such a thing were possible. But fortunately for humanity, that is completely impossible. Still, a person who does not know God's love, who does not sense the breath of the Kingdom, can quite well imagine God's power deprived of God's love. And that mirage will become terror for him, just as it became terror for the witnesses of Jesus' healing of the possessed man.

Why were people astonished? Well are there not many words said by the Prophets and by the teachers of the Books of the Bible in what Jesus was talking about? There were other teachers in Israel in that period; it is especially clear after the discoveries of the Red Sea also called Qumran. By what Jesus Christ was different from the others? Here is given the solution: "His message was with authority ". Or as it is written in the Gospel of Matthew: " He was teaching them as one having authority, and not as their scribes" (Matt. 7:29). A huge tradition of teaching and of interpretation of the Scripture already existed by that time; Israelis teachers spoke with a lot of caution, referring constantly to the authorities, as if screening themselves behind their backs.

Jesus does not hide. He also speaks without fear, quite as Israel great prophets. He does not even refer to the authority of Moses the legislator, and allows Himself expression such as "It was spoken to Moses but I speak to you ". It is not a matter of authoritative tone of His words, nor of His ego trip - there is neither of them in His thoughts - but rather is a matter of His listeners who feel a full conformity between This Man and what He speaks about. Love and truth are always united in His teachings, and that is effectively why people found that He has the right to teach them.

We meet sometimes in our way people in whom we feel the same power of love and the same power of truth, then something touches our heart, because an unquenchable thirst of love and truth lives in the kernel of the personality of every human being.

When demons find themselves face to face with Jesus, they usually understand better than people who they are dealing with. Is that good for us? It is hard to answer unambiguously. Of course, it is better to be a human being, even a fallen one, than a fallen spirit. Yet a human being does not possess the clarity of spiritual vision that belongs to spirits, who retain that clarity even after their fall.

Perhaps this is connected with the differences between fallen angels, who remain purely spiritual beings even after the fall, and human beings, who from the beginning were conceived and created as twofold beings, both spiritual and natural. And in a human being, it appears that the natural component takes the main blow.

Of course, the fall itself is a spiritual phenomenon. It is connected with a person's spiritual choice, with the decisions a person makes at a certain moment in his history. But judging by everything we know today about fallen man, the consequences of that wrong decision distorted his nature far more deeply - meaning, of course, not only and not so much his physiology as, above all, his psyche - than his spiritual life.

Today this may strike us as unfortunate and irritating. Yet our own nature, by taking the main blow upon itself, may have significantly weakened the influence of spiritual evil on our spiritual life. In a certain sense, one could say that our own nature, physical to a lesser degree and psychological to a greater one, became for us a kind of safety cushion, softening the blow of the forces of evil against that spiritual core of our personhood without which we simply would not exist as human beings.

The price of this softening was, among other things, the lack of clarity and distinctness in spiritual sight that marks fallen man. This defect is overcome only on the spiritual path, on the path of deepening one's relationship with God. That is why many do not recognize the Messiah in Jesus. But the fallen spirits, who have not lost the clarity of spiritual sight, see Him with complete clarity and understand perfectly who stands before them. Only this understanding does not bring them any closer to God. The issue is not knowledge in itself, but how that knowledge affects one's relationship with God, and whether it helps on the way into the Kingdom.

Why do three evangelists give attention to this one of Jesus' first miracles, the healing of Peter's mother-in-law? Perhaps the reason lies in the genre of the Gospel: testimony. Testimonies are strong and convincing when they are not anonymous, when they speak not in general about some healed people whom the witnesses themselves never met, but about concrete people known to the listeners or close to those whom they know. Everyone knew Peter, and his mother-in-law is a very concrete and convincing example.

It is interesting that all three evangelists emphasize one detail: "She immediately rose and served them." This does not mean, in all probability, that such behavior was uncharacteristic of her. Rather, the point is that miraculous healing is given to a person not without purpose, for God does nothing without purpose, but for service, because this is exactly how love expresses itself in behavior.

We do not know much about the devils, but one thing is sure: these devils are against God not only by their goals, but also by their methods. If the purpose of God as regards to men is salvation and bringing to eternal life, the purpose of the devil is perdition; furthermore, if God respects and takes into consideration the freedom of man, the devil on his side tries to enslave man, to capture man's conscience, and paralyze his will (it is what we call obsession). When an obsessed man meets Jesus, he is delivered from his obsession and the devils desert him immediately. The current extract makes us know that the devils know Who outcasts them (see (James 2:19), although they do not stop being devils and continue to withstand God's will. May be that is why Jesus prohibits them to testify about Him, because man can fall in a false situation by listening to such testimonies: Man has to believe in order to receive this message…are we going to believe in demons?

Jesus commends us to testify about Him! So how important is it for us to be faithworthy people! All the ethical teaching of the Gospel is based on this; on the way we are called to live our lives, in order to have the right to be Jesus’ witnesses.

We do not know much about the devils, but one thing is sure: these devils are against God not only by their goals, but also by their methods. If the purpose of God as regards to men is salvation and bringing to eternal life, the purpose of the devil is perdition; furthermore, if God respects and takes into consideration the freedom of man, the devil on his side tries to enslave man, to capture man's conscience, and paralyze his will (it is what we call obsession). When an obsessed man meets Jesus, he is delivered from his obsession and the devils desert him immediately. The current extract makes us know that the devils know Who outcasts them (see (James 2:19), although they do not stop being devils and continue to withstand God's will. May be that is why Jesus prohibits them to testify about Him, because man can fall in a false situation by listening to such testimonies: Man has to believe in order to receive this message…are we going to believe in demons?

Jesus commends us to testify about Him! So how important is it for us to be faithworthy people! All the ethical teaching of the Gospel is based on this; on the way we are called to live our lives, in order to have the right to be Jesus’ witnesses.

The desire to keep Jesus with oneself is very understandable in human terms. At least when one has already accepted Him inwardly and is ready to establish with Him the relationships that can truly change one's whole life. But now He is leaving. He says that He must bring the good news to others too, that He cannot remain. What then are we to do, since we have only just met Him, have barely had time to come to know Him, and so many questions and perplexities remain, so much still needs to be discussed... But it is impossible to hold Him back.

On the other hand, one can always be with Him. For He can truly be known only in His Kingdom. Together with His Kingdom. And in the Kingdom one can always meet Him. There are no distances there. And the more widely it spreads, the easier it will be to meet Him. So it turns out that it will be better for us if He leaves. He leaves in order to remain with us. In order to be closer to us. Or, more precisely, in order that we may be closer to Him.

For we truly are close to Him in the breaking of bread. In the Eucharist. And for this He must be not where we can see Him physically, at that boundary that separates the Kingdom from the world not yet transformed, but in the depths of the Kingdom. On the throne. Then, from there, we will be able to see Him everywhere. If, of course, we ourselves become inhabitants of the Kingdom. But if we do not, then communion with Him will give us nothing, even if it lasts for all eternity.

The problem of insiders and outsiders has always existed, in every society and every culture. Everywhere and always it has turned out that it is better to be an insider than an outsider. But then the Messiah came into the world, and it turned out that everything was not so simple. It turned out that an insider is not necessarily someone we know. Most often it is someone we think we know. And this is understandable: we perceive our own people as part of the familiar and known world. There is no need to look closely at them, and no need to listen carefully to their words. In general, we already know more or less what our own people can tell us.

Outsiders are another matter. An outsider is always someone you do not know. Someone who is not part of the known and familiar world, and here it does not matter where he is from: another continent or the neighboring village. Outsiders are often rejected, but they are always looked at closely. People listen to what they say. Not necessarily in a friendly way, but always attentively. After all, an outsider has to be understood. Or at least explained to oneself. Explanation is often an illusion of understanding. Understanding presupposes the perception of another person as he is. Explanation begins when we perceive this other person as we want to see him, so that he will fit within the bounds of our perception of the world familiar and known to us.

Christ can and must be accepted as He is. And He can and must be understood too - also as He is. But He does not need to be explained. Not to ourselves and not to others. Provided, of course, that we want to communicate with Christ and not with our images of Christ. And here it turns out that it is easier for those to whom He is an outsider. They know nothing about Him. His own people also know nothing about Him, but they think they know everything. Unlike outsiders, who at least are not mistaken about their ignorance. And it is this way not only with Him.

It is this way with God too. With His heavenly Father. It is no accident that Jesus gives examples from ancient Jewish history of God's not being recognized by His own people. A failure to recognize Him that separates people from God. And from the Messiah too. For God or the Messiah to begin to act, a person must want it. And must turn directly to God. Directly to Christ. But not to those images of God or Christ that he has invented for himself. Otherwise even the Kingdom may turn out to be unreal. Imagined. And so may life in it.