NOTES for Mar 1:9-15

The Saviour's earthly ministry begins with the descent of God's Spirit, followed by the trial in the wilderness (described in greater detail by the other evangelists) and the ministry itself, the testimony to the Kingdom (Mark describes all this briefly and concisely). What, then, do we have before us: a unique feature of Jesus' ministry as Messiah, or a certain universal spiritual algorithm (insofar as one can speak of algorithms in spiritual life at all)? Or perhaps both?

Of course, Christ's path is unique. Yet, on the other hand, Jesus was not born as a human being in order to have nothing in common with us, including in matters of spiritual life. We will probably not face trials like those that awaited Him in the wilderness, although something similar may quite possibly await us as well: the devil is not as inventive as he is sometimes thought to be. We will in any case have to bear witness to the Kingdom, provided that we are Christians not merely in name. And the descent of God's Spirit will also certainly become part of our spiritual life, unless, of course, we remain forever, in the spiritual sense, children who have taken the first step towards the Kingdom and stopped as soon as they crossed the threshold.

But how all this will happen remains an open question. Similar or identical spiritual processes sometimes take very different forms under different external conditions. They take their own form for each person, and there is no point in imitating someone else's spiritual life: it is useless in any case and almost always brings only harm.

Quite apart from the fact that, in the Messiah's case, such efforts look simply ridiculous as well. Jesus did not come into our world so that we would imitate His life, nor to force each of us to travel the same path that He travelled (in the end, none of us is capable of this, for one would have to be free from sin). Jesus came into the world to give us the Kingdom, to give it to everyone who wishes to enter it, and also to help us get there.

Of course, the way into the Kingdom is no less difficult than the way of righteousness in pre-Christian times, and it is just as impossible to travel it without God's help as it was to travel the way of righteousness without His help. But on the way into the Kingdom there is an obstacle that is in principle insurmountable for a human being: the sinfulness of fallen human nature. Even if a person is somehow able, with God's help, to walk the way of righteousness, any one of us can only be carried into the Kingdom in His arms. And Jesus' entire earthly path was necessary precisely so that He could later carry each of us into the Kingdom in His arms.

This, of course, by no means implies that there will be no trials in our lives or that we will not need the help of God's Spirit. It is impossible to travel the whole way in the Messiah's arms, and life in the Kingdom also requires the ability to walk. But He will help us overcome what is insurmountable for us. Otherwise we would have to forget about the Kingdom forever.

The Savior's earthly ministry begins with His baptism and the descent of the Holy Spirit upon Him, followed by trials in the wilderness. At first glance this may seem somewhat strange, for Jesus was born into the world already bearing within Himself all the fullness of God. What could He receive when God's breath descended upon Him? What did He lack? And what was the meaning of the trials He then underwent in the wilderness?

Had He needed simply to walk the earth, even revealing to the world the entire fullness of the divine and the human, and then leave this world as everyone who had lived here before Him had left it, perhaps none of this would have happened to Him. But He is the Messiah, and He had to reveal the Kingdom to the world in all its fullness. It was not enough for Him simply to be born the God-man. That was a necessary condition of the ministry entrusted to Him, but the ministry itself consisted in something else: His uniqueness had to cease being something that belonged to Him alone and had to be opened to the world. He was not merely to reveal Himself as King, but also to open the way into His Kingdom to everyone who sought it. Together with Him, something greater than Himself had to enter the world—greater not in fullness but in scope.

And this greater reality, His Kingdom, had to be opened to the world in His unity with the Father. The Holy Spirit—the fullness of the Father's breath—made this revelation of the Kingdom to the world possible. The trials in the wilderness that He underwent immediately after the descent of the Holy Spirit upon Him became a test not simply of Him as a man, or even as the God-man, but as the King He was to become over that Kingdom.

It is no accident that all these trials were connected in one way or another with the single central question: what kind of King will You be? How will You rule: according to the laws of the fallen world, making use of human weaknesses and vices, or as the King of God's Kingdom? The right choice meant the establishment of the Kingdom; the wrong one meant collapse at the very beginning of His ministry. And this was Jesus' completely free choice, free in a human way—the choice with which His ministry as Messiah began.

The Lord was tempted in the wilderness for forty days in order to be entirely like us. Thus, when we begin to complain that the Lord cannot understand this because He has never gone through it, He can answer us: “No, I am here now, with you, in the trial in which you now find yourself. If you are undergoing temptation, know that I went through it and overcame it; you were created in My image and likeness, I created you, I love you, I died for you on the Cross and rose again, and therefore you too can emerge victorious from temptation. I showed you an example; I overcame temptations, and I overcame death.” The Kingdom of God is very near; it is within us to the extent that we make room for it in our heart. Fasting is a time when we can clear space within ourselves, carry out a thorough cleaning, and take out the trash; then much more room will remain for God. Then God will come, proclaim the Good News of Salvation to us, and become King in our heart, for a kingdom is what belongs to the King, His own personal domain.

One of the main themes we encounter in the Gospel of Mark is that of calling and our response to it. The point here is not spontaneity: these four were apparently already acquainted with Jesus (this is one way to understand Jn 1:35-51). After all, we ourselves are not reading these lines for the first time. What is striking here is something else: how briefly the evangelist speaks of it. Indeed, a calling, a conversion, is only the very beginning of the path. Much more will be said about the words and deeds of Jesus, the disciples' hesitations and denial, and the joy of the Resurrection.

Yet, on the other hand, without this episode there would have been no Gospel at all. What would have happened if no one had followed Jesus?

In our own time, Christ's work in this world continues. And this time, the disciples without whom nothing would happen are you and I. That is why it is so important for us today to realise once again that the Lord has called us to follow Him, and to find within ourselves the courage to climb out of the boat and go after Him.

Mark describes the calling of the apostles sparingly, concisely, in a few words. He called - they went. Other evangelists mention certain details in some cases, give dialogues that unfolded between Jesus and His future disciples. Dialogues, of course, did take place, because to call means to make oneself heard and answered, and here dialogue is impossible to avoid; here words must certainly be spoken. For Mark, however, they are not important. He sees the main thing: that response to the Savior's call which in the end and in essence could be reduced to one thing alone, to the fact that the one called leaves everything and follows the One who called. This is the main thing, and everything else is only the embodiment, the expression of the main thing, an embodiment necessary insofar as we live not only in eternity, but also in time.

The main thing lies in the relationships that bind the disciples to Jesus, just as they bind us, if of course we are Christians not only in name. In essence, these relationships are completely impossible to express, just as it is impossible, for example, to express the experience of one's own existence, what is sometimes called pure self-consciousness. Just as pure self-consciousness can be experienced but is completely impossible to express in words, so it is impossible to express a true relationship in words; it is no accident that poets of all times and peoples have maintained that for true, deep love, for example, it is completely impossible to find adequate words that would express it.

This, however, does not mean that love or another deep and authentic experience is in principle inexpressible. They are expressed and embodied perfectly well, but not at the level of abstract description; rather, in the context of those same relationships, at the level of interaction between people who love one another. So too true relationships of disciple and teacher are indescribable, but fully expressible in the context of the interaction that becomes for them a kind of outer covering, just as shared life in marriage for spouses who love one another becomes the outer covering of their love.

In this case, however, the evangelist pays very little attention to the covering; he is interested in the essence of the matter. He called - they went. Nothing more can be told here; the rest is hidden inside this "went." The story becomes a hint, a hint at what cannot be expressed in words but what everyone can experience as the reality of his own life when a meeting with Christ takes place in it. The very meeting without which there is no Christianity.

So we begin reading the Gospel according to Mark. Following the evangelist, we will remember and live through the Gospel events we know so well, relate them to our own life experience, and try to change ourselves so that we may become at least a little more like "the pioneer and perfecter of faith, Jesus" (Heb 12:2). How many times have we read this Gospel? Where should we begin this time? Mark begins his account with words about John and the baptism of Jesus. In order to receive the Good News of Jesus, the people had to repent, to recognize that they did not correspond to the coming Kingdom of God. And how are we to apply to ourselves the words of the prophecy: "Prepare the way of the Lord, make His paths straight"? It is here, at the very beginning of the road, that we face the need to reassess and reconsider our whole life so that we may be able to follow Mark into the later stories, in each of which we can meet the Lord Jesus.

We are accustomed to the concept of holiness. People are very fond of praying to saints, and then, with excessive zeal, the saints turn into a kind of pantheon of lesser gods. But faith cannot tolerate anything done merely from habit. Such a crystallised image of holiness must be shattered mercilessly. We might recall that we are all called to be holy at the moment when we receive Communion, for it is said, “The Holy Things are for the holy.” Or we might recall the image of John the Baptist: he is the first among the saints, the greatest among those born of women (Mt 11:11), the limit of human holiness; holiness abides in him in the fullest measure—and yet “the least in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than he” (Mt 11:11).

Why does the Lord say this? Precisely to warn us against creating pantheons. John's image helps overcome the tendency described above to deify what is not divine precisely because prayers to him are far less widespread than, for example, prayers to the Mother of God.

And if we think about it, who are the two special people who seem to rise above the human race? The Mother of God and John the Forerunner. This is also expressed by the Deesis row of the iconostasis in every Orthodox church. But we are not accustomed to praying to the Baptist. Perhaps one day, with God's help, we should begin and ask him to teach us not to make an idol for ourselves (Ex 20:4)?