NOTES for Luk 8:1-21

The word, the seed sown by the sower, contains within itself the germ of the Kingdom of Heaven. Falling into our hearts, it begins to sprout into an ear of new life. But in this parable the sower does not act alone. Without soil—that is, without us—the seed cannot sprout. As Jesus observes, the more we participate in this process, the more fruit we bear. This produces an apparent injustice: the richer we are, the richer we become. Yet the issue here is probably not spiritual wealth, but how much of our capital—our time, attention, strength, and finally our whole life—we are willing to invest in this shared process of cultivating the Kingdom.

Jesus' parables are something halfway between amusing stories from everyday life and riddles: in them He explains the inexpressible, the Message of His Kingdom, in simple human language. Many of them begin just this way: "The Kingdom of God is like someone who..." - and then He sketches a situation familiar to His listeners, revealing to them the essence of His Gospel.

So, the most famous parable is about how the Word of God, like a seed, must fall into fertile soil in order to bear fruit and not be lost in vain. The evangelist wonderfully completes the parable by giving, immediately after it, the account of Jesus' family, where He speaks to the disciples a new riddle that expresses the same Message in other words: "Whoever hears the Word and does it has entered My family".

The listeners only have to compare these parable-riddles to understand what the Kingdom consists in that their Teacher brought to earth. Through his book, the evangelist offers this task not just to the small circle of disciples, but to all readers of the Gospel.

Unlike Matthew, Luke places the parable of the sower in the context of words that Matthew records as part of other teachings of the Saviour (vv. 16–17; Matt. 5:15, 10:26–27). We can no longer say with certainty whether Luke quotes these words to remind the reader of what Jesus said on another occasion, or whether, after telling his disciples the parable, the Teacher really did remind them of something he had already spoken about. One thing is clear: for the evangelist, as for Jesus himself, the Kingdom is inseparable from witness. The parable of the sower can be read not only as a parable about what prevents a person from accepting and entering the Kingdom, but also as one about what prevents them from bearing witness to Christ and the Kingdom. Everyday cares, if we give them too much attention (v. 14), fear of persecution and harassment, if we give in to it (v. 13), and simple frivolity towards the revelation received from God (v. 12) can all hinder a faithful witness. It is not merely that all these things distract a person from a particular activity by turning their heart, and therefore their attention, to something else.

It is also that a full witness is not merely an account but a visible demonstration of what life with Christ in his Kingdom is like. Everything listed in the parable of the sower destroys the spiritual wholeness that makes this demonstration possible. It is no accident that commentators interpreting verses 16–17 still disagree about what Jesus means by the secrets that will sooner or later be revealed. Some are certain he means carefully concealed evil deeds or weaknesses that people do not usually speak of, and feel uncomfortable speaking of aloud. Others maintain that he was speaking of the Kingdom, which, though hidden for a time, will sooner or later be revealed in all its fullness and become visible to everyone.

Verse 18, meanwhile, may help settle the dispute: it calls those listening to a particular kind of spiritual attentiveness. The Gospels often mention situations in which people listen but do not hear. This does not mean that they simply let the words pass them by: Jewish culture is a culture of dialogue, not only dialogue between people but also between a person and God. It concerns what sometimes prevents someone from hearing the person speaking to them, the very thing described in the parable of the sower. The listener does not keep track of what is happening, because their attention is focused neither on the speaker nor on the words, but on something else. Without spiritual wholeness, however, a person may not even notice this, having neither the habit nor the skill of observing where their attention is directed.

Alas, such an unreflective state is normal for fallen humanity. But this kind of spiritual slackness is unsuited to the Kingdom, for what matters most in the Kingdom is relationships, and here attention, and awareness of where it is directed, become essential. Without this spiritual collectedness, a person will not gain the Kingdom they hope to receive. This is not an examination for its own sake: a spiritually slack person simply lacks the organ needed for life in the Kingdom. Or they have it, but it is so weak that even after entering the Kingdom they cannot remain there: they lack the spiritual strength to keep God and their neighbours in the focus of their attention, and without them there is no Kingdom. Then contact with the Kingdom becomes a moment of truth: what was previously hidden, perhaps even from the seeker—for fallen human beings are prone to deceive themselves about themselves—becomes evident and known to all. Then it becomes clear whether a person is ready to enter the Kingdom.

Among the Savior's parables about the Kingdom, the parable of the sower, the parable of the word that God sows in the human heart, occupies a special place. The Kingdom and the word: how are they connected? How is the word entering the human heart connected with the Word? The Word with a capital letter is incarnate in Christ. But what about the word of God with a lowercase letter? How does it enter a person's heart? What is this word like? The word by which God creates the world. The word that the prophets hear. The word that, as the hymn writer says, does not return to God unfulfilled. It turns out to be given to everyone. It is sown like seed in a field, with a generous hand. Only it is far from always received as seed is received by well-prepared soil.

This is understandable: the word is not simply a revelation given once. It is the instrument of God's action, which God uses in order to change a person. To prepare him for the fullness of communion with God. For life in the Kingdom. And a person does not always want this. For all sorts of reasons. Sometimes simply because he has no time. If God's word is not the main thing for a person, if God for him is somewhere beside the road along which the person is walking, the word of God will never become in his heart the instrument of God's action. But even if it does become that, this is still not everything.

After all, spiritual life is not for a day, not for a month, not for a year. It is forever. And if a person has time for "spirituality" today but not tomorrow, then his "spirituality" really does belong in quotation marks. And, of course, there is steadfastness during trials. A person who desires a righteous life, life with God, has always been an enemy of the evil in which the fallen world lies. And a Christian is doubly its enemy: he not only does not accept this evil himself, he also brings into the world the Kingdom that destroys evil without mercy, leaving it no place in creation.

It is not surprising that if this world generally hates the righteous, it hates Christian righteous people twice as much. And yet persecutions themselves are not as frightening as the everyday, organic rejection of spiritual life that marks the fallen world. Persecutions spiritually mobilize; their absence relaxes. And only after overcoming both can one begin a normal spiritual life. With the word in the heart, reflecting that very Word that became incarnate in Christ, and which, if one allows it to change one's heart, will make it capable of containing the life of the Kingdom in all the fullness available to a human being.

The Savior's earthly ministry involved journeys that, though not long (Palestine is not large), were constant. One might of course say that this was a fairly ordinary way of life for a prophet, as many people believed Jesus to be. Yet above all, this choice was naturally dictated by the need to preach the Kingdom that He had brought into the world.

His followers, however, seem to have been divided into two groups. Some preached and traveled with Him, while others—primarily women—remained at home and served Jesus, as the Evangelist says, out of their possessions. This division was of course caused above all by the need to have, if not a home (from the moment Jesus began preaching He no longer had an earthly home, and would not have one to the very end of His earthly ministry), then at least a place where He could stay for a while.

But this was probably not the only reason. Even then, during His ministry, there had to appear in the world the space of the Kingdom that church assemblies would later become. Of course, before Pentecost one could not yet speak of the Church in the full sense of the word. Yet the homes in which the Savior was awaited and where He held His gatherings became its prefiguration.

The Kingdom was, of course, wherever Jesus set foot. Yet certain homes where He could be encountered gave the Kingdom definite earthly outlines. This was important—not for the Savior Himself, naturally, but for those whom He wished to save. The homes in which Eucharistic assemblies took place later became similarly important for the Church. For they became a prefiguration of the house about which Jesus Himself said at the Last Supper that it has many rooms—so many that there is enough room for everyone.

Today's reading ends with the words "and many others, who provided for Him out of their means." Thus before us passes a line of people unknown to anyone except God, people who brought to His feet everything they had, gave Him their whole life, and demanded nothing in return. Because the only and greatest reward for them was the possibility of being near Jesus.

Again and again the Gospel tells us that there is room for everyone in the Church, that everyone can follow Christ "preaching and proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom of God!" Everyone, regardless of one's past. Even after being Christians for a long time, we often think that the past cannot be changed. It is not so hard to believe that God holds our present and our future in His hands. We know that He knows everything about our past. But it is very hard to believe that He can change the past too: He can so change our attitude toward a painful past that it ceases to affect our life; He can heal wounds received by us in deep childhood, wounds we may not even remember, though they distort our life, our perception of reality, our understanding of ourselves, and our relationships with other people.

We see what kind of people follow Christ through the cities and villages. They are different; they are wounded, uneducated, formerly demon-possessed, sick, sinful women and sinners, and all of them can carry the Good, Joyful News, the news that the Kingdom of God is coming to earth, the news that for God time does not exist and He is able to change everything if we allow Him to enter our heart. But we can serve God not only by preaching. Others have a quieter, more silent ministry. This is not necessarily solitary reclusive prayer in a cell, or the work of a doctor or nurse. Service to God can also be something we very rarely perceive this way: "many others ... served Him with their possessions." That is, they helped materially. They fed, gave drink, clothed, and gave a place to spend the night. They may have performed no great deeds and never preached. They simply shared generously what they had.

Yes, of course, in the Gospel Christ says that "it is hard for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven." But the rich man in this sense is not the one who simply has much; it is the one who does not understand that his possessions were given to him by God, that they do not belong to him. Only by beginning to give can he enter the Kingdom. By beginning to give, he will become rich in another way. After all, one can give only what is one's own; one cannot give what belongs to another, and by deciding to tear something away from oneself, one acquires the Kingdom.

We are called to serve God with the gifts He Himself has given us: for one person this is the gift of speech; for another, the gift of understanding other people; for another, the gift of helping with one's possessions, which God also gives.

In today's passage we see Christ surrounded by women. He restored to women their human dignity, something to which Luke's Gospel bears particularly eloquent witness. We must not forget this. One of the important sociocultural consequences of the spread of Christianity is precisely this: women gained spiritual independence from men. The process, however, followed a rather difficult path. In the earliest Christian communities, when all the Events were still relatively recent, women played a very important role. They carried out works of mercy and social service; they became martyrs and, later, saints. There were many women among the first saints. By the late Middle Ages, however—the end of the fourteenth and beginning of the fifteenth century—when difficult times came upon the Church and so much was happening, as we now understand, contrary to the spirit of the Gospel's preaching, something also went wrong in this respect. Woman came to be seen as a vessel of sin, and the “witch hunt” began. Trials of women were a most evident revival of the spirit of paganism, always bound up with a certain opposition and attraction between the sexes. In our own time, under the influence of secular culture, the situation is again moving out of balance, now in the opposite direction. We must simply always remember the ideal of harmony that Christ gave us.

Many ancient teachers and philosophers gathered a school of followers around them, and many of them were followed by disciples who hung on their every word, yet no preacher of antiquity was followed by so many women. In this passage the evangelist lists in detail the names of these women, who were as close to the Lord as the twelve apostles. Luke makes a special point of noting that they had been healed or cleansed of evil spirits, thus drawing our attention to the fact that through them Jesus visibly manifested His divine power. While He calls the apostles chiefly by His word, He wins the future myrrh-bearing women through miracles. Mary Magdalene came to know Christ when she realized that the seven demons tormenting her had been cast out, not when she heard the call to follow Jesus. Perhaps this reveals a gender difference in the perception of God... To most disciples the Savior points out an entirely new path in life, whereas in the women He brings about a qualitative change. But these are only ways in which the Lord draws hearts to Himself, ways that are not of great importance. One thing remains paramount—the Kingdom of God, regardless of how your attention was drawn to it.

This parable gives a remarkable account of the history of Christian preaching over the past twenty centuries. When Christians are reproached for unworthy conduct, many of the examples cited—not all of them, but that is not the subject now—can and even should be humbly accepted and acknowledged: yes, in some cases the seed fell on rock, and in others it was choked by weeds. That is why in many places no good harvest is visible, even though the seed was of the highest quality. Yet it is far more important to measure ourselves against this parable: what condition is my own soil in? Have I grown hard? Have I stopped pulling up my weeds?

If we answer these and similar questions honestly, we may encounter a trick of the evil one: “You are what you are and will not become better, so do not even try to receive the seed and bear fruit.” But this is not true, and we must not pronounce upon ourselves a final diagnosis dictated by the enemy, who is eager to snatch away the seed that has been sown. The soul of each one of us is capable of changing and at different times can be different kinds of soil. With God's help, stony ground can become fertile black earth.

Why does Christ set the apostles apart so sharply from "the others," to whom it is given to know only in parables? These words often surprise us deeply. After all, we read this interpretation, given only to the apostles, but are we really better than those who heard only the parable? No, we are not better. But Scripture was given to the Church. The "mysteries of the Kingdom of God" can be known only by those who are already together, who follow Christ not alone, who are ready to share life, joys, and sorrows with the neighbors given to them by God. The 12 apostles were not sinless, but they were gathered together around Christ, just as we are gathered in the Church, the Body of Christ. And together we can receive the Word; in the Church the Holy Spirit grants us the ability to hear and understand the Word of God.

And God has also given us freedom. This may be why He spoke in parables to those who had not yet decided, as the apostles had, to follow Him. The interpretation of the parable of the Sower is so simple and clear that the choice becomes painfully sharp; not everyone can bring himself to make it. The interpretation of this parable is so categorical that it can frighten an "outsider." In fact, it frightens us too, because we cannot fail to see how unlike fertile soil we are. But God protects our freedom, and therefore, by speaking in parables, He leaves us the freedom to choose: "He who has ears to hear, let him hear!" We can decide to hear, ask God for "hearing ears," and then we will hear, understand, and a very frightening and very simple choice will stand before us: with God, or without God.

The parable of the sower is one of the few Gospel parables accompanied by comments from the Saviour Himself. Jesus tells a story in images to a large audience, but later, alone with His disciples, He explains it, because only to them ‘has it been given to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of God’. Reading these lines, we cannot help wondering why some are more prepared, and others less prepared, to receive these mysteries; why some, ‘seeing, do not see’, while for others everything is transparent and clear. The parable itself answers this question. Each seed falls on a particular kind of soil, where it encounters the corresponding obstacles that cause it to perish. But these obstacles could have been overcome; otherwise the Sower would not have sown in such places. Sometimes it seems to us that, ‘hearing, we do not hear’, that our heart has grown dull and hard as stone, that the divine seeds will never sprout in it. Only faith that the Lord is merciful, and that His love overcomes every weakness of ours, enables us to listen to His Word again and again. For it makes no difference to His love whether it transforms rocky ground, a road, or a field full of weeds. God has revealed Himself to some from infancy; others come to Him before they die. But does this matter so much on the scale of the eternity that will open up in His Kingdom...

Like many other parables of the Savior, the parable of the sower is a parable about the Kingdom and about spiritual life. Or, more precisely, it is a parable about what hinders a person on the way to the Kingdom. Of course, if the field into which the sower goes is understood as the whole world (and in that case the sower should, of course, be understood as the Savior Himself), then the parable could also be interpreted as a parable about different people, each of whom has his own problems in spiritual life.

And yet, on closer examination, it is hard not to notice that the parable speaks of the most typical problems, and it often turns out that all of them appear in the spiritual life of one and the same person at different stages. Of course, if a person cannot resolve the next problem that has arisen before him, he will have to forget about any further spiritual path. If he does succeed, a new stage will begin in his spiritual life. But in order to speak at all about any kind of spiritual life, a person must learn to listen to and hear God and God's witnesses.

To hear not superficially, not the way we usually listen today out of the corner of our ear to the sounds and words that reach us on the street, but to listen by entering into what is heard, allowing it to penetrate the heart and touch that deep "I" which is the spiritual center of our personality. But hearing is not everything. Resolve is needed in order to fulfill what has been heard. The decision accepted, the choice made, inevitably changes the whole life of the one who has made that choice; and if the choice is made in favor of Christ and the Kingdom, the opposition of the world is inevitable.

Of course, it does not always take the form of open persecution, but opposition in one degree or another and in one form or another takes place in every case. This is where spiritual wholeness is important, enabling a person to remain firm in regard to the choice he has made. But there is something in the world more dangerous for spiritual life than persecution: everyday bustle. Indeed, any external pressure, and all the more persecution, under normal circumstances contributes to the inner psychological mobilization of those being persecuted, and psychological mobilization almost always contributes to a more intense spiritual life as well.

Everyday worldly bustle, however, does not contribute to any psychological mobilization; on the contrary, it only relaxes a person psychologically. And preserving the necessary intensity of spiritual life in such a situation is more difficult than during trials; for this, special attention must be paid to the problem. But if the seeker of the Kingdom overcomes this obstacle as well, he will find himself at the threshold he was seeking. Of course, coming to the threshold of the Kingdom is not yet the end of the road; ahead of the seeker lies the life of the Kingdom and the path of a witness. But that is already a spiritually different, new life.

The parable of the sower is one of Christ's best-known parables. All three authors of the Synoptic Gospels recount it, so it recurs in the cycle of liturgical readings. As in every parable, the Lord uses images here to reveal something essential about God and humanity to His disciples. Clearly, the sower himself is the image of God in this parable, and the seed is God's word, as Christ Himself explains to the disciples. He does not dwell on this at length, but it is important for us to consider every aspect of His comparison of Himself to a sower sowing the word. The sower has no guarantee that his labor will bear the desired fruit. He seems to surrender the seed to the earth's power so that it may have the opportunity to bear fruit. The Lord speaks of this in John's Gospel too: unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. This is a humble and tragic image, a kind of verbal icon of the crucified Lamb of God.

Explaining this parable to the disciples, the Lord says that the fruit we bear is ultimately determined by our own qualities as the poor or fertile soil into which God's word falls. We ourselves, not God, are responsible for ensuring that our hearts are not stone and that the thorns do not overgrow... From the Sower's perspective, the outcome of His labor on the Cross depends on us. This is the highest measure of responsibility, at once beyond our strength and incredibly ennobling. The fruit the Almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth, receives depends on us! For centuries, people have feared this responsibility, and still do. One of the most widespread ideas in religious systems from antiquity to the present is predestination. People try to shift responsibility for the fruit onto the Sower Himself, thinking that some are granted the ability to be good soil while others are not. Only God speaks the truth that defines both the measure of human responsibility and the measure of human dignity in the world.

Sowing is one of the most important images not only in the New Testament but in the Bible as a whole. Indeed, its meanings are so abundant that we cannot even glance over them all now. From Genesis to Revelation, we see in sowing a foreshadowing of God's cooperation with humanity, of His love for humanity, and of human beings' conscious and responsible labour, not only for food but also to ‘sow seed’ (Gen 1:11), which God saw as ‘good’ even before humanity was created (Gen 1:12). And here we have mentioned only a small part of sowing's meanings in the Bible. But let us now turn to the meaning that seems closest to today's Gospel passage, closest to the words Jesus speaks to us today. It is the meaning given to sowing by the prophets who prepared for Christ's coming. ‘Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of human beings and the seed of livestock’ (Jer 31:27). Another prophet, Hosea, says, ‘I will sow her for Myself in the land, and I will have mercy on Unpitied, and I will say to Not-My-People, “You are My people”, and they will say, “You are my God!”’ (Hos 2:23). Here the Lord Himself appears as the Sower, so that ‘holy seed’ may grow from the root of the felled ‘tree of Jesse’ (Isa 6:13). But has this seed grown? And what kind of seed is it? Let us listen to another prophet, Zechariah: ‘…and say to him: thus says the Lord of hosts: behold the Man whose name is the BRANCH; He will grow from His own root and build the Lord's temple. He will build the Lord's temple and receive glory, and sit and rule upon His throne; He will also be a priest upon His throne, and a counsel of peace will be between the two’ (Zec 6:12–13). In other words, the Branch is the Messiah. A qualification is needed here, however. We have not found the origins of the word ‘Branch’ in either the Vulgate or the Septuagint, where the word is ‘Rising’ or ‘East’—Oriens and Ἀνατολή. Yet translations into modern European languages do have words meaning a shoot or a branch, including the English ‘branch’. How this happened is another question; it is already a fact of our spiritual history that this ‘holy seed’ is associated with Jesus and with what will grow from This root. That is why Zechariah's words are so important to us and so often recalled. The history of God's Word is so complex, so difficult to make sense of… But let us trust not our head, but our heart.

"He answered them, My mother and My brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it." Today we read the Lord's words, which speak of the love between mother and child as something that leads beyond earthly feelings and becomes for us a kind of bridge to the knowledge of God's love. The parallels are close, even to the point that these words, like the words from the book of Sirach, cut and grate on the ear if they are read not prayerfully, but in the ordinary way.

But in order to try to understand, let us turn to the book of Psalms. "Have I not calmed and quieted my soul, like a child weaned from its mother? my soul is within me like a weaned child" (Ps 130:2). A great deal of what the Lord says is a direct answer to the questioning of the book of Psalms. This is understandable, for that book is a kind of sum of all prayerful sighing, of everything we want to say to God, while Christ is the center of what the Lord wants to say to us.

So let us look closely at this image of a child weaned from its mother's breast. This is how a person feels in the world: every person seeking the meaning of his life and the lives of those he loves, seeking a love that is not afraid of decay, seeking the sources of that inexpressible feeling of holiness that he senses in his chest. It is a brilliant image... The Lord gave birth to the human being into the world, nourished him, and released him from Himself, while the human being so longs to press his little nose to His breast again. Without Him it is so frightening, sad, lonely, cold, and hungry. These are human feelings.

But then Christ says... My mother and My brothers are those who hear the word of God... The reunion of mother and child, and of sisters and brothers with one another, has taken place; harmony has been restored with His coming into this world. Only it is strange: everything is reversed, and the images of mother and child appear to change places. Is this accidental? Was it just said because the occasion presented itself, because His mother came and His brothers came?

But nothing is accidental. Nothing is meaningless. As the great physicist Einstein said, "The Lord God does not play dice." Therefore in everything, in everything, we can look for meaning. So why did the images change places compared with the book of Psalms? Perhaps because pure love is a relationship between two who are fundamentally equal, or more precisely, commensurable. We cannot love an ant; it is too small. But we can love a kitten. Yet God is far more perfect than we are than we are more perfect than an ant; we are far less commensurable. And when this logic is broken through, one can no longer simply take the relationship of mother and child and place it directly on the relationship of God and His child. It is only a bridge. One can cross it in order to begin to know the love of God. And that means that the change of order alters nothing. The main thing is that the logic of incommensurability has been broken through; the main thing is that wholeness has been restored.

But there is also a simpler meaning. Perhaps Jesus is telling us that we are no longer little, that we are no longer infants; God has weaned us from His breast by bringing us into this world. Yet no longer, for all His love for us, can He put us to the breast again. Five-year-old children are not put to the breast.

Speaking of the Kingdom and of bearing witness, Jesus gives the example of a lamp that serves no purpose if it is hidden and made invisible. Of course, there is also a polemic here, not obvious to everyone, against the advocates of a holy war against the Romans. They usually acted in secret, seeking to prepare the uprising as thoroughly as possible so that, on the appointed day, they could emerge into the light as triumphant victors.

The Kingdom Jesus speaks of does not need some secret, clandestine organization to prepare its coming: it needs witnesses, not conspirators. Yet this is probably not the whole point. The point is also that once the Kingdom has become part of your life, it cannot be hidden from those around you. Of course, it does not begin publicly at all, for merely hearing testimony as we hear noise reaching us in the street is not enough.

It is no accident that Jesus says: take care how you listen. What is heard must be received by the heart; it must begin a spiritual process involving not only reflection on what has been heard, but also the choice the hearer must make after considering everything said, and the decisions that will have to be taken in accordance with that choice.

All this takes place “in secret,” since it concerns a person's inner life. But once the choice has been made, the decisions taken, and life changed accordingly, witness in one form or another inevitably becomes part of the convert's new life. Then the hidden truly becomes manifest: it is impossible to bear witness only within oneself. Testimony, in turn, once heard, gives rise to new witnesses. Thus the Kingdom brought by the Savior grows in the world.

Jesus is often called Teacher, and for us this is true as well. But each of us also has to take on that role from time to time, so it is worth learning from the Teacher. These three verses from the Gospel of Luke let us glimpse Jesus' teaching method.

After telling an extended parable, the parable of the sower, and giving its explanation for the disciples, He continues in the traditional manner of Jewish teachers, aphoristically. The classic example of this method is the book of Proverbs, which is composed almost entirely of aphorisms. An aphorism in itself is already an image, acting on the listeners' imagination and provoking them to reflection. The parallel passage in the Gospel of Mark, perhaps the earliest of the Gospels, Mark 4:21, shows more clearly the lack of connection among these sayings of Jesus, while the Gospel of Matthew even places them in different chapters.

Luke is writing for Hellenized readers who were not used to this style, and he inserts logical connectors such as "for" and "therefore," so that these sayings acquire the quality of a unified text that lets us trace the logic of the development of Jesus' preaching. The first image, the lamp, says that the new message heard by the disciples is not for "internal use," but for passing on to others. The second saying suggests the uselessness of playing hide-and-seek: everything comes out into the open. And then comes the unexpected "take care how you hear," calling for special attentiveness, and the paradox Jesus states many times about cooperation and inaction.

All this, gathered together, gives rise in the listeners to a new idea of the way of life before them: serious, interested, active, and fearless interaction with other people.

We can have quite varied relationships with the Word of God, but in today's Gospel reading the Lord singles out only two main points. First, there is attention, the readiness to listen to the Word. God speaks quietly, and in order to hear Him, one needs outward and inward silence and the desire to hear Him. And second, Christ speaks about putting the Word into practice. "Take care how you hear," and in explaining this, the Lord calls the one who hears and acts on it the one who "has." Such a person understands God's Word, and it fills him with life; it itself becomes his life. But the one who does not hear, and especially does not put the Word into practice, that is, listens in vain, loses even the very ability to hear.

In essence, the only One who truly hears the Heavenly Father and fulfills His will is the Lord Jesus Himself. Therefore those people who follow Him on the path of hearing and fulfilling the Word of God become close to Him; they become His family. And this kinship of ours with the Lord Jesus is no less strong than the bonds of blood kinship that connect people. That is why the Lord says that those who hear and fulfill the Word are honored with the name of His brothers and His Mother. And for all of us it is exceptionally important that Jesus' family, His Church, is gathered by Him not according to signs of bodily kinship, but according to obedience to the Father. That is why His Mother became the Virgin of Nazareth, who said: "Behold, the handmaid of the Lord." This is precisely how all of us enter His Church, though we are so far from His people.

More precisely, "even what he thinks he has." Jesus by no means has in mind something like the saying "money goes to money." He is speaking of relations with God to which we are not accustomed: relations of trust and respect (in the end, of love). God offers His relationship to everyone, but He forces it on no one. A person who freely accepts this gift enters an unending process of developing this relationship, whose goal is the deification of the person, the fullness of that person's entry into the life of God. But a person who thinks that everything is fine with him, that the relationship with God he thinks he has is enough for him, by that very fact closes himself off from God and does not accept from Him what God gives; and that means he breaks even the weak threads that had still kept him afloat in this life. "Take care, then, how you hear"; tune your "receivers" to the wavelength of God's grace.

The situation described by the evangelist Luke in this passage can cause surprise and even indignation. Jesus' relatives come to Him, and they do not interrupt His conversation but wait patiently outside, yet He does not go out to see them. A natural question arises: is it possible to treat one's loved ones this way, and is this Christian?

But if we read these lines attentively, we will understand that the Lord is addressing not His mother and brothers, but those who surround Him; it is precisely for them that He says this. In contrast to the Old Testament understanding of kinship, which presupposed blood ties, Christ proceeds from an entirely new understanding of relationships. It turns out that the Lord becomes neighbor to the one who hears His Word. Every person receives the privilege of being the Lord's brother or sister. And no national, geographical, or temporal boundaries can limit these relationships.

For many people these words are a stumbling block; it seems to them that Jesus is cruel here toward relatives. But Jesus does not reject kinship according to the flesh; He exalts kinship according to the spirit. Just as bodily kinship is determined by a certain unity, genetic unity, with a parent, so spiritual kinship has as its source the one Father. But if the first was never chosen by us, the second is our free agreement with the Father's will. That is why there is no spiritual feat in bodily kinship, while there is a spiritual feat in spiritual kinship, and Jesus offers us such a feat.