NOTES for Luk 12:35-59

The coming of the Kingdom of God is a mystery perhaps no less profound than the mystery of the Kingdom itself. The Lord therefore calls the disciples to keep watch, lest they miss or sleep through the Kingdom's coming into their lives. This probably does not refer merely to constant readiness for death or for Christ's Second Coming.

Christ also enters a person's life when that person least expects it: at any moment we may find ourselves facing a vitally important choice or a decisive encounter. Woe to the person who fails to notice Christ at the moment when he is called to take part in bringing about God's Kingdom. It is not that God will take offence and punish him, but that, by passing this Kingdom by, he will miss the most important event and the most important encounter of his life. Therefore, as the final Encounter approaches, the Lord calls people not to miss His presence even now, here on the way towards the triumph of God's Kingdom.

Today's reading touches on another theme, one very important for understanding what life in the Kingdom is. But the meaning of what Jesus says becomes clear only in the context of the situation of that transitional era which began with the coming of the Savior and in which we live. It could be called the era of the advancing Kingdom, and it will be completed by Jesus' return. But since we do not know the exact timing of this return, readiness is required always, every day and every hour.

In fact, this is the meaning of the parables Jesus tells (vv. 36-48). When the Gospel speaks about the nearness of the Kingdom, what is meant is not the date of Christ's second coming, but the fact that the Kingdom has already entered the world, that its presence for us today is no longer future but present; and if we notice nothing of the sort, it is only because we do not want to notice. Of course, sometimes for those to whom God entrusts ministries connected with the Kingdom, the apparent remoteness of the time when the process will be completed has a relaxing effect, like the effect produced on the unrestrained servant in the parable by the thought that the master was far away (v. 45).

It is not surprising that those who knew everything and, despite everything, allowed themselves to relax are called to a more serious account than those who knew less (vv. 47-48). What is interesting is something else. In the world there are those who know more and those who know less, but, as one can see, there are none who know nothing. It is no accident that Jesus compares the signs of the advancing Kingdom to the signs by which people in those days recognized a coming change in the weather: they were just as obvious and just as understandable to everyone, so that it was simply impossible not to notice them at all and understand nothing (vv. 54-57).

That is why the coming of the Kingdom divides people, and the division, as one can see, does not run along any national, class, or religious border, but across all borders, separating those who accept the Kingdom from those who reject it, people sometimes living not only in one country and one city, but even in one house (vv. 51-53). And this happens not because God needs divisions, but because the Kingdom is an absolute reality; it is impossible to enter it partly or halfway, and even entering it "almost completely" will not work: one enters the Kingdom either to the end and without looking back, or one does not enter at all. That is why in the Church, according to the word of the Apostle Paul, there can be "neither Greek nor Jew": if the Church remains the Kingdom and does not turn into a religious organization, one among many, then only one division remains relevant for it: between those who accept the Kingdom and those who reject it. All other divisions are conditional and relative; this one is absolute, as absolute as the division between eternal life and eternal death can be.

The theme of suddenness, of the unexpected, often appears in the Saviour's parables about the Kingdom. As with the master of the house who appears when his servants are not expecting his return at all. Such a sudden visit can serve as a kind of emergency drill: since one never knows exactly what to expect, one has to remain constantly ready for anything.

This is, of course, an important quality for spiritual life, and for life in general. But it is not only a matter of constant readiness. It is also a matter of the inward state that such readiness presupposes. Being ready for everything at all times is impossible in principle—at least in the sense in which we speak of readiness in relation to life in this world. In our world, readiness usually means responses planned in advance for particular situations that have likewise been anticipated.

These responses are set out in the relevant instructions, which those responsible for making decisions are required to follow. But anticipating every possible situation is an impossible task. This is not even because there are infinitely many of them, but because, at any given moment, we are capable in principle of forecasting only certain kinds of situation, related to what we know at that moment. In other words, at any given moment a situation can, in principle, arise that is absolutely unpredictable.

Absolutely unpredictable means impossible to predict not because of a lack of information or forecasting tools, but in principle—even if we had all the information existing in the world at that moment and every forecasting tool possible at that same moment within the limits allowed by the nature of our world.

In the development of any complex system, there are moments when its future development cannot, in principle, be predicted from its current state. Scientists call such moments bifurcation points. But the system remains unpredictable only when viewed from outside. From within, the situation looks different: everything depends entirely either on chance or on the choice of the person who finds themselves in such a situation.

The Saviour's return and the fullness of the Kingdom, revealed in its entirety, entail the world passing through just such a bifurcation point: a moment when nothing can be calculated or predicted in advance, and everything is determined by each person's concrete choice. If a person shares in the life of the Kingdom even before that moment comes, the moment itself does not take them completely by surprise, throw them off course or disorient them to the point of being utterly unable to make decisions. This is what it means to be ready to meet the returning master. The King. And the Kingdom in all its fullness.

All of Jesus' earthly preaching speaks of the approaching Kingdom. And He gives very much attention to our readiness to enter it. The coming of this Kingdom includes judgment and division, because in it one cannot be lukewarm and cannot serve two masters. And while we are on the way to it, we have an opportunity, perhaps the last one, to make peace with the one who will accuse us at the judgment. It may be our conscience, it may be people whom we have wronged, and it may also be the Lord Himself, as in the parable of the Last Judgment (Matt. 25). And the more the sprout of Christ's Kingdom grows in our hearts, the sooner we need to run to make peace with our adversaries, so that we come to judgment with them already as friends.

The call to keep watch is repeated very often in the Gospel. Among other reasons, because always being on alert, always remembering why and how we live, is unbearable labor. It is unbearable because we live in time, but we must keep watch in expectation of eternity.

Having met God, we are so blinded by Him that at first such frequent reminders of our changeability seem ridiculous to us. But time passes, and it becomes harder and harder to preserve that inner tension of the first days of faith. Like the first Christians, we suddenly understand that we are waiting impatiently for the Second Coming, but no longer for a day or two; we are waiting ten or twenty years, and who knows how many more decades of difficult and frightening life will be needed before we wait for Him. And He keeps saying: "Keep watch, do not relax, be ready. Above all, be ready."

How hard it is to be ready. Every day to give an account to oneself that one must wait for Him to come, and not for something else. How much one would like to put things in order once and for all. But even if one stops moving and sits absolutely still, there will be no disorder, but one will become covered with dust. And day after day, in expectation of Christ's coming, one will still have to put things in order, wipe off the dust, wash the floors, and wait until He comes.

In the different Gospels much is said about the need to be ready for action, whether witness to Christ or meeting Him. Many of the Savior's parables speak about this. The words about girded loins and a burning lamp return us to the same theme. Jesus is clearly speaking about readiness for action, for making one's life truly Christian. A belt, especially a warrior's belt, said a great deal about its owner in antiquity, and in the army it was generally a mark of distinction, replacing epaulettes.

An officer who removed his belt and handed it to his superior was in effect submitting a request for resignation. And before a campaign everyone in the army had to gird himself, first of all so that everyone could see his military rank. But in ordinary civilian life too, taking off one's belt meant relaxing and even becoming unrestrained. Without a belt it was hard to imagine a long journey: on the belt one usually carried a water skin, a special small pouch for money and necessary papers, and small but necessary travel items such as a fire steel.

Therefore to gird oneself usually meant to prepare for a road, most likely a long road. But the Savior clearly has in mind not only this outward side of the image. He also speaks of the inner collectedness that is reached through consistent keeping of the commandments and following the inner Torah. Such following forms in a person the spiritual core necessary for full Christian life.

The image of the lamp is just as multivalent, indeed even more so: in the same Sermon on the Mount it means both witness, which cannot and need not be hidden, and a person's spiritual sight, the image of the eye as the lamp that illumines the human body. Of course, there can be no purity of sight if there is no spiritual core, which is reached by following the inner Torah. But this purity will remain only a possibility if a person is not aware of the inner wholeness he has managed to reach and the measure of its fullness.

If awareness is present, then a person's body is bright: such a person is not mistaken about himself, being aware of his inner life and of every intention born in his heart. Such a person knows who he is and what he can do, and what he cannot do and therefore had better not undertake. Yet awareness is also necessary for full witness. Christian witness cannot be theoretical; only a person who has experienced what he speaks about can be a witness, and such experience can only be the experience of communion with Christ and life in the Kingdom.

Experience of this kind cannot be acquired without inner wholeness and conscious life: even if some meeting occurs or an experience of spiritual reality, or even of the reality of the Kingdom, takes place, without inner wholeness and awareness a person will not be able to retain, remember, or understand what he has experienced. That is why the Savior draws His listeners' attention to girded loins and to the lamp: without them not only witness, but the very path of the Kingdom is impossible. And therefore being His disciple is impossible.

The Savior compares the position of God's servants in the people of God with the position of a slave-steward. Today it seems strange to us to entrust care of a house and servants to a slave. But in antiquity such a practice was quite widespread: everything depended only on the measure of the master's trust in one or another slave.

Such a situation was especially widespread where, as in Israel and later in Judea, slavery was domestic, so that slaves lived in the house practically as junior members of the family. If the master of the house placed one of such slaves in the position of steward during his absence, this slave, of course, by no means ceased to be a slave, but the circle of his duties, and accordingly his rights in the house, expanded significantly, coming close to the duties and rights of the master.

But one could speak of the duties and rights of such a steward only in relation to the other household slaves and servants, who owed him formal obedience. In relation to the master, however, he remained a slave, bound to him by those partly formal and partly personal relations that usually connected master and slave in a situation of patriarchal slavery. And only on the stability of these relations, on the master's favor, did the slave's position in the house depend: whether he would remain steward or not, and how the master would deal with him on his return. A slave, in himself, of course, had no rights and could have none, and woe to the slave who forgot this. These are the very relations Jesus gives as an example, as an earthly analogue of the relations of the Kingdom.

In a certain sense, in the Kingdom all are without rights except the King who brought this Kingdom into the world, since no one has deserved it and no one can enter it by right. And when the Kingdom is projected into our still untransformed world, it often turns out that a servant of God receives power over people, since the laws of the untransformed world presuppose such power. For God acts in our world so that His action proceeds as if from within, without blowing up the world or destroying it.

And here everything depends on whether such a servant feels himself in the position of a slave to whom the true Master has entrusted temporary management of His house, or imagines himself a full-rights manager whose rights are not conditioned by a concrete situation of service, but belong to him from the beginning by virtue of some special status or special position in the Kingdom. The issue here is not that the true Master will be offended and want to punish the usurper, but that any attempts at self-assertion in one's own independence separate the one who tries to do this from the Kingdom. And therefore from the One who brought the Kingdom into the world.

We constantly put off repentance until the last moment. Right now one can still sin, but on such and such a day I will go to confession and repent there; or when I am dying, then I will repent; or in general, when the Lord asks me at the Judgment, then I will repent!

We deceive God. After all, we know that He is with us all the time, that He sees us all the time. We know that we must always strive to imitate Him, not out of fear of punishment, but because with our sins we drive nails into His palms. And we can ask forgiveness right away, so that it will not seem to us that we can "store up" sins and then dump them on God. God carries our burden on Himself all the time, so that it will not be too heavy to bear.

But we can help Him carry at least a small corner of the Cross, for His Cross is made up of our crosses.

A person gets used to everything. To good things quickly, to bad things more slowly, but still gets used to them. That is why the apostle Paul gives so much attention to how those who have acknowledged their liberation from sin will live their life.

Our salvation is accomplished in eternity, but we receive it in time. It is easy to get used to the astonishing gift of freedom from sin and life in grace, and just as easy to return to existence under the old laws. The Gospel reminds us how repulsive life is for the one who "knew, but forgot" the price at which our life was paid for. The issue is not that we must fear punishment for returning to sin. Our task is never to get used to the fact that our life and grace were paid for by the price of Christ's blood.

Do we really believe that Jesus will come again? And if we do, are we waiting Him? And if yes, how are we waiting him: with a merry impatience (fast, Fast!), or with fear (oops, only not now!).

What do we have more in us: faith in Jesus and the desire to meet Him or the fear of His justice and pressing forward to avoid His glance?

The answer to this question depends on the way we regard our preparation to His advent. It is clear that we cannot be totally ready, and that is why it is said that He will come "as a thief, at night", and on the other hand He exactly delays His advent so that we could get ready (see 2 Peter 3:9). And if we are afraid of this advent, if Jesus is an austere Judge for us, then we shall repeat all the time consciously or unconsciously: "no, don't, I am not yet ready" - and not hurry up to be ready. But if His glance is for us a glance of love, if our heart looks for a meeting with Him, then we shall wait every day for His advent, crying internally: "Maranatha! The Lord is coming!”

In answering the Apostle Peter’s question about the parable of people awaiting their master’s return, Christ speaks of two things that are very important in our relationship with God. The first is faithfulness to God, the readiness to do His will in whatever He sees fit to entrust to you. In several parables the Lord uses this image: an absent master or king who has left his property in the care of servants. We may suppose that this image conveys something essential about the position in which God places us and the tasks He sets before us. And we can carry out this commission, which gives meaning to human existence, either according to the Master’s will or at our own discretion. It is of the fruits of this choice that the Lord speaks: ‘Blessed is that servant whom his master, when he comes, will find doing so.’ This is said of the faithful steward, faithful precisely to the Master’s commission.

The second important point is contained in the words: ‘…from everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required.’ This refers first of all to the people of God, both old and new, to those who truly know the Master’s will, which has been declared to them plainly: ‘He has told you, O man, what is good and what the Lord requires of you: to act justly, to love deeds of mercy and to walk humbly before your God’ (Mic 6:8). But in a broader sense these words refer to humanity’s unique place in creation: to be the image and likeness of God, part of the Body of Christ.

In our stereotyped notions, Christianity is usually covered with a certain sugary coating. Psychologically, this rosy, sentimental stereotype is quite understandable, but it is nevertheless inadequate. That is precisely why the Lord’s words in today’s passage from Luke’s Gospel so often shock and frighten us. The fire he came to cast upon the earth, division among those close to one another—these are the last things we want. And when he says that his disciples, following him, will also be brought before kings and tribunals, we stop our ears altogether, just to avoid applying these words to ourselves. Yet faith is nothing like syrup poured over human life and the whole world. Faith concerns life and death, and there comes a moment when compromise is impossible for a believer. The Lord says that we are called to recognize in our hearts the time when our faithfulness to God is being tested. This can happen in very different ways, but in any case the preservation of everyday comfort is not guaranteed. We are called to cover the sins of the world with love and forgiveness, but not to consent to them. That is why the world hates Jesus’ disciples, just as it hates Jesus himself. The division he speaks of today results from a human choice: to be with him, or to remain in the rosy, conflict-free realm of death.

The Saviour's words about the division He brings into the world may seem harsh to the point of cruelty: division means confrontation, and when matters are so serious, sooner or later it will inevitably lead to outright war. Yet evidently, where the Kingdom is concerned, confrontation is unavoidable. So is war, if we mean spiritual war. Spiritual, because what is at stake is the confrontation between the Kingdom, which, in Jesus' words, is ‘not of this world’, and this very world. The issue is not anyone's cruelty or intolerance, but the real incompatibility of the untransfigured world with the Kingdom. It is no accident that the Saviour points to the world's opposition to the Kingdom as a sign of the end of time: that end comes in such a frightening form precisely because the Kingdom and ‘this world’ cannot coexist in the same space.

Now the internal conflicts that arise in the fallen world because of its fallen condition cease to be fundamental: it is better to make peace with an adversary without taking the matter to court. Not because the adversary must always be right, but because times are coming when there will be more pressing concerns than lawsuits. And the issue, of course, is not that the very nature of the untransfigured world is utterly incompatible with the Kingdom. In its present form it is indeed incompatible, but it can be transfigured by God's breath, and then it will become a fully organic part of the new world.

But the Kingdom is indeed incompatible by definition with the evil in which, as the Gospel says, the fallen world lies. Hence the confrontation of which Jesus speaks. Over its two-thousand-year history, Christianity has often been accused of hating the world and opposing it. In reality, however, Christians—apart, of course, from religious extremes and spiritual abnormalities—have never opposed the world, never waged war on it, and certainly never wished for its destruction.

But the Church as a whole and individual Christians have always struggled for this world against the world itself: for the new world being transfigured by the Kingdom's power and breath, against the evil in which it lies. This confrontation must be regarded as the central confrontation of our age, the age of the coming Kingdom. And unlike conflicts that unfold within the untransfigured world and according to its laws, which can sometimes be quelled, the central conflict—the conflict between the Kingdom and the forces of evil at work in the fallen world—will end only on the day of the Kingdom's triumph and the complete defeat of those who oppose it.

Jesus' words about the division He brought into the world trouble some readers of the Gospel, especially today. Unity seems more appropriate to us now than division; we would like all divisions between people to disappear. Unity seems better than division to us by definition.

And so it is when secondary matters are concerned. From the Gospel's perspective, as from that of spiritual life in general, all our divisions—cultural, linguistic, racial, even religious—are essentially secondary. They do not touch what matters most: our relationships with God and their dynamics. From the Gospel's perspective, as from that of spiritual life in general, it is precisely the dynamics of our relationships with God and our neighbors that are central; everything else is secondary. In this respect, people fall into only two categories: those whose lives contain a relationship with God and its associated dynamics, and those whose lives do not.

Of course, a complete absence of relationship with God means the complete destruction of the person, often followed by physical destruction as well. But we can speak of these relationships developing and growing stronger, or of their gradual deterioration, their tendency toward complete breakdown. Ultimately, in the context and perspective of the Kingdom entering the world, we must speak of striving for the fullness of the Kingdom's life or of self-isolation: an attempt to shut oneself away and create one's own small, closed world, becoming its king, its sole master and ruler. The fallen world exists in precisely this isolation. Thus the central Christian division is between those seeking the life of the Kingdom and those content with the life of this world, the fallen world.

Here division really is absolutely inevitable. These two spiritual directions are incompatible, not because some people are “spiritual” and others are not, but because some seek life and move toward it, while others are content with a life of dying, a gradual sinking into the death that reigns in the fallen world. These are not different views or convictions, but opposite directions of spiritual movement, which inevitably divide those who choose them. After all, people going in different, opposite directions cannot remain united.

From speaking about the new people of God, Paul turns to the spiritual life. It is, of course, no accident that he calls the Church the Body of Christ and speaks of Christians as its members. Clearly, this is neither an allegory nor a matter of shared ideas. The faithfulness of the faithful makes possible that essential, organic unity of Christians with Christ which the apostle describes as Christ ‘dwelling’ in the hearts of His followers. This image recalls another, associated with the prophetic tradition: the prophets, too, often spoke of the breath (Spirit) of God entering a person’s heart. For Paul, evidently, Christ’s dwelling in the hearts of the faithful is inseparable from their life in the Kingdom, in which they cannot otherwise take root (verses 14–19).

Of course, it is no accident that the apostle raises this theme in the context of his reflections on the new people of God: it is precisely the living spiritual bond between the faithful and the risen Christ that makes them a new people. There is nothing fundamentally new in this approach: throughout history, God’s people have been God’s people not because of exceptional religious devotion or a high spiritual level, but because of God’s presence among them since the Exodus, the covenant at Sinai and the giving of the Torah. Only the quality of these relationships is new. Previously, God’s presence was an objective reality that shaped and spiritually renewed the lives of those ready to follow God by following the Torah. Now Christ’s presence in the hearts of the faithful depends only on the faithful themselves, not merely renewing their spiritual lives but transforming them completely, so that at the end of time, when the Kingdom is revealed in all its fullness, they may become fully part of it, as far as this is possible for transformed human nature. For Paul, the messianic people are not simply a people who have accepted the Messiah; from the apostle’s point of view, only a people who share one life with the Messiah can become such a people: the life of the Kingdom, which neither Jew nor Gentile can attain without Him.

For us, as for the disciples of Jesus who heard the terrible words of today's reading, it is hard to accept such a prospect. They were waiting for a Messiah who would come as a liberator and bring triumph to Israel. The Romans would fall, Israel would be free, and the world at last would be wonderful and good. But Jesus, by His perfection, by the fact that He is the Truth, became a stumbling stone for everyone and for each person. His very presence becomes a cause of division. No one remains on the sidelines; everyone has to decide Who has come.

But even if one accepts Jesus as the Messiah, the division does not end there. Children and parents, brothers and sisters - all of us stand on different sides of Him; all of us see different things and try to consider what we ourselves have seen as the most important thing. Some see wrath, some mercy, some love, some light. Each considers it necessary to secure the primacy of his own view of God. This is how our damaged humanity shows itself when it comes into contact with His perfection. The apostles faced this, and it continues to this day. On the other hand, we have already been warned of the danger. And the one who is warned is armed: he can keep himself from becoming a conduit of division.

"I came to cast fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!" These words from today's Gospel reading can be very hard to understand and accept for people accustomed to finding in their religiosity only comfort in life's sorrows, peace, and rest. But the world of church hymns pleasant to the heart, the world of vigil lamps, candles, and icons, is not the whole of faith. Faith is continuous struggle, an unending battle against sin.

We often get used to the fact that sin is present in our lives and stop noticing it. But there is also a special state, when the heart burns. Then every sin, even the smallest, touches the soul like a burned wound. It is the state when grace descends and you stand like Moses at the burning bush, and the Spirit of God scorches your face. It is the state when there is so much warmth in you that you simply cannot help sharing it. It is the state when not a single minute can be empty, because then the fire begins to consume you yourself. Do you remember the wonderful meeting on the road to Emmaus? "And they said to one another, Did not our heart burn within us while He spoke to us on the road and while He explained the Scriptures to us?" (Luke 24:32). This is the kind of fire the Lord is speaking to us about.

How polysemous are the evangelical images; cut from their context, they put out of countenance. Isn't in this same Gospel we read that the followers of Jesus wanted to make fire to come down from heaven, and Jesus prohibited them (see Luke 9:54-56)? It is then about another fire here, serving not to destroy, but to save people. May be it is about the fire of Pentecost (See Acts of the Apostles 2:3), or about the fire of purification (Is 4:4; Rev 3:18); or may be about the fire of faith in our hearts, of which mother Mary (Skobtsova) remarkably said: "Christianity is fire, if not, it does not exist ". Is this fire burning in us, are we hot or simply lukewarm (to see Rev 3:15-16)? As our heart burned when The Lord offered us the first meeting with Him (see Luke 24:32)! Haven't we cooled down, haven't we abandon our young love (see Rev 2:4)? It is indeed our responsibility to preserve this fire, which Jesus made come down on earth.

These words of Jesus about the division He brought into the world trouble some readers of the Gospel, especially today. Unity seems more appropriate to us now than division; we would like every division between people to disappear, and unity seems to us better than division by definition. And so it is when secondary matters are concerned. From the Gospel's perspective, as from the perspective of spiritual life in general, all our divisions—cultural, linguistic, racial, even religious—are essentially secondary and do not touch what matters most: our relationship with God and its dynamics. It is the dynamics of our relationships with God and with our neighbors that matter most; everything else is secondary. In this respect, people are divided into only two categories: those whose lives contain a relationship with God and the dynamics associated with it, and those whose lives do not.

A complete absence of relationship with God naturally means the complete destruction of the human personality, often followed by physical destruction as well. Yet one can also speak of this relationship being formed and strengthened, or of its gradual degradation and tendency toward total destruction. Ultimately, in the context and prospect of the Kingdom entering the world, the question must be one of striving toward the fullness of the Kingdom's life or of self-isolation: an attempt to shut oneself off, create one's own little enclosed world, and become its king, its sole master and ruler. The fallen world exists precisely in such isolation, and therefore the fundamental Christian division is the division between those who seek the life of the Kingdom and those who are content with the life of this world, the fallen world.

Here division really is absolutely inevitable. The two spiritual vectors just described are incompatible—not because some people are “spiritual” and others are not, but because some seek life and move into life, while others are content with a life-that-is-dying, a gradual descent into the death that reigns in the fallen world. These are not different views or convictions but opposite directions of spiritual movement, which inevitably divide those who choose them. People moving in different, mutually opposite directions cannot, after all, remain united.

“You will not get out until you have paid the very last penny,” the Lord tells us today. And this can be very hard for us to hear. Schooled by prayer books, we often find it easier to think of ourselves in self-abasing terms. We imagine that we have now attained poverty of spirit. I am a beggar. I am the thief on the cross. I have nothing, I have been given nothing, and nothing can be required of me. We begin to revel in this state so much that we think the first beatitude has come upon us.

In fact, however, all this can end in an instant. The Lord will call you and say: “Where is what I gave you? What did you do with it? What did you squander it on?” Even material poverty comes in different forms: there was Xenia of Petersburg, who gave away everything she had, and there are ordinary drunkards who have simply drunk everything away. That sounds rather crude, because we are speaking of something purely material. But if we apply this metaphor to the spirit, we find the very same laws at work there. The medieval mystic Meister Eckhart spoke of poverty of spirit in these terms: “If someone now asks me what this is, ‘a poor person who wants nothing,’ I will answer and say this: as long as a person has something toward which his will is directed—even if his will is to do God's will—that person is not poor in the sense meant here. For this person still has a will with which he wants to please God's will; and this is not yet the real thing.”

So as long as you want to be poor in spirit, as long as you are trying on this role, you are not that person. And if you are not poor in spirit, then something can be required of you. If such thoughts about poverty of spirit have come into your mind, if you pray, even from a prayer book, then you have been given a great deal; you have come into contact with the Spirit, and that is greater than the greatest thing there can be, for God does not give the Spirit by measure (John 3:34). That means a very great deal is required of you. Only when everything has been exacted from you will you be poor, and not a moment before.

The Savior's words, addressed to people who, at first glance, are believers, make us think about what we notice and what we do not. Or, more precisely, what we want to notice and what we do not want to notice. Both today and in every age there have been many people, even believers, who more or less sincerely assured both others and themselves that, when it comes to spiritual life, they are doing everything possible, but not everything, they say, is within their power; and if that is so, what more can be asked of them? You cannot do more than you are able. Meanwhile, Jesus, addressing the people listening to Him, people who demand from Him certain signs proving His messiahship, advises them to pay attention to themselves.

The principle is simple: if you truly knew yourselves, Jesus tells them, then you would recognize Me as well, and you would not need any signs. And in the condition in which the people listening to the Savior were found, no signs would have helped them. The issue here is not necessarily that the people listening to Jesus were deliberately deceiving Him or themselves. The issue may also have been that His hearers were not, in the spiritual sense, themselves.

They were not their true selves - just as we very often are not our true selves. We do not live the true life that God gives us, and therefore there is nowhere for the life of the Kingdom to enter us. Indeed, our natural life is a stream that comes from God and is bound up with His breath, with that breath of life which defines our existence as people created in the image of God. And if we do not allow the stream of our life to flow freely, if we drive it into frameworks we have created - the frameworks of theories, concepts, religions created by us - then there is nowhere for the breath of the Kingdom to enter.

To live the life of the Kingdom, one must first become oneself. Then very many things become obvious which, as long as our life does not flow freely, cannot be proved to us by any miracles. This is what Jesus says to those who demand from Him proofs of His messiahship: become yourselves, and you will see everything yourselves. No better proof can be devised: every proof is by definition external, while here the issue is what comes from within, what a person becomes convinced of himself. Then he no longer needs any miracles: everything is clear to him without them.

The Saviour often speaks of the master's return—meaning, as one may readily guess, Himself—as an unexpected event. Although this unexpectedness may itself be expected, judging by Jesus' words it is quite possible that those waiting will be unprepared to meet the One they await. Why is this? Much can of course be explained by uncertainty about the time: it is not easy to keep oneself constantly ready; this demands too much inward strain.

Jesus Himself does not regard that argument as an excuse. He says plainly that if the householder knew when the thief would try to break into his house, life would be much easier—but, alas, that is not how things are. Nevertheless, if the householder wants to protect his house, he must always be on his guard. So must the servants awaiting their master, unless they want trouble from their unexpectedly returning lord. Clearly, a Christian's spiritual life requires constant spiritual alertness, without which one cannot remain in the Kingdom. Of course, one could say that any serious spiritual or ascetic system requires the same of its adherents. It could hardly be otherwise: this is a spiritual path, on which all kinds of unexpected things are possible.

Moreover, without maintaining spiritual alertness, we can forget about moving forward: every step on a spiritual path requires effort, as does the very ability to hold the new position reached through that effort. Otherwise, if a person relaxes spiritually, they can easily slide back to their former state. But spiritual alertness has special significance for life in the Kingdom. In the age of the advancing Kingdom, every inhabitant of it inevitably stands on the boundary between two worlds. Without the necessary efforts, one can easily fall out of the Kingdom's spiritual realm and find oneself wholly under the power of the evil in which the untransformed world lies.

Then there can no longer be any question of readiness to meet the Risen One. One cannot prepare for that meeting in a single instant: a spiritual process involving the transformation of human nature is required. For that process we have been given the time between the Saviour's coming into the world and His future return in glory. What the meeting will be like depends on how we use that time.

"Fear not, little flock!" That was also the title of an article by Fr. Georgy Chistyakov, which contains the following passage:

"If we analyze Sacred Scripture on the basis of what linguists call the 'frequency' of the use of a given word, we discover that almost 370 times in it there is the call: 'Fear not!' It is addressed now to Abraham, now to Jacob, now to Gideon in the Old Testament, now to the apostles and the myrrh-bearing women in the Gospel. This call is constant and insistent. God does not say: do not be afraid of this or that. He addresses us with extreme simplicity: do not be afraid. Never and of nothing! Of course, fear is embedded in our nature from the beginning - as are many other things. But some natural traits must be developed, while others must be outgrown. Overcome. God addresses precisely our animal memory: 'Fear not, little flock!' - and even more sharply: 'I send you as sheep among wolves.'" ("Ogonyok," 1999).

Everything here is said with the utmost precision and unity; it is hard to add anything. Still, one can recall these well-known words of the evangelist: "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, because fear has torment. The one who fears is not perfected in love" (1 John 4:18). For us this is paradoxical; with us everything is usually the other way around: the more we love, the more we fear for the beloved. But that is only the beginning of love. After all, if the Lord is all-good, and the final "station" will be the state when "God is all in all," then what is there for us to fear? Only to endure and wait remains, and to endure and wait means to believe. But the fearful thing stands clearly before our eyes, while the angelic world is hidden. How can one not be afraid? How can one not want to eat, not want to sleep, and so on... It is impossible. And precisely because of this impossibility, this is something utterly true.

I will accept all, take all that You give,
Whatever You give, whatever You send me.
Let wild folly come to pass,
Let dark falsehood envelop me.
Grant that I may hear You amid the lie
And not confuse Your voice with another.
Help me, strengthen me, uphold me
With Your careful breath.
(Yuly Shreider)

"Let wild folly come to pass" - somehow these words really are frightening. Still, as another poet said, "We do not need to fear this darkness, and we will not pretend to be happy" (B. Okudzhava).