NOTES for Zec 1:1-21

When the Lord's anger is slight, people increase evil... In turbulent times, one wants to hope that one need only live to see better days, and life will improve and good will triumph. But then peaceful times arrive, and once again it becomes clear that such hopes were unfounded. The presence or absence of evil does not depend on outward circumstances; it derives from the state of our hearts and the direction of our wills. It is often precisely in peaceful surroundings that we grow spiritually lax and become susceptible to the enemy's deception. Then the Lord may destroy such ruinous “peace.”

It is probably no accident that, in the prophetic vision, those who go out to oppose the powers of evil are not warriors, but workmen. The struggle against evil and sin has repeatedly been likened to battle, and it truly requires courage and steadfastness comparable to a soldier's. But it is also hard and persistent labor—labor blessed by the Lord, Who gives the strength to perform it.

The words of Zechariah, although at first sight it can seem a little bit strange, permits us to understand, what is the spiritual Tradition in the original sense of the word. It would seem that what the prophet says is far enough from what we usually understand by Tradition. And Zechariah however reminds his listeners: on the basis of the real Tradition always lies the history of Revelation.

Not the history of religious tradition, not the history of how man searched God, but the history of how God revealed Himself to man, search for man, held out to him His hand. And also how man reacted to this extended hand: accepted it or rejected it, answered "yes" or "no" to God. And the problem here is not in concrete people, not in prophets who witness to the people about that will of God, which was revealed to them in a concrete historical moment in a concrete historical situation, but in the general plan of God, part of which are separate people and entire generations. Here is, this God's plan is the Revelation, and concrete revelations given to concrete people are only its elements, which had to be revealed to the people in any stage of its history. For the people of God, which was initially conceived by God, as people-community, such revelations had a decisive meaning: because they particularly indicated to the people their spiritual way, the way of their future, as people-community. And this fact that the contemporaries of the prophet calling the people to make this or that spiritual choice, did not see the consequences of their choice, says only that God's plan is too much big for the life of a generation. But indeed, the Tradition supposes not only the succession of the revelation, but also the succession of the spiritual experience, connected with its perception of the community.

This succession, which the people demonstrated during the captivity and at the period of after captivity, when all the history of before captivity was reinterpreted in the context of what the prophets said (the books of the Old Testament called historic for Christians, and for the Jews - early prophets, represent thus the fruit of this understanding). Here is this logic of the understanding of the history of the perception of revelation by the community is the second part of the Tradition. And it is not surprising: because the real Tradition always means, first of all, the relationship between God and man. And all the rest only as long as it is connected to these relationships.