NOTES for Heb 10:32-38

"...For yet a very little while..." Sometimes we do not want to believe this, and we say: you are only comforting us, Apostle Paul. But before this Paul says: "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God!" (Heb. 10:31). And in the Greek text the word is "phoberon," which is somehow clearly associated with the Russian word "phobia." In Russian usage, phobia means precisely an inner painful state when there is no real external danger: just darkness or height, just an enclosed space, and so on. We have this inner state: we both want the End and fear it. Because of this uncertainty, because of our inner confusion, this End does not come.

For the Lord, as the Bridegroom, comes when love has been established. Imagine a bridegroom and bride who are preparing to be married, but the bride is afraid, unsure, wavering; she does not yet have that radiant, happy, calm love that longs to give itself in service to the beloved. Would their wedding be right in that case? Still, it would be premature.

In the same way, even if we speak only about the Church and its members, we do not yet have this deep, quiet, calm love. We still fear ourselves and frighten others. We fear punishment, vengeance, recompense; we simply fear, without ourselves knowing what, because "no one has ever returned from there." What kind of "wedding" (that is, the End) can we speak of?

But this does not mean that we are alone. We can say that we were "betrothed" by Christ's First Coming, and we need to build our relationship with Him. In any case, He is here, He is near. And of course, it is "a little while longer," because when there is love, time flows in a special way: separations are endless, meetings seem to fly by so quickly, and overall there is this feeling that there it is, just a little longer, and eternity will pour into the soul.

One of the most important principles of a Christian's spiritual life is called non-possessiveness in the language of the Eastern monastic tradition. The Western tradition calls non-possessiveness poverty and limits it by reducing it to a certain material condition. However, if poverty is understood as Isaiah of Jerusalem, for example, understood it, then it could quite well also be called non-possessiveness.

Incidentally, Isaiah's fate can serve as an illustration of the author's words, although this prophet lived eight centuries before the coming of the Savior: being an aristocrat and a wealthy man, he called himself poor, and at the end of his life, during persecutions, he really lost everything. There are even not very clear reports that the prophet ended his life as a martyr. This sense of oneself as poor regardless of the size of one's own property is what is called non-possessiveness. In such a spiritual state, the loss of this very property is indeed not perceived as a catastrophe.

A person then truly understands that the main thing for him is not property, or at least not the property he has on earth. And this is not some refusal, self-limitation, poverty for the sake of freedom, or anything similar. It is simply life in the Kingdom as such. In a reality that is arranged differently from our untransformed world. And for a person precisely this reality becomes true and absolute. Of course, in such a case a person does not necessarily have to lose everything: monastic practice, whether in the East or in the West, merely externalizes what can remain internal.

The issue is precisely one's attitude toward one's own property. When it is perceived not as a more or less inseparable part of one's beloved self, but as an instrument given by God for carrying out tasks set by God. An instrument that one does not own, but uses. And if even this instrument is taken from you, and God does not intervene, then His plan does not involve intervention. Perhaps these instruments will no longer be needed. Or God has prepared others. In any case, He knows better. And His servants need not worry: it is His world and His plan.

Over the long history of humanity, much has been said and written about courage. But what is courage from a spiritual point of view? And why is it so important? To answer this question, it is important to remember something else, the foundation of spiritual life: faithfulness. It is no accident that the Bible connects faithfulness with the relationship between God and the human person, and between God and the people of God. In Russian translation, faithfulness is sometimes called faith, but in most cases the corresponding Greek or Hebrew word means faithfulness, as well as trust.

But if faithfulness plays a key role in the relationship between God and the human person, then the same can be said of steadfastness, without which there can be no talk of faithfulness. And steadfastness, in turn, is unthinkable without courage. Of course, if we were to live in a world that knew no evil, everything might be different. It is quite possible that such a world would not know a concept like courage at all. But we, unfortunately, live in a world wounded by sin and lying in evil. And such a world, or rather the forces of evil at work in it, has no need for steadfastness. None at all, in anything.

The expression "steadfastness in evil" is, in essence, only a pretty but meaningless phrase. It means no more than, for example, the expression "he rolled down the slope with all his might." To do evil, one needs neither spiritual collectedness nor perseverance. Of course, anyone could point to great people who possessed strong will and other qualities, and who displayed them even when they did evil deeds. But they did not receive these qualities from the devil or from dark forces. They were placed in them by God, who gave them freedom, as He gives it to everyone else. And they abused that freedom, so that God's gift became a dark, evil force in them. Strength comes from God; evil comes from the refusal to direct it toward God's work.

In essence, to do evil it is enough to do nothing and to let others use one's talents and abilities, received from God. But to avoid doing evil, one has to resist and stand against those who would like to make use of gifts that do not belong to them. God's gift in a fallen world has to be defended, just as one's faithfulness to God has to be defended in it. And courage is faithfulness standing against the forces of evil. It is faithfulness that ceases to be itself without such opposition.

Continuing the conversation about Christian life, the author of the letter calls his readers not to turn aside from the path on which they have set out and along which they have already managed to travel some distance. As can be seen, the author, being a disciple of the apostle, together with him and with some others experienced persecution for Christ, which he mentions in general terms but quite clearly. Unlike his teacher, the author of the letter was not executed, but at some point the threat to his life was real.

Others were in a similar position. The fate of Paul and of other Christians may have been different if the anti-Roman uprising in Palestine, which began at about this time and proceeded under religious and, in particular, messianic slogans, had not started. The Romans then apparently began to look at the followers of Jesus in the same way as at all messianists in general: as rebels actively opposing Roman authority.

In such a situation, persecution naturally could not help intensifying, at least until the uprising was completely suppressed. And judging by the testimony of the author of the Letter to the Hebrews, many of his addressees showed themselves to be faithful disciples of Christ. But now, after hopes for Christ's imminent return had dissipated, they were evidently in some confusion, not understanding what to wait for next and, one can think, looking closely at various messianic groups and sects of a gnostic kind; gnosis in those times was no less characteristic of the Jewish environment than of the pagan one. It is in just such a situation that the author writes his letter to some Christian Jewish community, possibly a community of Roman Jewish Christians.

There could have been many such people: the Jewish community of Rome was one of the largest in antiquity, and there were many there who had turned to Christ, in particular under the influence of Paul's preaching. Of course, these people experienced everything connected with the catastrophe of AD 70 as deeply as the whole Jewish community did, whether one speaks of orthodox Jews or of messianist Christians. And the author of the letter, remaining faithful to the teaching both of the Savior Himself and of his teacher Paul, calls them not to despair and to remain faithful to what had been revealed to them at their conversion and to the faithfulness they had witnessed during persecution.

Continuing the discussion of faithfulness to the once-established covenant-union, which is inseparable from faithfulness to the Church, the author of the letter reminds his readers of the persecutions they had endured before, apparently even before the catastrophe of AD 70 (vv. 32-34). This reminder is clearly not accidental: faithfulness during persecutions is possible only when the Kingdom is an obvious and immediate reality of life for those who are persecuted, so obvious that even physical death does not frighten them. The life of the Kingdom is greater than the physical life that can be taken from a person in our world, which is not yet transformed. And now the author clearly wants to remind his addressees of the times when the Kingdom was so evident to them that no one even thought of doubting its nearness. The main source of doubt for the faithful was evidently the fact that even now, after the catastrophe of which the Savior had spoken as an event immediately preceding His return in glory, the complete and final triumph of the Kingdom was being delayed, and delayed for an indefinite time: Jesus had left His disciples no other landmarks on this matter.

Such a situation did not so much frighten many people as cool them off, so that the author of the letter had to remind them that the history of the Kingdom's formation and its revelation in our transforming, but not yet transformed, world is still far from complete. That is why he calls the faithful not to give in to despondency and disappointment, assuring them that the Savior's return is near (vv. 35-37). Of course, in this case he is not speaking about any specific dates, since even Jesus Himself refused to speak about them. The point is something else: now that what He said concerning Jerusalem and the Temple has been fulfilled, history has entered the final stretch that leads straight to the threshold of the Kingdom. Precisely now, when it seems there is nothing more to wait for, the possibility of the Savior's return is higher than ever before. And precisely now the faithful need spiritual readiness more than ever, and therefore a resolve that knows no wavering (vv. 38-39). Indeed, it would be foolish and painful to lose the Kingdom because of disappointment, cooling, and indecision at the very time when every day and every hour one can expect its complete and final triumph.

Calling for patience as we await the coming of the Lord, the apostle Paul quotes the astonishing words spoken by God to the prophet Habakkuk at the end of the seventh century BC. Like those to whom the apostle Paul wrote, and like us today, the prophet Habakkuk addressed an agonizing question to God: “How long will evil triumph?” It was precisely in response to this that God told him that the wicked would perish in his sin, but the righteous would live by faith. The apostle Paul develops this thought and applies it to the New Testament expectation of God’s final victory.

Yet, compared with the revelation given to Habakkuk, the apostle Paul also says something entirely new about faith: faith is the substance of things hoped for and the assurance of things not seen. According to the apostle’s thought, we are called not simply to endure “with clenched teeth” until the Second Coming. In a dying world, amid evil and lawlessness, God gives the believer an opportunity to taste the future life that we still only await. In our faith, what we await becomes present. It hardly needs saying that, in Christian life, these words apply above all to the sacrament of the Eucharist.

Two thousand years ago, the author of the Letter to the Hebrews said: “In a very little while, He who is coming will come and will not delay.” Are two thousand years really such a little while? One is tempted to say that such a “little while” resembles something in mathematics that approaches zero without ever reaching it. Perhaps this coming will never happen? And even if it does, surely it will not happen to us! What, then, is the point? Why did the Church include in the canon of Holy Scripture words that look like a failed prophecy? The reason is probably that this “very little while” is a view from the perspective of Eternity. He really will come very soon—but He alone knows when that “soon” will be. For each of us, our meeting with Him cannot fail to come unexpectedly. And the moment when this meeting comes for us is death. If we were to see God five minutes from now, would we be able to look Him in the eyes? This is what the Church reminds us of in today's reading.