NOTES for Joh 13:31-18:28; Mat 26:57-75; Joh 18:28-19:16; Mat 28:2-20; Mar 15:16-32; Mat 27:33-54; Luk 23:32-49; Joh 19:25-37; Mar 15:43-47; Joh 19:38-42; Mat 27:52-66

In speaking to His disciples about His path and His ministry, Jesus could not avoid telling them the meaning of the death that awaited Him. He tells the apostles: My earthly journey is complete; the time has come to part (vv. 5-6). But this is not simply a parting—Jesus leaves so that the Kingdom may be revealed to the world in all its fullness. He says: if I do not complete My earthly, human journey, then My divine fullness will also remain hidden from the world. The apostles themselves will not feel God's breath or come to know the Spirit-Comforter of whom Jesus spoke to them (vv. 6-7).

Meanwhile, the Savior tells His disciples about the coming of the Kingdom. He says that when God's Spirit comes into the world, He will become the chief witness to everything that many people did not want to hear from Jesus and His disciples: the witness to His mission, the defeat of the dark powers, and the sin of rejecting the Messiah sent by God (vv. 8-11). The meaning of this testimony is clear: it is testimony to the Kingdom and to Jesus as the Messiah who brought the Kingdom into the world. No testimony in itself deprives anyone of freedom of choice, of course, and those who reject the testimony of God's Spirit will become persecutors of the witnesses to the Kingdom (vv. 1-4). This is the chief thing; the disciples will learn and understand the rest when they enter the Kingdom and receive the revelation of God's Spirit (vv. 12-15).

Yet the disciples still do not seem fully to believe that Jesus is speaking to them about His death. They are bewildered: what does He mean? Where is He going, and why does He want to hide from them (vv. 16-18)? Jesus then speaks to the apostles with the greatest possible clarity about His death and resurrection. He warns His disciples that they are to experience great sorrow, which will soon give way to even greater joy (vv. 21-22). He promises them that the day will come when they meet again, the day when everything becomes clear to them and they have no questions left (vv. 22-23). Finally, Jesus tells His disciples directly: I came into the world from the Father, and now I am leaving the world again and going to the Father (v. 28).

After these words from their Teacher, the apostles think that at last they understand everything, but Jesus apparently thinks otherwise. He tells the disciples plainly that soon they will all scatter and leave Him alone (vv. 29-32). Yet even the flight of the bewildered disciples is of no consequence: victory over the powers of evil that hold the world captive has been won, and no suffering of the Kingdom's witnesses can now undo it (v. 33).

The disciples cannot understand Jesus' mysterious words: "A little while, and you will not see Me; and again a little while, and you will see Me...". We too can fully share their bewilderment. Even if we know that He said these words to them with His imminent crucifixion, death, and then the meeting after His Resurrection in mind, why are these words addressed to us now? We did not see Him either before the Cross or after the Resurrection.

Perhaps He is speaking of the Second Coming? Perhaps... But here too we hear that the words, the image, and even the very presence of Christ can meet us before the end of the world, when the Comforter brings them with Himself, the One who will speak with the voice of Jesus and teach as the Lord taught, because He Himself will come from the same place from which Christ is from: from the Father.

The prayer Jesus offers for His disciples sums up everything said during the Last Supper. It is usually called the prayer for unity, and one can undoubtedly agree with this. Yet it concerns not only outward unity. Jesus again asks the Father to preserve between Him and His disciples the same union that He has with the Father (vv. 21-23). Apparently no testimony is possible without such unity; without it the world will not believe that the apostles truly were sent into the world by the Savior Himself.

Yet bearing witness to the Kingdom and revealing the Kingdom to the world are precisely the chief task of those who are sent. Addressing the Father, Jesus in a sense hands over to the apostles the mission the Father entrusted to Him, while entrusting the apostles themselves to the Father. He says: I have given the life of the Kingdom that You gave Me to everyone who wished to receive it; I have accomplished everything You entrusted to Me (vv. 1-5). I revealed Myself, You, and Your Kingdom to those whom You sent Me, and they accepted everything (vv. 6-8). And now, Jesus says, I am leaving while they remain, and I pray for them, for those who belong to You (vv. 9-11).

Such a request was entirely natural, for the apostles were now becoming witnesses to the Kingdom about which Jesus had previously spoken to the world, and the apostolic community was to become the nucleus of the Church. Previously Jesus Himself had kept His disciples safe in a world hostile to them. Now, as He goes to the Father, He asks the Father to help the apostles preserve the joy of the Kingdom that they knew during the Savior's earthly ministry (vv. 12-13). This does not mean removing the apostles from the world to some other, special reality. The Kingdom had to be revealed here, not somewhere on another planet or in another dimension (vv. 14-16). But to reveal it, the apostolic community had to be sanctified by receiving the fullness of God's living revelation, which the Savior Himself embodied (v. 17). Only then could the apostles become witnesses to the Kingdom and their community the nucleus of the Church, whose very purpose would be to preserve the Kingdom in our still not fully transformed world and bear witness to it. This nucleus would grow, and the Church would expand, including everyone who sought the Kingdom and eternal life (vv. 18-21).

The Lord Jesus says several times in John's Gospel that He came so that the people who hear His message, His disciples, might believe and have the life that He brought from the Father. Therefore, in His final prayer before His arrest, He prays for the disciples and their followers, not for the world, not for those who did not receive Him.

At the same time, however, He also prays for the world, indirectly, that the world may believe in Him when it sees the unity of the disciples. In this way, He expects from those who have believed in Him the continuation of His work: to contribute to the salvation and enlivening of the whole world, not by replacing Christ, but by manifesting His presence in their unity, which bears witness that they already live divine life, imitating the inimitable unity of the Father and the Son.

In describing Jesus' arrest and the events that preceded it in the Garden of Gethsemane, John is noticeably more laconic and restrained than the other evangelists. In particular, he mentions neither the prayer the Savior offered before His arrest nor how the apostles, unable to withstand a strain too great for them, fell asleep despite their Teacher's requests. He reports only briefly that Judas knew the Garden of Gethsemane well, as did the other apostles, because it was a customary place for Jesus' gatherings and conversations (vv. 1-2). According to the evangelist's testimony, those who came to arrest Jesus were not Roman soldiers but the temple guard, and the arrest was carried out in the presence of representatives of the Pharisaic movement (v. 3).

Jesus, who was expecting the arrest, Himself went out to meet the authorities who had come for Him (vv. 4-5). The effect of the Savior's Person on everyone who found himself near Him was so great that those who came for Him did not immediately dare to do what they had come to do (vv. 5-12). Meanwhile, Jesus did everything possible to spare His disciples from arrest (vv. 7-9).

He evidently understood that the apostles had great difficulty grasping the meaning and significance of what was happening, and He may have feared that they would try to seize the moment by offering armed resistance to the authorities and thus begin an uprising which, according to their plan, was to grow into a full-scale war under religious and messianic slogans. His fears were evidently not unfounded: Peter, the most resolute of the apostles, did indeed try to resist (v. 10), but Jesus stopped him (v. 11).

This response from Jesus obviously left the apostles completely bewildered. Not knowing what to do next, they simply scattered, according to the testimony of the other evangelists, and thereafter they are mentioned again only in the accounts of the Savior's crucifixion. John does not speak directly of the apostles' flight, but his description of subsequent events makes it clear that only two followed Jesus: Peter and another disciple whom the evangelist does not name (vv. 15-16). They too, however, apparently no longer hoped for anything and wished only to see how their Teacher's trial would end.

As for their messianic expectations and hopes for the Kingdom's imminent triumph, most likely nothing remained of them: their Teacher Himself had only just voluntarily renounced all resistance! Now all they could do was wait to see how the judicial proceedings would end. What remained was a personal, human attachment to the Teacher who, as it seemed to the apostles, had lost, but whose Person evidently had not lost its hold on the disciples. It seemed that all the disciples had left was the memory of their Teacher. Yet in their eyes that memory was sacred.

Jesus' words about His unity with the Father, spoken during the Last Supper, take on a new meaning compared with what they conveyed before. Now Jesus speaks of this unity as the way, the truth, and the life. His life itself proves to be not only the fullness of living truth but also the living embodiment of the path everyone must travel—the path of the Kingdom. In those days, the ideas of way, truth, and life were traditionally associated with the Torah. The Torah was regarded as the way, the way of truth and the way of life, leading the one who walked it to God and to the threshold of the messianic Kingdom. The ideal was a living Torah, which a person could become if his life conformed to it completely.

By calling Himself the way, the truth, and the life, Jesus speaks of Himself as the living Torah. But His way becomes the way of the Kingdom. His relationship with the Father contains a dynamic that is revealed to the world as the dynamic of the Kingdom entering it. He goes to the Father—and the Kingdom enters the world. Such is the path of the Man who revealed the Torah to the world in all its fullness, the living Torah. But it is also the path of every Christian, everyone who wants to follow Christ into His Kingdom and travel that path to the end.

The Savior goes so that there may be a place in His Kingdom for each of His disciples and followers. But to become His disciple in truth, to reach those dwelling places in the Kingdom that He promises to prepare for them, one must repeat His journey. Not imitate it outwardly, but repeat it in essence, travel it oneself—and oneself become a living Torah.

Of course, a person does not remain alone on this path. Otherwise no one could become a living Torah, for without help from above this is impossible for a sinful human being. Yet everyone must still walk for himself. A person can be helped to walk, but only if he is walking rather than sitting on the sidelines. This is the path to which Jesus calls His disciples. He is confident that they know the way, for He Himself is before their eyes as a living example. They do not yet see or understand everything, of course, but what they do not yet see or understand can be understood only through their own experience, which each of them will gain in due course. Words are useless here. Jesus has already told His disciples the essential thing; the rest will become clear once they set out on the path.

The Lord continues His final conversation with the disciples about His new covenant with them. If since the time of Moses the bond between God and Israel had been carried out through sacred rites in the tabernacle and then in the temple, now Jesus becomes the center of God's presence, the new temple (John 2), He is the way to the Father, the manifestation of truth, and life itself living in people.

But they face separation: He is going where access is still closed to the disciples. He promised to return, but how many generations must pass before His words are fulfilled? How can the disciples preserve their bond with God if Jesus leaves them? And the Lord reveals a new mystery to them: He remains despite His departure. He will abide with them through the One whom the Father will send to them, the Comforter, who will remind them of Jesus and make His presence among them manifest, so that each person may recognize in the Spirit the face of Christ and, having recognized Him, see the Father in Him...

Christ tells the disciples that they know where He is going and even know the way there, yet they immediately admit that they do not know. Characteristically, it is Thomas, inclined to examine critically what he hears, who makes this admission. But it seems that he voices a perplexity troubling the other disciples too.

The disciples, like all of us, really do lack the kind of knowledge that settles in the mind as rationally presented information. But the knowledge they have received from their Teacher—the knowledge of His love—is far more important than facts stored in the head, and still more than what many people habitually regard as ‘secret knowledge’. What Christ gives us may not always be apparent to rational understanding, but when received in the heart it provides reliable bearings. In that case, if reason supplies no right answer, it may come from Christ.

Philip, who asked to be shown the Father, was among the first called by Jesus. Even when close by, one may fail to understand the meaning of what is happening nearby; often only at a distance does one see what one had failed to notice. But now the hour has come when the disciple asks for the very thing for which the Teacher came to humanity. We do not know whether the disciple immediately understood the answer; even two thousand years later, not everyone hears and accepts it. It is hard to understand how the Son's unity with the Father comes about, and hard also to grasp what our unity with the Son of God should be in its fullness. Yet it is precisely unity with Him, and through Him with the Father, that makes it possible to do works like His and greater than these.

Apparently, Jesus' disciples were completely unprepared for what would happen in the Garden of Gethsemane, for the arrest of their Teacher. According to the other Evangelists, they all scattered at the moment of His arrest. The only exception was Peter, who tried to resist and took up a sword. Jesus stops him — and it is then that everyone except two, Peter and John, runs away. Why was this? Only a short time before, they had all sworn that they would not abandon the Teacher. Yet only Peter tried to keep his promise.

The explanation for what was happening, however, is quite plain, and is linked precisely to the messianic ideas that the apostles shared with most of their contemporaries of the same faith. They shared them despite their Teacher's words. Whatever He said, the disciples remained certain: an uprising and a great messianic war lay ahead. They probably imagined it as something like the war of the Maccabees, still remembered by everyone, but on a larger scale and probably with more miraculous events, such as the appearance of angelic armies. What they certainly did not expect was the arrest of their Teacher.

Especially not an arrest like the one that took place — foolish and inept, from their point of view. It was a catastrophe. The leader had been seized before he could do anything, the uprising had been crushed before it was born; it was all over before it had begun. The most resolute among them tried to do at least something, but the Teacher Himself stopped him. What did it all mean? It was impossible to understand. The Teacher seemed simply to have surrendered to the authorities. Why? To what end? They did not know. One thing was clear: they had nothing more to do at His side; He no longer needed them, since He had abandoned all His plans.

And the disciples scatter to save themselves, as the participants in a failed conspiracy or an abortive uprising often do, or soldiers of a defeated army who understand that further resistance is pointless. In what was happening at Gethsemane, the apostles saw only defeat and nothing more. Jesus understands this perfectly. More than that: He knows beforehand that it will be so. His disciples' behavior came as no surprise to Him. He is even glad that they have all scattered. He knew that at that moment no greater understanding of the situation could be expected of them. And the last thing He needed was for them to resist.

He was probably rather glad that matters had gone no further than Peter's one attempt. The main thing at that moment was to keep all the disciples safe, so that none of them would die needlessly in an attempt to start a wholly unnecessary war. So that none of them would be arrested: that would have done nothing to help Him. Only deep, concentrated prayer could have helped Him — but that was precisely the kind of prayer of which the disciples were then completely incapable. Jesus remains alone.

What might Jesus' arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane have looked like? It was probably not very different from other such arrests and “security operations”: a cohort led by an officer, a crowd armed with pikes, darkness, the disciples' pitiful attempts at resistance, their dejection, confusion, and flight... But in the eyes of the evangelist John, who sees the events of the Savior's earthly life in their true spiritual dimension, even at this moment He does not cease to be the King of the universe, the Word through whom all things were created. He speaks the sacred Name revealed to Moses at the burning bush in the wilderness, “I am,” at which the guards fall to the ground in sacred dread. He commands them with authority to let the disciples go and orders Peter to put away his sword and not hinder Him from fulfilling His sacred ministry: drinking the cup offered to Him by the Father. As we shall see, John clearly perceives Jesus' divine dignity even in the most terrible moments, when the shameful interrogation, beatings, and execution become, for the apostle enlightened by faith, the hour of the Messiah's triumph.

Today we read a passage from the prayer of the Lord Jesus Christ, which He offered during His final conversation with the disciples. It was largely on the words of this prayer that the fathers of the First Ecumenical Council based their faith and ours in the consubstantiality of the Father and the Son. The Lord speaks of His glory, which He had before the world existed, that is, from eternity. Therefore, the fathers of the Council argued, the Arians are wrong to think that the Son is lower than the Father, that He is a creature. Addressing the Father with the words "all Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine," the Lord speaks of the fullness of His authority, and this too serves as an argument for our faith in the equality and equal honor of the Father and the Son.

It would seem that after seventeen centuries the dispute that then shook the Church has become the property of history. But in the true doctrine formulated at the Council, in the victory of Nicene theology, we see the fulfillment of Christ's promise that the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church. In addition, in our time various near-Christian sects include people with Arian tendencies, so the acts of the fathers of the First Council have by no means lost their relevance.

In the Gospel passage itself, the most important words for us are perhaps Christ's words about what eternal life is. Because of historical circumstances, we have become accustomed to an idea of eternal life that comes from Hellenic mythology. In European culture we imagine paradise as a place where the souls of the dead enjoy bliss among flowers and innocent pleasures. And little cupids fly about... This sanatorium of the Olympian gods is a pleasant picture for a vacation, but to be stuck there forever would be endlessly boring.

This picture is completely foreign to the Bible, including the New Testament. The Lord Jesus Christ formulates the essence of eternal life this way: "And this is eternal life, that they know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent." To know God: this is the chief condition of life. To know Christ: this is what transfigures any existence, even the most miserable, building paradise out of it. That is why half-starved hermits freezing in the forests of Northern Rus' or languishing from heat in the deserts of Egypt are already in paradise, living eternal life. That is why eternal life is available to everyone who knows God and does His will. It is fundamentally important that the eternal life of which Christ speaks is open to us right now, not sometime later, after death.

Jesus’ prayer, His address to the Father, like His entire earthly ministry, also becomes a testimony to the Kingdom. First of all, of course, this applies to His words about His glorification of the Father and His glorification by the Father. If we remember that in biblical language glory signifies a theophany or God’s presence, these words fully describe the meaning of the Savior’s earthly ministry as it is revealed to Him Himself. As is evident from Jesus’ words, the principal task of His earthly ministry was to glorify the Father, to reveal to the world the Kingdom that belongs wholly to Him and that He opens to the world through His Son. For it to be opened to the world completely and in its fullness, it had to become an organic part of this world, and therefore the One through whom it was revealed also had to become an organic part of it. This is why the Messiah, bearing in Himself the whole fullness of the Kingdom, also had to be born into the world as every human being is born into it, and to live the same human life that every human being lives in it. During His earthly ministry, His human nature was not even to be revealed to the world in its transformed state, for then it would already have been partly alien to the world that was not yet transformed. The only thing that could not be present in it was sin, for sin is incompatible with the Kingdom. Now the moment when His earthly journey would be completed was already near, and with it drew near the time when the Father would glorify the Son. The moment was coming when the Kingdom that the Son had brought into the world was to begin revealing itself within it, and the first step on this path was the triumph of the Kingdom in the Son through His overcoming of death, which has no place in the Kingdom, just as sin has no place there. The Son’s chief concern is for those whom He leaves in the world as inhabitants of His Kingdom. For they were, in essence, to become not simply continuers of His work but, in a certain sense, His own continuation in the world, so that the completion of His earthly ministry would not become the end of the history of the Kingdom entering the world. This required unity: the unity of the Father with the Son and the unity of the Savior’s disciples and followers with Him. It is this unity that forms the foundation of the Kingdom in our world, which is being transformed but has not yet been fully transformed.

Preparing to leave this world, Jesus prays for those who remain. This is understandable: Christianity is inseparable from the person of Christ Himself. Christianity is not a new religion, not a new theology, not a new morality; it is new life. It is precisely this life that Jesus speaks about, and it is precisely this life that He opened to those who became His disciples. Christianity is, after all, the state of being a disciple of Christ: Christians (that is, messianists) was once the name given only to some of His disciples in one specific city, and only later did all His followers adopt this name for themselves.

Yet Christianity is a very special discipleship. Usually a teacher trains disciples in a craft, techniques, practices - something that, when the training is complete, can become an inseparable possession of the disciple. This applies to any learning: from mastering a craft under an experienced craftsman to training in spiritual and ascetic practices under masters of such practices. With Christ everything is different. Jesus, praying, says that He has revealed the Father's name to His disciples.

The main thing, however, lies elsewhere: in the life to which He has joined them. Yet one is inseparable from the other, because among believing Yahwists the sacred name of God was always connected with theophany and communion with God. To know the sacred name meant to know God Himself in the dynamic reality of one's relationship with Him. To become the embodied name meant to become God's person absolutely, to the very end - to the extent that human nature allows.

To the end and in fullness, this was achieved in human history by only one person, Jesus, for He was free from sin from the very beginning. For us, all the rest of humanity, one thing remains: to partake of His life, the life of the Kingdom that He brought into our world, which had separated itself from God by the wall of our sin. Discipleship here is not about learning from Him some skills, techniques, or practices (even spiritual or ascetic ones), but about learning a new life. It is about acquiring a new quality of one's own life, because new life becomes real for us only when it becomes ours. It is about learning to abide in the newly acquired life, to preserve it - to preserve it as a state, because this new life cannot become our property, even an acquired one, at least not at the earthly stage of our path. And only then, if we manage to solve this minimum task, will we be able to call ourselves true disciples of our Teacher: disciples for whom the Kingdom and its life are not merely words.

"I am the way and the truth and the life." That is how these words sound, in a way unfamiliar to our ear. We are more accustomed to "I am the way, the truth, and the life"; then it would be a list of coordinate terms, each of which could be moved into first place. See Fr. Georgy Chistyakov's book Light Shines in the Darkness, chapter 19. Yet such an approach substantially distorts the picture: the word "way" stands at the beginning for a reason, for Christ is the way, and "the expression 'and the truth and the life' has, to use the scholarly term, an explicative character, from the Latin explicatio, explanation" (ibid.).

But it is hard to come to such a conclusion by limiting oneself to an attentive reading of this one phrase alone; it is necessary to turn to the whole New Testament text as a whole. Let us recall the words where the way and life again appear together: "narrow is the gate and narrow the way that leads to life" (Matthew 7:14). The way that leads to life. What sort of way is this? Let us note that here it says "gate and way." But the Lord says, "I am the door; if anyone enters by Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture" (John 10:9).

A door, like a gate, is something one must pass through in order to go out onto a way. But when the way is finished, one must pass through the gate and the door again, for this is the beginning and the end of the way. The Lord is the beginning and the end, but also what lies between them: the way itself. Let us recall another saying: "I know your works. Behold, I have set before you an open door, which no one can shut; you have little strength, and have kept My word, and have not denied My name" (Revelation 3:8). The opened door becomes, as it were, an icon of the Lord, who sends us on the way and waits for our return.

So we have tried to understand the link between "way and life." Now let us turn to the expression "way and truth." The word "truth" (like the words "to do," "works of God," "light," "hour," and some others) is key for the Gospel of John and does not occur in the synoptic text. First of all we must recall a fragment of the prologue: "for the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ" (John 1:17). It is not He Himself who is truth, as one could think if the words in the phrase we are considering were separated by commas; rather, truth came through Him. And although neither the Greek nor the Latin originals contain this etymological connection, in Russian the word proiskhodit, "comes forth," has the same root as khodit, "to walk," and one can walk only by one way or another.

In mathematics, the equality of two sets can be proved this way: first it is shown that all the elements of the first set belong to the second, and then the reverse - all the elements of the second belong to the first. And it turns out that this mechanism applies far beyond mathematics. As we read today in the Gospel, Jesus Himself uses it, saying: "I am in the Father and the Father is in Me" (John 14:10).

We do not know why He does not tell the disciples directly that He and the Father are one, since He had already said this publicly (see John 10:30). Perhaps to the people closest to Him He wants not simply to report this as a fact, but also to explain why it is so. This is enough for our understanding of how the Father and the Son can be one: everything one does is done through the other and in the other. If we try to penetrate fully and lay out "on shelves" the mechanism of the inner unity of our God, nothing may come of it. The Lord asks us simply to believe that it is so. And if we cannot, then simply to look at what Christ does and in this recognize the Father (see John 14:11).

It turns out that the Ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ did not complete God's plan for our salvation, but opened a new stage in the spiritual history of the world. And the Lord speaks to us about this in today's reading from the Gospel of John. "I will send you another Comforter, the Spirit of truth."

He speaks of such nearness of God as we are unable to imagine and could not have expected. The Spirit of God Himself, whom the world does not see and does not know, will be not only with us but also in us. The Lord says that the Spirit, the Comforter, will guide us into all truth; therefore we will no longer be alone in our search for God, but He Himself will lead us to Himself. And another name of the Spirit of God is the Spirit of life, the life-giving Spirit, as our Creed calls Him. He creates in us life that never ends, never grows poor, and never ceases.

At the Last Supper, Jesus tries, for the last time during His earthly ministry and in as much detail as possible, to explain to His disciples what the Kingdom He has brought into the world is. And they struggle to understand Him: even after the Resurrection, their ideas about the Kingdom remained practically the same as those of their contemporaries. He tells them that there is room for everyone in the Father's house, while they are probably imagining a magnificent palace in an earthly kingdom, perhaps even miraculously appearing out of nowhere, where there really will be room for all their Teacher's followers—and, of course, for themselves too. He tells them: you know where I am going, meaning that they have already seen and know what the Kingdom is, for they have spent more than a day with Him, and He has spoken to them more than once of the death that awaits Him, as well as of the resurrection that will follow. Yet they probably still think that He intends to leave and go into hiding so that He can prepare in secret for that final messianic war which, they were sure, was about to begin, and in which they themselves would have to take the most direct and immediate part. And they also long, at last, to see God face to face. For afterwards, after the victory, the new Kingdom founded by their Teacher will undoubtedly be the Kingdom of God Himself, and they, as their Teacher's closest disciples, will at last see the God He calls His Father as closely as He Himself sees Him. If only they could see His Father right now, before the final, hardest war, and before the victory! There would be nothing more to wish for; then even dying would hold no terror, for after such an encounter there would be no doubt left about their own resurrection. But He speaks in riddles again; He says: whoever has seen Me has seen the Father. And again there is bewilderment: Who, then, is He, after all? Where is His Kingdom? And how will all the things He speaks of come about? The Last Supper is full of riddles and bewilderment. And no wonder: Jesus' disciples have not yet understood the main thing. And the evangelists were candid enough to describe the situation as it was at the time, without embellishing anything. So that we too, as we read these lines, would understand: apostles are not born, they become apostles. And not all at once. And only by grace.

Every branch that bears fruit, the Father prunes so that it may bear more fruit. Jesus says that the disciples have already been cleansed through the word He preached, and now the task is to abide in Him.

Something within us constantly strives for independence, and this is normal, since God created us free. But when we begin seeking freedom from Him, sooner or later we receive it, and then it turns out that without the Living Vine we perish and dry up.

Most often, however, we exist like a cracked branch that still appears connected to the vine and receives nourishment from it, but the connection is weak and there is not enough sap. It depends on our choice whether it breaks off completely or is grafted back into the vine.

We are called to abide in the vine because, when separated from it, the branches are cut off from the source of life and quickly wither. The branches are free to break away, but they themselves will gain nothing from it. None of the branches grafted into this vine can remain fruitless. The Gardener calls us to bear fruit precisely because He constantly prunes the branches and enables them to do so—each branch according to its own measure, and there is no need to be troubled that each has a different measure. But if we refuse to bear fruit and intend to settle comfortably on the vine without making any effort, we will fall away from it. We are warned that in that case we will be cast out and wither. In fact, we will begin withering even before visibly separating from the vine, for a branch that has not completely broken off but is separating inwardly already deprives itself of life-giving sap.

It is no accident that fallen vine branches are used as a symbol of spiritual barrenness. Once cut off, their weakness when dry makes them unsuitable for use in objects such as baskets or fences. Even as fuel they are inferior to other branches: they burn quickly and give little heat...

Today's reading lets us see the foundation of what is, properly speaking, called Christianity. Jesus tells His disciples: I am the vine, and My Father is the vinedresser (v. 1). The image of the vineyard was already a symbol of the messianic Kingdom among the ancient prophets. And by calling Himself the vine, Jesus bears witness to Himself as the spiritual core of this Kingdom. This is not about some new religion of the Kingdom founded by Jesus. The vine is not a teaching and not a religion, but Jesus Himself. He is the One who brought the Kingdom into the world, and if it can exist, it is only because He will continue to remain its center and support. Jesus carries in Himself the fullness of God, and therefore also the fullness of the Kingdom, which is inseparable from His Person. In philosophical language, this is an ontological unity; it cannot be destroyed. And the Father truly is the vinedresser, for it is His power that gives life to the Kingdom, and Jesus reveals His fullness to the world (John 14:8-11).

Christianity, then, is life in the Kingdom, life inseparable from the life of Jesus Himself, who compares His disciples to the branches of the vine (vv. 4-5). This, properly speaking, is Christianity in the Gospel sense of the word: living one life with Christ in His Kingdom. As we can see, one can speak of Christianity only when the life of Christ's followers is as inseparable from the life of the Savior as the life of the Savior Himself is inseparable from the life of the Father. The unity of the Kingdom is determined not by a shared teaching, religion, or morality, but by a shared life.

And life depends on the sincerity and trust of the relationship between Jesus and those who seek the Kingdom. That is why, as we can see, those entering it need the cleansing by the word that Jesus mentions when He tells the disciples about the Kingdom (v. 3). To be a Christian means, properly speaking, to live the life of the Kingdom. All the other elements of Christian tradition are needed only for this "cleansing by the word"; they are only the means needed so that the words Jesus once spoke may sound again and again, becoming a guide for new generations seeking the Kingdom.

There can be no other Christianity by definition: Jesus Himself points to Himself with complete clarity as the only foundation of the Kingdom, and therefore of the Church. Any alternative is, in the Savior's language, the alternative of a "withered branch," doomed to destruction (vv. 4-6).

And this is no surprise: in the untransformed world that lies in evil, there is nothing that can give life to the person seeking the Kingdom. The world is vast, but there is only one Source of life in it. Whether to accept Him or reject Him is something each person decides.

Before going to His death, Jesus speaks the most important words to His disciples. He reveals the very essence of what it means to be His disciple. Each of us is called to be a branch on the vine, and therefore to be directly connected with Christ and nourished by life-giving sap, as happens in a plant. If a flower is cut from its stem, however beautiful it may be, it will inevitably wither. In the same way, a person who has lost his connection with God loses life and is unable to bear fruit.

There are many indications in the Gospel that this connection with the Lord is realized through His Word. Here Jesus once again addresses the apostles and all of us, saying that “the words that abide in you” are a necessary condition for fruit to appear and for the whole branch to remain alive. If this condition is met, even the most incredible things become possible; then, “ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.”

Speaking of the word by which He has cleansed His disciples, Jesus again bears witness to Himself as the living Torah. After all, it was precisely the words of the Torah that people in those days said cleansed a person. Of course, this did not mean memorizing the text of the Pentateuch and repeating it in the hope that the repetition itself would free the one repeating it from all sins. Although there were many people in those days, as indeed there are today, who really did know the Pentateuch by heart among the Jews.

But the point was not to memorize the Pentateuch by heart, but to allow God's commandment to change one's life. First inwardly, and then outwardly as well. The commandment was viewed not simply as some legal or even moral norm, but as a direct revelation of God's will. As God's intention directed toward the human being. It had to be accepted as such, and one's own life had to be built in accordance with it. One's human intentions had to be brought into accord with God's. In those days this was called the inner Torah. The very Torah that cleansed a person. Because it truly became the living word of God, which could cleanse. And Jesus speaks of the cleansing power of His words. Thereby He affirms that every word of His is the word of God. But cleansing through the word alone proves insufficient. One must also preserve an essential unity with Christ; otherwise full life in the Kingdom is impossible. Essential means the kind of unity in which one lives one life with Him.

Like shoots on a grapevine: normal life is possible for them only as long as they remain united with that vine. Yet participation alone is not enough: the same life must also continue in the shoot itself. Dry shoots, like dry branches on trees, are not needed; they are only a burden for the tree or for the vine. It is not enough to be near Jesus and share in His life, not enough to experience the breath of the Kingdom as reality; one must also become oneself a vessel and bearer of this life and this breath.

Of course, the breath of the Kingdom that blows over a person changes him, and a meeting with Christ does not pass without leaving a trace. But if after all this a person does not change inwardly, does not become, in Paul's words, a "temple of the Holy Spirit," a place where the Spirit dwells, then one can say that all the meetings were in vain and the whole experience was wasted. The inner Torah is necessary for a Christian precisely so that what is received in meetings with Christ and in the experience of the Kingdom does not leak out of his soul like water through a sieve. Only in this twofold unity of the Law, the inner Torah, and grace is the life of the Kingdom possible: not episodic and accidental, but full.

Speaking of the word by which He cleansed His disciples, Jesus again bears witness to Himself as the living Torah. It was precisely about the words of the Torah in those days that people said they cleanse a person. The point, of course, was not to memorize the text of the Pentateuch and repeat it in the hope that the repetition itself would free the one repeating it from all sins. Although among Jews there were many people in those days, as there are today, who truly knew the Pentateuch by heart.

But the point was not to memorize the Pentateuch, but to let God's commandment change one's life. First the inner life, and then the outer one. The commandment was seen not simply as some legal or even moral norm, but as the direct revelation of God's will. As God's intention addressed to a person. It had to be accepted as such, and one's own life had to be built in accordance with it. One had to bring one's human intentions into agreement with God's. In those days this was called the inner Torah. The very one that cleansed a person. Because it truly became the living word of God, which could cleanse. And Jesus speaks of the cleansing power of His words. By this He affirms that every word of His is the word of God. But cleansing through the word alone proves insufficient. One must also preserve essential unity with Christ; otherwise full life in the Kingdom is impossible. Essential unity means the kind in which one lives one life with Him.

Like shoots on a grapevine: normal life for them is possible only as long as they remain united with that vine. Yet participation alone is not enough; that same life must also continue in the shoot itself. Dry shoots, like dry branches on trees, are not needed; they are only a burden for the tree or for the vine. It is not enough to be near Jesus and share in His life, not enough to experience the breath of the Kingdom as reality. One must also become a vessel and bearer of this life and this breath.

Of course, both the breath of the Kingdom that surrounds a person and the encounter with Christ change him, and neither passes without a trace. But if after all this the person does not change inwardly and does not himself become, in Paul's words, a "temple of the Holy Spirit," a place where the Spirit abides, then one can say that all the encounters came to nothing and the whole experience was wasted. This is why the Christian needs the inner Torah: so that what is received in encounters with Christ and in the experience of the Kingdom does not run out of his soul like water through a sieve. Only in this twofold unity of the Law (the inner Torah) and grace is the life of the Kingdom possible: not episodic and accidental, but full.

Before going to His death, Jesus speaks the most important words to His disciples. He reveals the very essence of what it means to be His disciple. Each of us is called to be a branch on the vine, and therefore to be directly connected with Christ and nourished by life-giving sap, as happens in a plant. If a flower is cut from its stem, however beautiful it may be, it will inevitably wither. In the same way, a person who has lost his connection with God loses life and is unable to bear fruit.

There are many indications in the Gospel that this connection with the Lord is realized through His Word. Here Jesus once again addresses the apostles and all of us, saying that “the words that abide in you” are a necessary condition for fruit to appear and for the whole branch to remain alive. If this condition is met, even the most incredible things become possible; then, “ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.”

The vineyard, the vine — ancient Old Testament symbols of Israel (Isa. 5:1-7; Ps. 79:9). Jesus Himself also uses these images in His parables (Matt. 20:1-16; 21:28-46). And now, speaking with His disciples alone, He reveals to them the mystery of their new calling — gathered around Him for the messianic meal, they join themselves to the true vine, to the One who is the real Chosen One, forming a new people. Their belonging to the true religion, the true people — to everything claimed by all the "orthodox," "patriots," and "true believers" — is now determined not by nationality, not by confession, not by any orientation, but only by whether they "abide" in Jesus, live His life, and bear His fruit...

How important it is for us that Jesus says these words: "Let not your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me" (John 14:1). First of all, it becomes clear that the Lord knows we can be troubled and doubtful. He does not say that this is bad; but the fact that He calls us not to be troubled means that there is something better for the human heart: joy, rejoicing, peace, and all of this is given to us as the fruit of faith.

This is precisely why the Lord calls us to believe, overcoming trouble and doubt by faith. True, this does not mean that joy and peace will come to us immediately, because God expects faith from us regardless of what is happening around us and longs for our steadfastness. Therefore verse 1 of today's passage can be received as a motto for life, suggested by God Himself.

Reading today's passage from the Gospel of John, one wants, following Pilate and his question "What is truth?" (John 18:38), to ask: what is eternal life?

And indeed, it is hard to count the people who have ever been occupied by this question. Only God, who knows even the number of stars in the sky, can do that. And in answer to this question Jesus will answer us today with the words: "And this is eternal life, that they know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent" (John 17:3).

He may not say them directly to us, but we can hear them, like Jesus' disciples, in His conversation with the Father. Through the Holy Spirit, people are shown the Lord's desire that every person come to Him and enter into a relationship of love with Him. And in these very words one can see that this desire fills the Trinity: the desire that every person "know" the true God and Jesus Christ whom He sent.

Speaking of His glorification, Jesus expresses briefly and concisely the essence of the Kingdom He has brought into the world. It is, of course, in no way connected with any earthly state. Jesus had no intention of becoming an earthly king. The essence of His Kingdom lies elsewhere. Anyone who comes to share in it receives eternal life. Not in the sense of a dreary earthly existence stretching on endlessly, but in the sense of the fullness that distinguishes the Kingdom.

The fullness of all possible spaces and times. But above all, the fullness of that breath of God, that breath of life which the fallen world does not know. This breath does, of course, penetrate the fallen world as well, but with difficulty and only to a small degree. Not because anything is beyond God's reach, but because His breath, the breath of the Kingdom, and the evil in which the fallen world lies are incompatible.

In the Kingdom, however, there is no such evil. And to enter it, it turns out that only one thing is needed: a relationship with God and with the Messiah He has sent. With Christ. These relationships make a person part of the Kingdom. The very Kingdom whose King is the Messiah. The Kingdom is not a place, a territory or a space, but relationships. The relationships of its inhabitants with one another. Their relationships with God and with Christ. And finally, Christ's own relationship with His heavenly Father.

Within these relationships is the Kingdom. The glory that glorifies in the world the One who brought the Kingdom into the world. And with Him, those who help Him in this. For every inhabitant of the Kingdom also brings it into the world. By the very fact of sharing in its life. If, of course, they do share in it. But if they do not, there is no Christianity either. At least not the Christianity of which the Gospel speaks. For this Christianity is not a new religion or a new morality, but a new life. That very life of the Kingdom.

It is this life that glorifies both the King Himself and His subjects. Glorifies them not in the sense of any particular fame among people, but in the sense of the manifestation of God's glory. And in the Bible, God's glory is His presence. That real presence, contact with which changes both the human being and even the very nature of the world that has not yet been transfigured. Changes it so that the world becomes part of the Kingdom. Becomes wholly transparent to God's transfiguring action. And at the end of time, with the Saviour's return, it appears different. New. A new earth beneath a new heaven.

When telling His disciples about the Kingdom, Jesus more than once mentioned its organic incompatibility with the untransfigured world. This, and nothing else, is how He explains the persecutions that will become the inevitable companion of Christians throughout the Church's historical path. What, then, proves to be such an unbearable rebuke to the world, provoking such a violent reaction in response?

First of all, of course, the witness that the "prince of this world" has already been judged. Perhaps if the point were precisely the devil, dark powers, or the forces of evil, there would not be such a sharp reaction to this witness. But the point is the "prince of this world," and therefore the entire order of things existing in the world. Even the righteous who follow the Torah are justified in it not because they are part of this world, but because, and only insofar as, being righteous and following the Torah, they already do not belong to it. The world would like to appropriate to itself everything good that sometimes happens in it contrary to its own nature, and to wash its hands of all the evil that it itself produces by virtue of that nature. But the Kingdom, entering the world, bears witness to the world's true nature, corrupted by sin, thereby provoking the fury of the forces of this world: the fury of a villain whose mask has been publicly torn off.

An additional irritant is the reminder of the One whom the world would like to forget, but of whom it is constantly reminded. No, of course, if the world were reminded of Jesus as, for example, some great theologian, religious reformer, or, at worst, a teacher of morality, this would still be bearable: after all, He is not the first and not the last. But He is pointed to as Someone unique and unrepeatable, who in addition has no desire at all to take account of the world or of its weaknesses and sins.

As we see, the conflict is caused by the very essence of the differences that separate the Kingdom from the world mired in evil. No wonder it will last until the end of time, only becoming sharper with the years.

As the day of Pentecost approaches, it is necessary to listen closely to Christ's words about the coming of the Holy Spirit, so that we do not deprive ourselves of His gifts of grace. Two things are fundamentally important for us. First, that the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, will convict the world concerning sin, righteousness, and judgment. This means that in the coming of the Spirit we will see all this; these things will become evident, will become visible. In the power of the Holy Spirit the Church will know that sin is unbelief in Christ, that righteousness is His Resurrection, and that judgment is His victory over evil.

And the second thing we need so much is guidance into all truth. The Lord says that we will no longer wander through life like blind kittens, not knowing or understanding where life is and where death is. The Holy Spirit will guide us, and in Him we will know the truth and be able to live and move toward God. This is precisely the chief and so necessary gift of the Spirit.

The idea that the Lord has His own pedagogical principles, incomprehensible to us, was thought up long ago and not by us. The famous words spoken by God through the prophet Isaiah are exactly about this: "My thoughts are not your thoughts" (Isa. 55:8). He, the ruler of time, has His own time for everything. He knows exactly when His disciples should learn and understand something.

At times His words can appear to contradict one another: "I did not come to bring peace, but a sword" (Matt. 10:34) and "I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world" (John 12:46). But what we try to perceive from our point of view may be something entirely different for God. And therefore He, one may say, cares for us tenderly, watches over us, and waits for the moment when it will be best for us to hear His word, so that we can receive it (see John 16:12).

But it often happens that Christ's words are given to us "in advance," for the future. The Lord knows that we cannot understand everything right away, but all the same He generously shares His Word with us: His life. And it does not matter to Him that it will take us a great deal of time for the meaning of what He said to reach us, first the mind, then the heart. He still speaks to us, so that later on this soil the Holy Spirit will grow something new (see John 16:13).

Jesus compares His listeners to branches on a grapevine, and not to fruitless branches, which are cut off, but to fruitful branches that the vinedresser must cleanse from pests, from growths and scars that take away the sap. The Lord says that the word He preached has brought His disciples such cleansing.

What does He mean? Perhaps that His word, His preaching, builds in a person a clear dominant focus, an awareness of the meaning of life and its direction. A word can crush, but it can also heal. The word of Christ, if it is heard and accepted, gives a person inner wholeness; it becomes in him an active power that allows him to bring joy and light into the world, for it is a word about God's love for us and about our love, a word about salvation and eternal life.

The image of the vine is astonishing in how much it tells us about relations with God. And all this comes from the mouth of Jesus Himself. How wonderful it is to understand that you are not alone in this world: everything that happens to you comes from God. And He also gives the strength to accept it, just as the vine nourishes the branches. Besides, there is also the Vinedresser, attentively watching over His vineyard (see Jn. 15:1-2). It is enough to imagine the caring hands of the vinedresser, everything he does, tying up and cleansing each branch, in order to understand how God cares for us. The branches need only be aware that they are branches, not trying to become the vine, and accept the Father's care.

Speaking of His relationship with the disciples, Jesus constantly emphasizes the essential unity that binds them to Him. Moreover, He likens His relationship with His disciples to His relationship with the Father. For Jesus, these are evidently the very same relationship. Or another side of His relationship with His heavenly Father. They are, as it were, two components of the same spiritual process, which forms the spiritual foundation of the Kingdom. And it is precisely Jesus' disciples who remain in the world who constitute the boundary of the Kingdom in the fallen world. It is in them that Jesus is glorified as King of His Kingdom. But this glorification is possible only insofar as they are ‘not of the world’.

Insofar as they belong entirely to their Teacher and His heavenly Father. Not in the sense of a unity of views, but in the sense of a unity of life. That very life of the Kingdom which Jesus bears within Himself in all its fullness. And which He imparted to all of them except one — the one who rejected it himself. Rejected it by rejecting Him. But this is a person's free choice. Those who chose Him faced a new task: to preserve what they had received. Not by withdrawing from the fallen world, but by remaining in it. Yet without giving a place in their hearts and their lives to the evil in which the fallen world lies. Otherwise their lives have no meaning.

If they had all departed, leaving this world, the Kingdom would have departed with them. The Saviour's work would have remained unfinished. But if they had given the evil of this world a place in their lives, His work would simply have failed: for the Kingdom was to enter, and did enter, this world in purity and fullness, without mingling with it or with the evil in which it lies. This does not mean, of course, that an unbridgeable gulf separates the world and the Kingdom, but there is certainly a boundary between them. And the world can cross this boundary only by undergoing a qualitative change.

By becoming different not in its nature, but in the sense of being freed from the power of evil and sin. Of course, in the Kingdom the very nature of the world also changes. But these changes can take place only after the world has been cleansed of evil. That is why Jesus prays to the Father for His disciples, asking Him to keep them from evil rather than take them out of the world. He prays for them as those who will continue what He has begun. Continue it by becoming people of the Kingdom who remain in this world. Those through whom the Kingdom will continue its entry into the world.

The last two lines of today's passage from the Gospel of John read as one, as something similar and repeated. But in the words "If you ask anything in My name, I will do it" (John 14:14) there is what appears to be a small difference: it does not say of whom we may ask anything in Jesus' name. We can ask anyone: relative or stranger, acquaintance or unknown person, evil or good. And despite this, He says that He will do it. The main thing is that the request be in His name.

And a person who, without embarrassment, openly pronounces the name of his Lord, without being sure that the one listening will understand him, trusts God. And his faith is strong. According to this faith the Lord does what we ask.

Jesus says that His departure, the completion of His earthly path, is not the end at all. It is only the beginning. The beginning of the process that can be called the Kingdom's entry into the world. His Kingdom. And the Kingdom of His Father. That is why the unveiling of the fullness of this Kingdom is connected with His departure. And the point here is not that He has to disappear in order to make room for someone else. It is simply that the Kingdom, as it enters the world, becomes ever fuller. More spacious. Deeper. It is this depth that the apostles begin to sense at the Ascension.

He disappears into the depth of His Kingdom. Into a depth the apostles had not known before because they had not noticed it. Now they have begun to notice it. But Jesus warns His disciples ahead of time. And the point is not that the divine breath, the Spirit of whom He speaks, replaces Him for the apostles. The point is something else. It is to follow Him. To follow the Messiah. To follow the King of His Kingdom. But to do that, one must first enter this Kingdom. Become a partaker of it. Simply being physically near Jesus is not enough. It is the same with the Kingdom: one can be in its presence, so to speak, on the territory of the Kingdom, and not notice it. And in order to notice it, one must make room for it within oneself.

His breath, which is also the breath of God. Then one will be able to see in Jesus that very King. Otherwise one can stand beside Him and have no relation at all to His real life. And what use is such standing nearby? That is why Jesus says that it is better for Him to go now. He must complete His earthly path. He must rise from the dead and continue this path already in the fullness of the Kingdom. He must bring this Kingdom into the world. In short, He must finish completely everything for which He came. And for His disciples this will truly be better.

Although to them it may seem otherwise. They want to be near the Teacher. But the Teacher wants to bring them into His Kingdom, to make them partakers of the fullness of the life by which He Himself lives. He wants them to feel for themselves the breath of God, the breath of the Kingdom, to breathe it in deeply. And for that the apostles must become involved in this spiritual movement of the advancing Kingdom. They must become part of it, just as He Himself is. For the Kingdom will also enter the world through them. Though they themselves do not yet know this: Pentecost still lies ahead of them.

What a strange arrest! Armed people come, Jesus asks, whom they seek, they give His name, and Jesus says: "I am He ", - and they fall to the ground. Apparently, the problem is about Jesus’ words, more concretely about one word, because He said only a single word: "Yahweh".

Let us look in another way. We had the opportunity to hear many times people, trying to understand: "why you consider Jesus as God, if He indeed never called Himself like that?" Here we see that He didn't only called Himself, but even did it more concretely: He used this God's name, which was given at first to Moses (Exodus 3:14), and after tabooed in order to avoid blasphemy. It wasn't even allowed to hear this name - that is why the soldiers fell to the ground. So, the pronunciation of this pious and instructor name in the Jewish doctrine, whom Jesus undoubtedly was, couldn't be a fortuity - it was self-testimony.

And the third consideration. It sometimes seems to the readers of the Bible that there is no feat in the sufferings and in the death of Jesus; He undergoes violence, which is unable to bear easily. But this scene shows that even during the arrest he is master of the situation. His suffering and the cross aren't constrained, but are voluntary. What a love of God towards us, if the One whom only His name paralyzes the enemies, goes unto death without resisting, "like a lamb dumb ", for our salvation.

The eleventh verse from today's Gospel is one of the most important in our life. The Lord calls us to believe Him, to believe His words that He abides in the Father and the Father in Him. At the same time, He knows that at times no words are enough for us to believe... Then He speaks of His works, calling us to believe Him because of the works.

And here the wondrous wisdom and mercy of God are opened before us: Jesus offers us the road of "faith," helping us enter it, if not immediately through faith in His words, then through contemplation of what He does. And if God speaks this way, that is enough for us to believe in Him, and therefore enough for our salvation (see John 5:24).

Is Jesus not too rash in promising the fulfillment of our desires? And what if I desire... well, something improper? But what "improper" thing will I desire if His word truly abides in me? Not in a book on the shelf, not in someone else's sermon, but in me myself? What "improper" thing will my will want if I exist as an organ inside a body whose head, that is, the One who makes the main decisions, is Christ Himself?

When speaking to His disciples about the Kingdom, Jesus constantly calls them to love one another (vv. 9-12, 17). This is unsurprising if we recall that Christianity is nothing other than life in the Kingdom, and therefore life in love. Love, of course, is not the Kingdom's only characteristic. The life of the Kingdom is also the breath of God that permeates it and those manifestations of God's power that accompany Jesus everywhere during His earthly ministry. Yet in our still not fully transformed world, the love characteristic of those who bear the Kingdom seems to be its clearest testimony.

Power, for example, is well known to the untransformed world. Indeed, in a world lying in evil there is sometimes even too much of it. Power can sometimes make people submit, but it cannot make them love. Relationships imposed by force, and therefore involuntary, are unsuitable for the Kingdom. Power in the fallen world will hardly be perceived as an alternative to the existing order. The same could be said of spiritual phenomena in themselves, for the fallen world too knows a peculiar kind of spirituality. The spiritual phenomena characteristic of fallen nature differ qualitatively in essence from the spiritual influences that proceed from the Kingdom, of course, but outwardly they can sometimes look alike, and to someone who sees only the outward appearance the difference may be imperceptible. Thus spirituality in itself does not necessarily mean that an alternative to the laws of this world has appeared.

For such an alternative to appear, everyone must be able not only to see clearly that Christ's disciples and followers possess a certain spirituality, but also to discern what it is. In this respect the witness of the love permeating every relationship in the Kingdom is the best, because mutual love visibly demonstrates to the world precisely what it does not have and what it lacks so greatly. Unlike power and spirituality as such, love can therefore become the alternative to the existing world order that the world both longs for and fears. It fears this alternative because, from the standpoint of the laws of our still untransformed world, relationships of love really are contrary to nature. Both nature and society, which has not moved so very far beyond it, follow different principles, relying on power, advantage, and efficiency.

It is no surprise that those who want to live differently in this world become a foreign body within it (vv. 18-19). But some are prepared at least to try to find an alternative, and so those who live by the laws of the Kingdom will face not only persecution. There will also be people ready to listen to their testimony and follow their path (v. 20). Nevertheless, Christ's disciples and followers should apparently neither try to escape persecution nor hope for their preaching to achieve mass success, for, in Jesus' words, “the servant is not greater than his lord.” Only the testimony is fundamentally important. Everyone decides for himself how to respond to it.

How piercing are the words about the love that lays down “one’s life for one’s friends”... My own response to these words is bewilderment and the realization that this is impossible by human strength, and therefore the recognition that I myself do not love... How greatly must one love in order to die for others? We have only one example before us, the foremost and most important for each of us: Jesus Christ. How greatly He loves every one of us, since He went to death for our sake! And not merely to death, but to torment beyond all bounds, though He was without sin and without guilt. Here lies the most important thing: to look at Him, understanding that only He can love in this way and share this love with those who believe in Him; to rejoice in our salvation, which came through the Lord and His sacrifice, rather than grieve because we ourselves cannot love like this. Then, in us as in many others, He will be able to do something worthy of His name. This is how, for example, He acted through Maximilian Kolbe and Mother Maria, who were in concentration camps and took the place in gas chambers of those who had been condemned to death.

Speaking of love as a new commandment, Jesus first of all requires every Christian to be ready to “lay down his life for his friends.” Usually this is understood as readiness to give up one’s life for friends. Yet the corresponding Greek verb means not “give up,” but precisely “lay down,” “place” — and not “instead of,” but precisely “for the sake of,” “on behalf of” friends. Obviously, this is not about self-sacrifice, or at least not only about it; rather, we should speak of the relationships that bind together people who live by the love with which Jesus loved each person. But what is this love of His, the love of the Kingdom? How does it differ from the love that people knew long before His coming into the world?

First of all, in this: human love has never been complete. It remained only an intention, a relationship, and in this sense it was a spiritual reality. But the environment within which relationships of love existed was natural, psychic: in the fallen state, after all, the human being remained primarily a natural being, and the psyche too is nature, only of a special kind.

Jesus, however, speaks of the love of the Kingdom, that Kingdom where the very environment of communion is not natural but spiritual. There love can be manifested in absolute fullness: in the Kingdom, the relationships and the environment fully correspond to one another. But a person’s life in the Kingdom cannot belong to that person alone.

Jesus Himself explains this simply: whoever wants to keep his life for himself loses it, but whoever gives it to Him and makes it part of the life of His Kingdom preserves it. And preserves it in a fullness that cannot be found in the fallen world. But if this is true of the life of the Kingdom as a whole, it is just as true when the matter concerns the relationship of the inhabitants of the Kingdom to one another: they too never belong only to themselves; their life never is and never can be something isolated, as the life of a person in the untransfigured world can be.

Of course, in the Kingdom too each person lives his own life, not someone else’s. But if the boundaries of this life in the fallen world are often closed to any interaction, in the Kingdom they are always open. There this is safe: since the life of each person is determined by God’s breath, no one abuses this openness as sometimes happens in the fallen world.

And with such openness the possibilities become immense: if necessary, each person can at any moment even completely yield his own living space to another, should the need arise. No unsolvable tasks remain for the inhabitants of the Kingdom, for there are no barriers between them either. And therefore there are no barriers for God’s breath, which unites them. Each person lives a full life, belonging at the same time both to himself and to everyone who wants to share in that fullness and take part in it.

This is the kind of life the Savior commands His disciples to live. In essence, it is Christianity itself.

The Father’s love for the Son is manifested in their inseparable unity, and the Lord invites us to abide in the same love. Are we ready for such love — not even to love in this way ourselves, since it is clear that we are not ready for that, but to receive it from Christ? Receiving love cannot be passive; it demands efforts in response, but do we always respond actively to Christ’s love? Yet even when He receives no response, He continues to love us.

He called the disciples not servants but friends, and not only those who were beside Him, but all whom He called to follow Him. He wants to raise us to a height that is difficult to reach without Him; our heads already begin to spin before the ascent has even started.

But if we are not servants to Him, then we must not be servants to one another either. Yet we want to rule, and so it is hard to accept His gift; we feel compelled to repeat after the disciple: “depart from me, for I am a sinful man.” Christ can, in fact, withdraw if we persistently beg Him to do so; He does not impose Himself by force. But He comes as a liberator, and whoever rejects Him of their own will remains a slave to sin.

In essence, two paths lie before us: to follow Christ, listening to His Word, or to turn away from Him. Jesus calls us, knocks at the doors of our hearts (see Rev. 3:20), and asks: "Abide in My love" (John 15:9). He already loves us, regardless of who we are and how we behave, what we do, whether bad or good. Nothing will separate us from His love (see Rom. 8:35-39).

But even though Love is near, it can be rejected. It can go unseen or be despised, ignored as if it were nothing. But it is there, and it is eternal. That is why the Lord calls us to abide in this love, so that He can give us life, the strength to live, and finally eternity itself - Love itself. Entering into this Love, each of us not only answers the Love of the One who created him, but also enters Eternity, taking part in the work of his own salvation.

That the Lord loves us is a fact that requires no proof; He loves unconditionally, in a way none of us knows how to love. And naturally, when this love remains unanswered on our part, it brings Him no joy. He wants us to respond to His love, although everyone (both He and we) understands that by definition there can be no "worthy" response from us: our love is immeasurably less than His.

And yet He does not lower the bar. He does not say that He, God, must be respected, feared, obeyed, and so on. He says: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind" (Matt 22:37, see Deut 6:5). The question is: how is this possible? How can we reach what He expects from us?

Today Christ Himself gives the answer. An unusual answer. We are used to perceiving rules and ordinances separately, and love and personal relationships separately. For us, say, even in family life these are most often two different areas. But today Jesus shows that this is not so: the one who keeps His commandments is the one who loves Him (see John 14:21).

That is how it is. Everything turns out to be very simple and at the same time very difficult, because loving Him is also a commandment. The result is a closed circle, and only God Himself, who promised that He would reveal Himself to us, helps us understand it. In this we place our hope: He will come to us and teach us everything (see John 14:26).

When telling His disciples about the Kingdom, Jesus describes it by the example of the relations between Himself and His Father, and also between Himself and His disciples. He says to the disciples: if you ask anything of the Father in My name, then I will do what you ask, and if you ask Me anything, I will do it. Thus, as we see, Jesus illustrates His own words that He is in the Father and the Father is in Him. In His presentation, the Kingdom turns out to be, first of all, a spiritual space, the space of the relations that unite Him with the Father and with all His disciples, uniting them in such a way that He becomes the Mediator between His disciples and the Father.

Perhaps this is exactly what Jesus means when He says that His Kingdom is "not of this world." Indeed, the only thing in us that does not depend in any way on the laws of our untransfigured world is our relation to someone or something, for it is determined exclusively by our will, which, unlike the body or the soul, remains free under any circumstances. And if the space of the Kingdom is precisely the space of our relations, then it truly can be completely independent of the laws of the world in which we live.

The only thing that can hinder this is our own fallen nature. After all, the fall became, first of all, the result of a wrong choice, an erroneous decision, and the consequence of such errors is above all the weakening of the will, which in a fallen person tends to submit to the very nature that, in a normal state, it should have governed. The only way out of this situation is the intervention of another will: also human, but not subject to original sin. For the spiritual space of the Kingdom, the will of the Messiah becomes just such a will. That is why He becomes the Mediator between God and His disciples and followers: without His will the Kingdom is impossible; it simply will not be the Kingdom of God in the true sense of the word.

Once the space of relations has been created, it is filled with the breath of God, thanks to which this space can spread wider and wider, including more and more hearts and saving more and more souls, right up to the moment when the Savior's return marks the completion of this process and the full triumph of the Kingdom that transfigures the world.

In the Last Conversation with the disciples, the Lord says two symmetrical things that mark the Christian's path. Like mileposts, these words stand on our road. "Whoever has My commandments," says the Lord, "is the one who loves Me." At the same time He says, "The one who loves Me will keep My commandments." If He had said only the first, it would have made Christianity a religion of law, in principle no different from the Old Covenant. If the Lord had said only the second, then our faith would have depended on elusive movements of the heart, which sinful humanity does not have the strength to control.

But precisely the paradoxical combination of these two, essentially opposite, statements places Christ Himself at the center and opens the possibility of salvation and life for everyone and always. Some of us are more inclined to try to fulfill the Lord's word, and through this we can come to know Him and love Him so that this love transforms the whole person. Others, by contrast, come to know Christ through the word, through the Church, or through any number of other paths, and for love of Him they begin in practical life to try to do what they had never even thought about before.

In the natural sciences there is a concept: a system with autocatalysis. These are systems in which two processes accelerate each other so that uncontrolled growth of the system begins. Explosive and chain reactions happen this way, for example. Combustion in active media happens this way... Perhaps what the Lord offers us is also a system with autocatalysis. Love for Jesus, the desire for communion and unity with Him, changes our life and moves us to fulfill His will. The experience of practical love for people, the experience of keeping the commandments, leads to the point where you can no longer live a single day without Jesus. And the result is autocatalytic, "uncontrolled" growth of the Kingdom of Heaven in your heart.

The words we read today, “Whoever has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and the one who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will reveal Myself to him,” are wonderful, kind, saving words. We often forget this, carried away by self-punishing repentance. In fact, repentance is joy, for obedience is love. When the Lord tells His disciples what to do, they are amazed; it seems impossible to them. “When the disciples heard this, they were very astonished and said, ‘Then who can be saved?’” (Matt 19:25) It is hard to explain to a three-year-old child that his mother does not give him another sweet not because she is greedy or unkind, but because it would harm him. And sometimes it is simply impossible to explain to someone who has not found God how good it is to heed God’s commandments and obey them. Only as we grow into full maturity do we come to this, and only then do we finally understand what true love is: love that desires not for itself, but for the beloved. Yet when one reaches this point, when the heart already seems so full of love that everything within is burning and one is ready to go through fire and water for another person, even to the scaffold... at some point one discovers that love has run dry. Everyone goes through this. Juan de la Cruz called this state “the dark night of the soul.” But this happens only so that we may understand that God alone is the source of love, and that we love not because we are so kind and wonderful, but because He gives it. For, as our poet so beautifully said, “and sympathy is given to us as grace is given to us” (F. Tyutchev).

We all know that Jesus came into this world and became human. And that means the Lord came to know all the weaknesses of our bodily existence; He experienced for Himself what it is to thirst and hunger, to freeze and languish from heat, to suffer and to take pleasure in tasty food. And all this was so that no person could reproach Him: "You are my God, who sent me into this cruel world, but You Yourself have not experienced everything that I have had to experience!" We have the opportunity to look at Jesus, to see how He teaches, interacts with the disciples, breaks bread, and suffers. And most often some very, very serious image appears before us. But this means that we do not see everything, or do not want to see it; it is simpler and somehow more proper for us, perhaps, to see God in exactly that way.

And yet the Lord is a God who rejoices. And He rejoices not merely in some material things, as is characteristic of all of us, but with perfect joy. He Himself speaks of this joy in addressing the Father and asks for such joy for all of us as well (see John 17:13). He rejoices that He is one with the Father and is going to Him. And this means that our joy too will be perfect precisely when He Himself, with His joy, comes to us and makes His dwelling with us (see John 14:23).

In this passage Jesus once again says that His followers, like Himself, are “not of the world.” Christians are called to live according to the Beatitudes, which do not fit at all with customary notions of earthly success. What the Lord calls us to does not guarantee universal recognition, wealth, or prosperity. Here He speaks of an entirely different reward—His “perfect joy,” for the sake of which the Lord “consecrates Himself.” He goes to the sacrifice of the Cross so that we may be bearers of joy in this world that rejects Him.

Jesus' disciples are called to live in this difficult world without trying to avoid everything that does not correspond to their ideas of what is right. How often, when we encounter something unchristian, do we try not to see it and ask God to remove it from our field of vision. Yet Christ clearly prayed to the Father not that He take us out of the world, but that He “keep us from evil.”

The faith, Jesus speaks about is similar to an exploit. He looks like a common person, He moves as a common person. He speaks - as an exceptional person, but all the same as a person. And He proposes us to believe He is in God, and God - in Him. That is, if a later theological terminology is used, than He is God-Man. It is as much as to jump a two and a half meter height - it is possible in theory, but we meet few people who can make such a jump!

We can't say Jesus doesn't understand this. That is why He uses the expression: "or else", - that is, if we do not succeed to believe in what He says, then believe "for the very works sake ". Jesus is Himself in His works all the time superior to human capacities - in His righteousness, His commitment, His love to God and to the men, in the realization of miracles... An open-minded vision of His works can prompt to faith (trust) in Him, and that will already be a small step towards the faith in Him.

In this passage the Lord reveals to the disciples the essence of the commandment He leaves them. And the measure of love to which He calls them turns out to be equal to death. "Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends" - such is this measure. Jesus calls us to forget ourselves, not to think about our own comfort or advantage, "not to seek our own," to give rather than demand. To die to ourselves and rise for our friends - this is the new commandment.

We know that Christ Himself loved us in this highest measure, giving His life on the Cross. And as we try to love our neighbors, we gradually enter this mystery of divine love. Freely fulfilling this covenant, we cease to be slaves and become His friends, those who "know what the master is doing" and truly understand what Jesus "heard from the Father."

Today's text, of course, first of all draws attention to the new commandment that Christ gives us as the only one necessary for life. But today I would like to note the line that Jesus builds in literally a few words and that contains the whole history of the relationship between man and God. I do not call you servants; I call you friends. And the measure of love for friends becomes the death of God for the life of human beings.

Reading the Gospel of John straight through, one constantly wants to pick up the pace and avoid thinking about the literal meaning of the words Jesus speaks, because their simplicity leaves no path for retreat. We are given the possibility of choice, but this choice lies between the words "yes" and "no." And by choosing "yes," faith in God's love for each person, His death and resurrection, in only three days we will hear at the empty tomb Jesus say to Mary Magdalene: "...go to My brothers". Thus, having passed through death, God became our brother.

In the verses of today's passage from the Gospel of John, the Lord speaks of the Spirit, who will come and guide us "into all truth." And why will He be able to do this - to reveal the truth, to free us from our inability to receive it (see John 16:12)? Because "He will not speak on His own, but whatever He hears He will speak"; He will do the will of the One who sent Him. This alone is the pledge of success - and not of personal success, but of the true attainment of eternity.

It would seem, why is this so? The Holy Spirit is God, and He could speak on His own... But we see that Jesus also does the will of the Father who sent Him. The point, apparently, is that between the Persons of the Holy Trinity there is no such division as there is between us and God, and the very fulfillment of the will - this deepest harmony in the actions of the Trinity - happens in a completely different way. This will is precisely one of those things that bind Them, the Persons of the Trinity, together...

So it is for us as well: the will of God, or more precisely, our free consent to it, is called to serve as the connecting link between us and the Kingdom of Heaven.

"Perfect joy": today we read about it, and this word is a unique revelation to John the Theologian. He uses it four times: here, 15:11, 16:24, 1 John 1:4. That means it is very important to him. What, then, is perfect joy? A priest, when asked about this, told the following story. One evening he was returning home, and young men attacked him, beat him, took his money, and crushed his glasses. Without money and glasses he could get home only by a miracle. And he remembers that while they were beating him, he felt perfect joy. This story can cause incomprehension and rejection in many people. But this is in no way joy at the thought of how great I am because I was found worthy of suffering. Many will understand it that way. No. In no case. Here there is something entirely different. An entirely different joy. With caution, understanding all the incompleteness of words, let us say: the joy of entrusting oneself into God's hands. One can hear that "perfect joy" is a kind of spiritual rapture from God's nearness. Something like what is described in the remarkable poem by K. R.: There are bright moments:
The earth is so incomparably good.
And the soul is full of unearthly delight.
To the Creator of worlds a fragrance
The flower bears, and the bird gives a song:
His creation thanks the Creator.
Oh, if only one could merge as one
With flower and bird and all the earth
And with them, as they do, pray one prayer;
Without words, without thought, without request,
To burn in soul with trembling rapture
And in life-filled forgetfulness to revere.
Is this "perfect joy"? It seems, still, that it is not. For almost everyone has experienced this state; it is easily attainable under the right conditions, whereas every perfection, on the contrary, is inaccessible, and one can only reach toward it with one's whole soul. That is why, it seems to us, the testimony of the priest whose story we gave at the beginning is deeply true.

Speaking to His disciples about His path and ministry, Jesus mentions a “Comforter” whom the Father will send them and whom, Jesus Himself says, the world can neither see nor know (vv. 16-17). This “Comforter,” whom Jesus also calls the “Holy Spirit” (v. 26) and the “Spirit of truth” (v. 17), will in due course remind the apostles of everything they are now hearing from their Teacher (vv. 25-26). The mention of God's spirit, or breath—the corresponding Greek word, like its Hebrew equivalent, can mean either—in the context of an account of the Kingdom is, of course, no accident. The Old Testament prophets were the first to speak of God's spirit, or breath. For them the spirit was not an abstract theological or philosophical concept but part of a living experience of communion with God; they truly felt God breathing in their hearts.

But Jesus apparently means something more. He speaks of the spirit as a reality on a universal, cosmic scale that nevertheless remains hidden from the world, for this reality belongs to a different order than our still untransformed world. The breath of God unites everyone who abides in the Kingdom, making them one whole: the Father, Jesus Himself, the apostles, and all who will enter the Kingdom through their prayers and under the influence of their preaching. In the past, only certain people felt God's breath at special, exceptional moments in their lives; now it is revealed to everyone who abides in the Kingdom. And no wonder: God's breath permeates the Kingdom, gives it life, and gives it the power to affect the world by transforming it. Because of this breath there are no distances in the Kingdom; here only the quality of relationships and the intensity of love determine mutual closeness.

Until now, the apostles had seen the Kingdom only because of Jesus: they looked at Him, and through Him God's power was revealed to them. Now they were to enter and see from within what they had previously seen only from outside. The time was coming when Jesus would become invisible to a world capable of seeing only what had not yet been transformed. The apostles themselves would therefore no longer see Him with physical sight; but after entering the Kingdom, they would find Him there, seeing Him no longer with their eyes but with their hearts (vv. 19-20). It is no accident that Jesus speaks of a peace unknown to the untransformed world (v. 27): true peace and harmony are possible only in the Kingdom, permeated by God's breath and joined by bonds of love. Again and again Jesus calls the apostles into this Kingdom so that, having become part of it, they may carry it into the world that so greatly needs transformation and sanctification.

Someone somewhere said: "Love is an instrument of knowledge." And in fact, what can we know about someone we do not love? Having turned away from a person, one cannot come into contact with him, cannot become closer to him, cannot understand him. The same is true when the matter concerns the knowledge of God. What can be known about Him without loving Him, without striving toward Him, is only dry and relative "scholasticism" about the fact that He is, supposedly, so great and strong and wise.

But truly to know Him, ("to know," in the language of Scripture, to be united with Him, to "abide in Him") is given only to the one who is ready to love. That is why Jesus says that He will reveal Himself not to the whole world, but only to the disciples, who will receive the Spirit of truth, revealing the Father to those who can understand Him, that is, love Him.

Christians have long held differing views on whether Peter's denial should be considered betrayal in the full sense of the word, or whether it is something else. The answer, as so often, depends on what exactly one understands Christianity to be. If Christianity is seen as a kind of new religion, then Peter's denial can be considered merely a misunderstanding, and nothing more. Indeed, the central thing that Peter and the other apostles thought their Teacher had been speaking about had failed. There would be no messianic war. It was all over before it had really begun. In denying Him, Peter was essentially betraying no one and nothing: there was no one and nothing left to betray. All that remained was loyalty to what had once been and was now gone. To former relationships. To former goals and ideals. Of course, someone who keeps such loyalty even in the face of possible death must be considered a hero.

But we can hardly demand such heroism of everyone. Especially since it was important to Peter to keep watch on the high priest's courtyard, on what was happening to the Teacher. His personal relationship with Him remained absolutely important to Peter in any case. And now people were pestering him with awkward questions about something that no longer made any sense, but could prevent him from doing what he was doing. He brushed the questioners away like annoying flies: I know nothing; leave me alone. What difference did it really make now? What had been the meaning of life only an hour before had now collapsed, and there was no point recalling it. If, however, Christianity is seen as a new life, then the denial does turn out to be betrayal.

It is no accident that the crowing rooster reminds Peter of the promises he made to the Teacher. In reality, nothing is over yet. On the contrary, everything is only beginning. The most important thing lies ahead. And for that, nothing matters more than the relationship linking Peter to Jesus. Peter alone went into the high priest's courtyard — seemingly without any particular purpose, since there was nothing he could do to help the Teacher. In reality, it was his sense of the depth of the relationship binding him to Jesus that made Peter go where he did.

And now he casually brushes aside what had been the foundation of that relationship only a short time before. Of course, Peter himself does not yet understand what is happening. He understands only that it has all turned out to be more serious than it seemed to him at first: the rooster really has crowed, just as the Teacher predicted, and the denial really has been uttered. True understanding will come later, at his encounter with the Risen One. Then true repentance will come too — repentance that fully restores Peter's relationship with the Teacher. This time forever.

Peter's denial looks like completely reasonable and sensible behavior in a critical situation. He needs to stay close and wants to learn something, and to do that he must not be recognized. At such a moment, one person runs away and hides while another tries to pass unnoticed into the place where the main events are unfolding. It is foolish to risk one's life by admitting acquaintance with the prisoner. You might be seized too, and whom would that help? We do not know, however, what drove the Apostle Peter. It is entirely possible that these first, superficial reasons, understandable to anyone, were not at all the main thing at that moment. What matters is that a moment sometimes comes when openly acknowledging that you follow Jesus is the only possible choice. On the other side, one hears the terrible word “denial.”

Another Comforter will remain with the disciples. It is not said that He will remain with everyone, most likely because those who reject the Son also reject the Spirit of Truth. One must accept Jesus, and then those who accept Him will be able to receive both the Father and the Spirit. Christ humbled Himself, but through His self-emptying we can attain the fullness of communion with God.

Christ promises the disciples that He will not leave them as orphans and that He will come again. Which coming does He mean—His Resurrection, the coming descent of the Holy Spirit, or the Second Coming? However these words are understood, He is near His faithful; He loves us and does not abandon us.

The sign of love—keeping the commandments—may seem too simple, and one can easily dismiss it as an expression of formal legalism. But depth begins at the surface. Observing basic rules is neither formalism nor mere discipline, but the pledge and first expression of a profound relationship with God that surpasses everything one could initially imagine.

As we see, Jesus' disciples understand their Teacher with difficulty. And He continues speaking to them in hints and figures of speech. It would appear that if you are not understood, or not fully understood, it would be better to refrain from figures of speech, since in such a situation they can confuse the matter even more. And yet Jesus continues to speak as He speaks. Why?

On the one hand, one could say that He had already more than once, perhaps even in plain words, told the apostles about what awaited Him. As we see, they did not understand Him then either, just as they do not understand now, and therefore Jesus resorts to images and figures of speech in order to convey better to the disciples what is so important for them to understand.

But the matter was perhaps not only this. Why did the apostles understand Jesus with difficulty when He told them about His death on the cross and His Resurrection? Perhaps, above all, because they were completely unready to hear anything like this, and what they heard shocked them. In a state of shock a person is unable to perceive and analyze anything; he simply falls into a stupor.

Seeing this reaction from the disciples, Jesus turns to images, allegories, and figures of speech, because all this forces the listener not simply to listen, but constantly to think over what has been heard, so that the listener himself can come to the conclusions that otherwise would simply shock him. But when you come to shocking conclusions yourself, as the result of your own reflection, they, while remaining shocking and requiring further thought, still do not knock you off balance as much as the words of a person you trust can do when he lays out before you the very same facts in ready-made form.

And Jesus, like a wise teacher, tries during His last earthly meeting with the disciples to lead them toward an understanding of things without which one cannot enter the Kingdom. For He understands perfectly what they will have to live through in the coming days, and He tries to do everything possible so that the prospect of the Kingdom coming into the world will not be hidden by what they will have to experience.

The Lord tells the disciples that after the joy that entered them with His coming there will follow sorrow, which will then once again be transformed into joy. It is as if there are two days separated by night. It is very important to understand that this night of sorrow, when the Lord lies in the tomb and is not with us, this night of God-forsakenness, is something everyone necessarily passes through who truly walks the path of spiritual formation. The fact that our great teachers also experienced such a state, difficult and grace-filled, bears witness to this. It is known that St. Tikhon of Zadonsk, who lived in the eighteenth century, experienced a mystical night of the soul, but even earlier, in the sixteenth century, the great Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross created an astonishingly deep and rich concept: "the dark night of the soul." It is impossible to explain it in a few words, but in the poem with the same title he gives an allusion to the Paschal hymn "Exsultet," which Catholics sing on Holy Saturday. Here are the words of the hymn:

This is the night
when once You led our fathers, the children of Israel,
out of Egypt
and brought them through the Red Sea on dry ground. (...)
This is the night
when Christ, breaking the bonds of death,
rose victorious from hell. (...)
O truly blessed night,
the only one worthy to know the time and hour
when Christ rose from hell.
This is the night of which it is written:
and night will be bright as day;
and night is my light and my joy. (...)
O truly blessed night,
in which earth is joined to heaven,
and humanity to divinity.

Let us return again to the experience of Orthodox ascetics. Theophan the Recluse writes this in his commentary on today's reading: "They say that every soul on the path to perfection experiences a similar blow. Darkness everywhere covers it, and it does not know where to turn; but the Lord comes, and its sorrow is transformed into joy." Let us also try, when we are enveloped by the darkness of God-forsakenness, the loss of faith, when "the mind seeks the Divinity, and the heart does not find it," not to lose heart, but to understand that this night is inevitable, and that a New Day awaits us ahead.

For us, what is happening at this very moment is often very important. We are concerned above all with our own feelings about what is happening. If we are hurting, the whole world around us looks dark and hostile. And if we feel good, our mood is peaceful, the sun is shining, and the whole world is smiling at us. Of course, things are not always so sharply defined, but most often our feelings tend toward one of the poles...

The Lord, however, is trying to teach us one wise practice: to remember that our condition changes, because nothing human is eternal. Only what is from God is eternal: "My righteousness will remain forever, and My salvation from generation to generation" (Isa. 51:8). Speaking today of a woman preparing to give birth, Christ emphasizes that we must not rely on what we feel now, not weep and lament because of sorrows, but remember not the sorrow, but the joy that will follow it (see John 16:20-22). We should think not by the feeling of the moment, but see more broadly and farther ahead. We should try to look at what is happening with God's gaze, seeking in everything meaning and a reason for joy and gratitude to God.

The Lord tells the disciples that after the joy that entered them with His coming there will follow sorrow, which will then once again be transformed into joy. It is as if there are two days separated by night. It is very important to understand that this night of sorrow, when the Lord lies in the tomb and is not with us, this night of God-forsakenness, is something everyone necessarily passes through who truly walks the path of spiritual formation. The fact that our great teachers also experienced such a state, difficult and grace-filled, bears witness to this. It is known that St. Tikhon of Zadonsk, who lived in the eighteenth century, experienced a mystical night of the soul, but even earlier, in the sixteenth century, the great Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross created an astonishingly deep and rich concept: "the dark night of the soul." It is impossible to explain it in a few words, but in the poem with the same title he gives an allusion to the Paschal hymn "Exsultet," which Catholics sing on Holy Saturday. Here are the words of the hymn:

This is the night
when once You led our fathers, the children of Israel,
out of Egypt
and brought them through the Red Sea on dry ground. (...)
This is the night
when Christ, breaking the bonds of death,
rose victorious from hell. (...)
O truly blessed night,
the only one worthy to know the time and hour
when Christ rose from hell.
This is the night of which it is written:
and night will be bright as day;
and night is my light and my joy. (...)
O truly blessed night,
in which earth is joined to heaven,
and humanity to divinity.

Let us return again to the experience of Orthodox ascetics. Theophan the Recluse writes this in his commentary on today's reading: "They say that every soul on the path to perfection experiences a similar blow. Darkness everywhere covers it, and it does not know where to turn; but the Lord comes, and its sorrow is transformed into joy." Let us also try, when we are enveloped by the darkness of God-forsakenness, the loss of faith, when "the mind seeks the Divinity, and the heart does not find it," not to lose heart, but to understand that this night is inevitable, and that a New Day awaits us ahead.

Your sorrow will turn to joy — these astonishing words of Christ express very precisely the essence of Christian hope. It would be inaccurate to say that sorrow will cease and joy will take its place, that joy will replace sorrow. It would be inaccurate to say that joy will arise alongside sorrow, in addition to it. Rather, sorrow itself will become joy, and the two will prove inseparable. There is no Christianity without grief over Christ's suffering and death on the Cross, just as there is none without the joy of the Resurrection. To emphasize this inseparability, the Lord uses the image of the pains of childbirth, which are transfigured by joy at the birth of a new human being.

The various attempts to portray Christianity as the ‘opium of the people’, a religion of groundless consolation, or as a religion of social protest, or as a cult of suffering, founder on this mystery of sorrow's transformation into joy. Human life is always terrible enough, and the Lord always suffers in those who are oppressed and persecuted for righteousness. Yet even in this life there is room for a joy that does not belong to this world and is not given by it. This joy of ours is born of grief and sorrow, and so does not lead Christians away into a world of illusions. It is the joy of the future Kingdom of Heaven, given to us already today. That is why the Lord speaks these most important words, which strengthen Christians: ‘and no one will take your joy from you’. The apostle Paul will later write: ‘nothing can separate us from the love of Christ’.

Why does Jesus not speak plainly to the disciples about His death and His resurrection? The figurative expressions He uses are certainly beautiful and full of meaning, yet, judging by their questions, the apostles still did not understand them. However, it is quite possible that even if the Saviour had spoken plainly of His death and His resurrection from the dead, they would have understood just as little. Today everything is clear to us: after all, we have read the Gospel. At least, that is what we think. Yet, in truth, even today we are familiar not so much with the mystery of the Resurrection as with the accustomed words about that mystery. Perhaps it is precisely those familiar words that Jesus wants to avoid.

The problem here is the same as with His messiahship: had He spoken of it plainly, His listeners would have responded not so much to the substance of His words as to their own clichés associated with familiar words. The same could have happened had He spoken plainly of His resurrection. In Gospel times, the Jews already had some notion of a general resurrection on the Day of Judgment, and it bore little resemblance to what the apostles would very soon see with their own eyes.

Traditional popular notions of resurrection presupposed the coming of the end of time, apocalyptic scenes and the like. No one could have imagined that both the resurrection and the coming of the Kingdom could take place in so ordinary a way. No one expected to be able to walk alongside the Risen One on a road in Palestine. And for the world not to collapse overnight or change in an instant. No one expected such an ‘ordinary’ miracle. And explaining all this to the disciples was practically impossible.

Not because words were lacking: the Gospels were written, after all, and words were found for them. It was simply that the disciples themselves had to become different. To see the Risen One with their own eyes. To see the Ascension. To experience Pentecost and share in the breath of the Kingdom. For the time being, it was possible to speak only of what the apostles would experience in the days that were approaching. Of pain and joy. Of despair and hope. And of the path they would have to set out on in those days, so as to follow it to the end. To the Kingdom in all its fullness.

Jesus says: "You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy." We are used to these words and no longer notice that the logical connection is not obvious. Ordinary logic would be this: "There will be problems now, but do not worry; later everything will work out and all will be well." But Jesus says that the very thing that was the cause of sorrow will also become the cause of joy; if there is no sorrow, there will be no joy.

Indeed, without Good Friday there can be no Easter Sunday. And in the life of each of us there are moments when it is necessary to go through, to live through, something very frightening and painful, because through this small death the Lord will give resurrection.

Jesus often warned His followers that they would face rejection in the world, even persecution. And He sees the reason for this not in religious or other disagreements with the majority, but in the very essence of Christianity. For He brought the Kingdom into the world, and He wants His followers to be not adherents of some new teaching—religious, ethical, political, or otherwise—but inhabitants of the Kingdom. He certainly understands very well that the world will always reject such people: they will remain strangers to it until the end of time, until its complete transfiguration. But what can the Church set against the world? Jesus Himself points to the means: love. Of course, love—not as an emotion, but as a way of relating—is itself foreign to the fallen world. It is illogical and serves no practical purpose, for to love is to wish one's neighbor well and strive to make that person's life better, expecting nothing in return. Not only a cynic but even an ordinary pragmatist will say that living this way is unreasonable and impractical: love must at least be mutually beneficial to be at all acceptable to the fallen world. Yet by definition it cannot be so. And Jesus speaks of love not only as a relationship between people, but as the spiritual environment that constitutes the nature of the Kingdom. If ordinary human love, when it is genuine, usually provokes mockery and distrust, the love of the Kingdom can provoke outright hatred. This is hardly surprising: the fallen world preserves the illusion not only of stability but even of immovability largely because its adherents have managed to convince, if not everyone, then a great many people that there is no alternative to the existing state of affairs. When people appear who can offer such an alternative, the natural desire of those who support the existing order is to destroy that alternative—along with the One who brought the Kingdom into the world and those who bear witness to the alternative today.

The passage from Christ's Last Discourse with the disciples that we read today reveals to us how the Lord Himself looks at the disciples. The point is that He, in fact, likens them to Himself. The world first hated Christ, and then His disciples. They do not belong to the world. People kept Christ's word, and they will also keep the disciples' word. Finally, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, and the disciples will bear witness to Jesus.

And the Lord says all this while explaining the commandment: "Love one another." This means that likeness to God and adoption as sons, for that is exactly what is being discussed, do not flow from some special superhuman merits of these Galilean fishermen, but from the fact that they will fulfill this commandment. Therefore Christ's words also apply to all who follow Christ's disciples in the Church, which He Himself founded precisely through these disciples.

Jesus builds His conversation with the disciples on a contrast: I give you a commandment to love one another because the world hates you. In the world there is hatred; among you there is love.

Two questions immediately arise here. First, can the disciples' love overpower the world's hatred, if the world is always larger and the disciples themselves do not really know how to love? And second, it is clear that the situation is not so polarized at all: in the world that does not believe in Christ, love is always present (for people cannot live entirely without love), and among Christians love, to put it mildly, is not the most frequent guest either.

As for the first question, one can only note that the matter is not the disciples' own love, but the mercy of the Father; and who is stronger - God or the world's evil - is a question addressed to the very depth of our being, since it has no "external" answer. As for polarization, the matter is apparently not a division into "believers and unbelievers" (it is unclear how to divide them), but the opposition between Christ and "the world" within each person again.

Peter's denial has always been one of the favorite themes for preaching about sin and repentance. Usually in this case parallels are drawn with the denial of Judas, who perished not because he sinned, but because he proved unable to repent. Meanwhile, if one looks carefully at the situation, it is not hard to see that, in essence, everyone left Jesus except two, one of whom was Peter, and the other, if one follows early Christian tradition, John, the author of the fourth Gospel and the Book of Revelation.

And one of them, Peter, in response to accusing testimonies, says about Jesus: I do not know Him. What preceded this? Why did the disciples scatter? They were by no means cowards, and when they promised to die for their Teacher, they were hardly speaking in the heat of the moment. But in practice everything turned out quite differently from what they expected. They thought the time for a messianic uprising had come.

They were ready to die in battle, and Peter, if it had come to war, would have been one of the first; it is no accident that he is the one who snatches out a sword at the critical moment. But it turned out that there would be no uprising, that their Teacher simply gives Himself into the hands of the representatives of authority, that everything is lost: the uprising failed without even beginning. After all, the apostles still did not fully understand what the Teacher had told them about His death and His resurrection.

Peter followed Him into the high priest's courtyard not because he was hoping for anything, but simply in order to be closer to the Teacher, to see how the matter would end, simply in order to remain with Him to the end. And here they accuse him of something, of some kind of participation in the preparation of some uprising. What significance does all this have now, when everything is over? Peter no longer has anything to witness to, nothing to hope for; by and large he no longer cares what people will consider him to be, for everything is already behind him.

His reaction is a rather ordinary reaction of a person who is being pestered with nonsense when he is occupied with an important matter. He brushes off the questioners as though they were annoying flies: leave me alone, I know nothing and no one! And only the rooster's crow brings him out of his spiritual stupor. Peter suddenly understands that the matter is not yet over, that everything they had spoken about so recently during the Passover seder remains in force, that everything in general has gone differently from what he expected, but... But he did deny the Teacher, and he denied Him publicly. This is a bitter and sorrowful fact.

Now all that remains for Peter is to weep, reproach himself for a betrayal unexpected even to himself, and repent of what he has done. He does not yet know that very soon the day will come when he will meet the Teacher, and He will understand him, understand him without long explanations.

Christ does not promise those who follow Him the conveniences of life or earthly prosperity. We are clearly warned: if someone wants to see Christianity as a way to solve accumulated problems and a means of achieving comfort, he has come to the wrong door. And the Lord does not refuse us help at all: when solving these problems is necessary, He is ready to respond to our petitions and gives us the right and the opportunity to reap earthly fruits as well. But by placing not God Himself at the center of attention, but His gifts, we turn away from Him, perhaps unintentionally, without thinking about it, but this does not change the essence of the matter.

If we choose Christ, we must be ready to face opposition. The call to carry one's cross, addressed to each of the disciples, flows from a clear vision of the reality of evil ruling in the world. One can evade this call if one wishes; however, then we will inevitably be defeated by evil. Evil often looks attractive and tempting, but its weight, unlike the weight of the cross, will both crush us and press us into the mud.

We are also warned that many of the persecutors will be sure they are serving God, but Christ clearly said of such people that they have known neither the Father nor the Son. The persecutors themselves will not agree with such a reproach and in response will begin to refer to their own theological knowledge. But knowledge of ideas about God is still not knowledge of God Himself, and here the warning applies to all of us: persecutors are not the only ones at risk of making such a substitution. As history shows, the persecuted, when circumstances changed, also became persecutors more than once...

Right now, in most of the civilized world, people talk constantly about unity. They call this unity by different names: someone says simply and plainly that "together we are strong," someone fights for or against globalization, someone prays for the unity of the Church, and someone reflects on the deep human longing for life with others and for "communion." Some only reflect on it, while others even try to build something - creating organizations, unions, and councils. In short, the topic matters.

But if you tried to gather all the people involved in this work and ask them to agree on what this desired community should be, a real commotion would begin. And all because, despite the common desire, each person still pulls in his own direction. Each person sees unity in his own way and assigns places according to his own ideas. And it may be that people will never be able to agree on the form.

Because true unity is what Jesus asks the Father to give us. It is a unity that is impossible to reach by human means: the unity of the Trinity. We are not even able to let others come as close to us as the Persons of the Trinity are close and one, let alone remain constantly in such "communion," where we are both different and one. Yet this is exactly what God expects from us. And He is the One who can make it real. We simply have to truly want it.

"At every service we pray 'for the union of all' in the Church of the Living God. What unity are we praying for, and why is it necessary specifically to pray for it?

We pray because only God can restore the unity that man destroyed: its criteria are too high, its measures are not human but God's. Such unity is a mystery by nature, a miracle in essence. Christian unity cannot be defined in the categories of fellowship or community. It is not merely "togetherness"; it is "unity": "That they may be one, as We are one", the Lord prayed to the Father in His final prayer.

This is a glorious and awe-filled calling and pattern, because within it lies a sovereign command for the whole human race: to attain likeness to the Holy Trinity, to be Its image and Its revelation. This is a promise, but also a responsibility. And we easily forget both. The experience of this glorious and trembling unity is the very being, the essence of the Church, her nature: the Church is this very unity; the Church is one and indivisible, even though the Christian world is broken into pieces by our sins. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem, the city bound together as one... (see Ps. 121)."

(Anthony, Metropolitan of Sourozh: "...and for the union of all, let us pray to the Lord")

By gathering people together and building them into the Church, the Lord does not merely oppose the human disunity that arises from sin. It is not simply that all of us, like Cain, are unable to be together. We are different, and the reason for this is the Creator's will, not our sin. Overcoming disunity has nothing to do with overcoming each person's individuality. Today, in a passage from Christ's final discourse with His disciples, we read that, in the words of the apostle Paul, ‘God has provided something better for us’. He lets us participate in the mystery of the Trinity's unity, a unity that neither absorbs persons nor effaces their individuality. A unity in which life given to another does not disappear, but grows. The unity in which the Father and the Son are one.

This unity is impossible for this world, which is why Christ says, ‘that they may be one in Us’. And behind these words lies something no less astonishing: He wants us to be in Them — in the Father and the Son. After the Ascension, in the Trinity as we see It in Rublev's icon, One of the Three is the God-man, and therefore also human! And in Jesus Christ, in His Flesh and Blood, there is a place for each of us not simply beside God's throne, but in Them Themselves! This, it turns out, is what the Eastern Fathers of the Church mean when they say that salvation consists in the deification of the human being.

And again words of consolation are heard... Not only consolation, however, but also the Lord's mercy and love, which every person needs so much. Jesus is already suffering as He encounters alienation and rejection from those around Him. And what should those who follow Him expect? Yes, the growth of the Church, the joy of the Gentiles, and other grace (see, for example, Acts 4:33, 6:7, 13:48), but along with that, rejection as well.

This is said not so that we become fixated on struggle, but so that the virgins have oil in their lamps (see Matt 25:1-13). And in today's passage the Lord says that the situation in which Christians are persecuted is natural, because He Himself is persecuted. The world remains the world, and in it there will always be people who oppose His word.

Yet in these same lines we see amazing support and encouragement. After all, if you are not received, then you share His lot, and that means you are His.

Jesus says: a servant is not greater than his master. The conclusion seems perfectly obvious: if Jesus was persecuted, why should His disciples not be persecuted? What is not obvious is something else. He says that a servant is not greater than his master—and continues: “If they kept My word, they will keep yours also.” It follows that, by the master’s mercy, the servant also receives His privilege: to speak with authority. In what situation can the disciples’ word be “with authority,” like the Teacher’s word? The answer is simple: when it is the same word—or, more precisely, the same Word who became flesh and dwelt among us. When it is He Himself who speaks and acts through them.

In today's passage from the Gospel of John, there is a very important idea for a Christian: the idea of unity, one of the foundations of the Church's understanding and experience. Moreover, in the Gospel it appears as what Jesus desired for His disciples almost more than anything else in the world.

The question is what kind of unity is meant by the words: "...that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You..." and what follows. They are usually interpreted this way: Jesus called for everyone to hold the same doctrinal formulas and belong to one all-embracing church organization. Yet, as we know, formalism and over-organization kill, while living relationships give life.

Rather, this is not so much about a church structure uniting everyone under its jurisdiction, although such a structure often flows naturally from unity of faith and life in the Christian community; after all, everyone in our world has to take on certain legal obligations in order to coexist fully with other people. Much more plausibly, Jesus was inviting the disciples to seek inner unity, not horizontally but vertically: like His unity with the Father, each person should have unity with the Father and the Son, who come to the one who keeps Their word and "make Their home" in his heart and in his life. In fact, only through a living mystical bond with the Father and with the Word who reveals Him is the inner Kingdom built, spiritualizing human existence at its deepest depths. Then all everyday affairs and church projects receive a firm foundation in the hearts of people attuned to the hearts of the Three: the Father, the Son, and the Spirit...

Everything in this world is mortal: countries, peoples, and church structures, all of which can collapse before the eyes of a single generation, as happened in the tragic 1920s and 1930s in the Soviet Union. But what remains unchanged is that unity, that personal communion with God, which in any historical conditions and life circumstances remains the eternally flowing spring of Christian prayer and action.

In today's reading Jesus prays to the Father for His Church. And the main thing He asks for is unity. Today, two thousand years later, we see that those who believed through the word of the apostles, believers in Christ, are not united. How many barriers and partitions there are among us!

And it is no accident that Jesus says: "May they be one in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me." For many unbelievers, the division of Christians is one more testimony against the Church. Indeed, try to figure out who is right and who is wrong... It is easier to say: if Christians cannot sort out their disputes and come to one mind, then what unites them is not so important either...

But we know that the Lord Himself unites us. What can each of us do for the unity of the Church? Nothing - and at the same time very much. Because unity begins today, now: when we recognize brothers and sisters in one another, when we pray together, when we labor together for God... when we seek what unites us, not what divides us.

Before us is the Last Supper, the farewell discourse with the disciples. Today the Church offers us what would seem to be only seven verses from several long chapters in which Jesus speaks one last time with the future apostles. There is so much that must be said before His “departure”—they must be prepared for the principal trial of their lives... That is precisely why these verses are so full—Jesus cannot allow Himself to waste time either on superfluous words or on lengthy explanations. The disciples are in any case unable to understand everything He is saying now, but later the Spirit will come and remind them of everything (see John 14:26). He will remind them of this prayer of the Teacher, of His ardent desire for the unity of His disciples and of all those who will believe through their testimony. And the words “that they may become perfectly one” mean far more than shared ideologies, aspirations, and the like—they concern perfect unity, uniting every sphere of our lives. Jesus also prays that every person may know that the Father has loved them as He has loved the Son (see John 17:23). For it is precisely this knowledge that can transform the world, uniting all people in the unity for which our Lord waits.

Jesus prays for His disciples as those who will continue His work in the world while remaining one with Him Himself. He does not pray for them as followers in a religious or ideological sense. Nor as those who carry on His work in the way that the companions of the founder of a religious movement carry on their founder's work. Jesus prays for His disciples as inhabitants of His Kingdom who will bring that Kingdom into the world just as He Himself brought it into the world. But one can bring it only by being an inhabitant of the Kingdom oneself. By living its life, and therefore the life of its King. It is precisely this life for His disciples that Jesus asks of His heavenly Father. As their Teacher, He brought them into this life, but now they will have to live it on their own. Of course, He will not leave them without support. But a new stage of the journey is now beginning for the disciples.

Previously, they could share in the life of Christ, in the life of the Kingdom, simply by being in fellowship with their Teacher. Directly, face to face. As long as there was fellowship, there was life. Now, however, the situation was changing. Of course, it is still possible to meet Christ face to face today. Many have met Him since His resurrection and ascension — Paul was the first, but by no means the last. But now much more will depend on the person themselves. On their spiritual condition. On their own life and its spiritual richness.

Previously, Jesus alone bore the fullness of the Kingdom within Himself. Now His disciples will bring it into the world together with Him. And not only those twelve who were with Him at the Last Supper, but others as well. Those who will accept Him through the testimony of the twelve. The Kingdom will begin to spread throughout the world. This, in fact, is the Christian mission. For Christianity is not some new religion, but precisely this life of the Kingdom. It is not within human power to make someone a Christian, but it is within human power to help them meet Christ.

To show them the Kingdom and its life. After that, each person will decide for themselves whether they need all this or not. And if they decide that they do, and then consistently follow through on that decision, the presence of the Kingdom in the world will increase a little more. And then more and more. Until a certain measure of the fullness of the Kingdom's presence has thus been revealed to the world. Then Christ's return in glory will become possible. And the transfiguration of the world, which at the end of time becomes a new earth beneath a new heaven.