NOTES for Luk 17:3-10

"...we are unworthy servants, because we have done what we ought to have done..." These words can offend us. We can say to the Lord, But You Yourself told us: I no longer call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I heard from My Father (John 15:15). But there is a difference: in one case He does not call us servants, and in the other He calls us to call ourselves servants. And what is the difference, if I am simply "no longer a slave, but a son" (Gal. 4:7)? This is a question on which lovers of objective materialism or opponents of subjective idealism keep banging their heads every time. Suppose there is a party decision according to which I am no longer a Pioneer but a Komsomol member, and no one is allowed to say to me, "Be ready!" but only and exclusively, "The party has said: it is necessary." In reality, everything is not like that at all, and there is no univocal answer; the world is richer and wider than our words and concepts. The Lord gives certain markers of meaning that we must hold to, but the path between them is our personal creativity. There are moments of tenderness and moments of severity. And everything is filled with meaning if there is love. Therefore no single phrase taken by itself from the Gospel has the divine authority that the Gospel possesses in its wholeness. But besides this, it is important to understand the more prosaic meaning of today's words of the Lord: a slave, when set free, often does not learn freedom, but enslaves those who gave him that freedom. It is not enough to be a former slave in order to become a son. There is still a long path between these two concepts. And each of us must walk this long path. The whole Gospel has not been spoken once for all, but is still being spoken; it has not been completed, but is still being carried out. "Christianity is only beginning," as one contemporary holy martyr said.