NOTES for Heb 1:1-12

The author of the Letter to the Hebrews often turns to the theme of angels and the angelic hierarchy, comparing them with Christ. Such a comparison is characteristic precisely of the author of this Letter: no one besides him gives so much attention to the theme of angels. Why did it suddenly become so relevant? Perhaps because the letter was written after the catastrophe of A.D. 70, when Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed as a result of another anti-Roman uprising.

Before A.D. 70, during the life of the apostle Paul, the most widespread form of messianism among the Jews was political messianism. The Messiah was expected as King and liberator, crushing Roman power and restoring an independent and strong Jewish state. But now, after this monstrous catastrophe, mystical messianism came to the foreground. Many people, and no doubt even some Christians, began to see in the Messiah not the Man who contained in Himself the fullness of God, but someone like an angel, a mediator between God and human beings. In that case the Kingdom was viewed as something mystical, having no relation to our world. This is how some understood the Savior's words about the Kingdom that is "not of this world."

Many were also troubled by the fact that Jerusalem and the Temple had been destroyed, everything the Savior had spoken of as signs of the end times had happened, and yet He Himself was not returning. Perhaps, these people thought, He was not going to return in the way His followers expected. Perhaps He had already come, had come in another world, in His otherworldly Kingdom, while here, in the fallen world, waiting for Him was useless. Then perhaps He would send angels to notify those whom He wished to save and take with Himself.

Meanwhile, in reality, the person of Christ as Savior and mediator between God and the faithful was pushed into the background, while certain "angels," "powers," "principalities," and other real or, more often, imagined entities that replaced and obscured Him moved to the foreground. And the author of the Letter, one of the disciples of the apostle Paul, reminds his readers that, having the Messiah as their Teacher and Savior, the faithful need no one and nothing else. Otherwise, instead of Christ and the Kingdom, there are endless mediators and hierarchies, first "heavenly" ones and then earthly ones. Christianity as life with Christ in His Kingdom disappears. In its place comes a certain religion that promises everything but gives nothing. At least, nothing that Christ can give.

With these words the apostle affirms the unity of the whole divine revelation handed down to us in Sacred Scripture - the unity of the Old and New Testaments. One and the same God spoke to people through the ancient prophets of the Old Testament and through Jesus Christ; one and the same Word was first given for hearing and then came in the flesh. One and the same Son takes part in the creation of the universe "before all ages," is incarnate through the Virgin Mary for our redemption and union with God "under Pontius Pilate," and brings about the final Transfiguration of the world for the life "of the age to come." This awareness of the divine presence in all human history, and therefore in the life of every person, is an integral component of Christian faith. And it is also important that this presence is not silent, not indifferent. God speaks, which means He reveals His love and His will to people, and therefore our attempts at communion with Him, our prayers, are never barren, even when it appears to us that we do not hear Him. His Word comes to us through Sacred Scripture, through the prayerful and sacramental experience of the Church, through the "inexpressible groanings" of the Holy Spirit in our hearts; it comes and bears fruit: our growth in love for Him and for one another.

Each person, believer or not, in difficult moments of life asks for the direct intervention of God in what happen with Him, with the close or with the world. Each person has his vision how to change quickly and effectively the course of the events. We wait for these same convenient and active actions from God, exclaiming: "why will He not punish? Why will He not condemn? Why will He not destroy? Why will He not strike, will not begin war, will not wipe off the face of the earth? Why will He not react?"

We ascribe to God these parameters of effectiveness, which are standards for our own selves, no matter, we believe or not. We are not ready to acknowledge just a simple fact: God is not like us; His thoughts are not our thoughts. Today, such as two thousand years ago, people wait for His intervention in their life, but receive a strange and paradoxical answer: God is born in the world powerless child. He is not armed, he cannot either speak, or walk, He limits His freedom and His omnipotence in such measure, in which we would have wanted to develop our possibilities to influence and to change everything on our own initiative. He accomplishes what nobody expects from Him and, most likely wants especially: He confides Himself completely to man. And each of us, decides for himself, how he will act with the Baby.

Each person, believer or not, in difficult moments of life asks for the direct intervention of God in what happen with Him, with the close or with the world. Each person has his vision how to change quickly and effectively the course of the events. We wait for these same convenient and active actions from God, exclaiming: "why will He not punish? Why will He not condemn? Why will He not destroy? Why will He not strike, will not begin war, will not wipe off the face of the earth? Why will He not react?"

We ascribe to God these parameters of effectiveness, which are standards for our own selves, no matter, we believe or not. We are not ready to acknowledge just a simple fact: God is not like us; His thoughts are not our thoughts. Today, such as two thousand years ago, people wait for His intervention in their life, but receive a strange and paradoxical answer: God is born in the world powerless child. He is not armed, he cannot either speak, or walk, He limits His freedom and His omnipotence in such measure, in which we would have wanted to develop our possibilities to influence and to change everything on our own initiative. He accomplishes what nobody expects from Him and, most likely wants especially: He confides Himself completely to man. And each of us, decides for himself, how he will act with the Baby.

The Letter to the Hebrews says much about the Messiah being higher than the angels. At first glance this is entirely obvious, and it looks strange that someone had to be convinced of what should already have been clear to them. But the matter, as can be seen, was not so simple.

The Letter to the Hebrews, according to the generally accepted opinion among biblical scholars, was written not by Paul himself but by one of his disciples, written after the apostle's martyrdom and after A.D. 70, and therefore after the catastrophe that completely changed the course of Jewish, and partly world, history. The revolt of A.D. 70 was not simply a war against Rome; it was a messianic war, conducted under religious slogans and perceived by its participants as sacred. It was one of the last surges of that militant messianism whose bearers in the Gospel era were the Zealots, the very ones who organized the revolt of A.D. 70.

The last messianic war of antiquity was the Bar Kokhba revolt, but when the letter was being written almost half a century still remained before it. In the 70s of the first century the militancy of the messianists had somewhat faded, which is no surprise: the defeat of the revolt and the complete destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple down to their foundations proved a terrible blow, from which it was by no means simple to recover. It is no surprise that in those times mystical messianism came to replace political messianism.

If to political messianists the Messiah appeared as a powerful earthly king whom God Himself supports, strengthening his kingdom and helping him win victory over all enemies, then to mystical messianists the Messiah really appeared as someone like an angel, a being not of this world in the full sense of the word. Many of them evidently considered the Messiah not a Man, but some kind of superhuman spirit who had never been human and was not supposed to be human.

Such an image was hardly any closer to the image of the real, Gospel Messiah than the image of a powerful earthly king that ruled in the minds of messianists of the Gospel era. Therefore the author of the letter insists that the Messiah is not some mysterious mighty angel, but a completely real Man, in His humanity not fundamentally different from any of us. But the fullness of God that this Man bears in Himself places Him above the angels: no angel was given such fullness.

The Sabbath, Shabbat in Judaism, is the foundation of foundations. Without observance of Shabbat there is no Judaism; this is clear to every observant Jew, and Gospel times differ from ours in this respect not at all. But what does it mean to observe Shabbat? For the religious consciousness it means above all observing the corresponding ritual prohibitions. Already in those days there were practically as many such prohibitions as there are today, so many that a person, unless he was born and raised in an Orthodox Jewish environment, usually found it completely impossible to observe them all: he would inevitably forget something, make a mistake somewhere, and do something forbidden.

The Pharisees, being deeply and in their own way sincerely religious people, were precisely the ones who watched to make sure the prohibitions were not violated. Plucking ears of grain is also work, and like any work it is forbidden on Shabbat, which means that Jesus' disciples violated Shabbat.

The Pharisees point out this violation to the Teacher. They think that He is simply instructing His disciples poorly, that He is not teaching them to observe Shabbat as they should, and therefore He is the first one to be held accountable. But Jesus answers them in a completely unexpected way, recalling the well-known story described in the Book of Kingdoms, when the high priest gave the bread of the Presence to David, who was hiding from Saul, food reserved exclusively for priests. By doing this he appeared to violate the Torah, which forbids anyone except priests to eat the bread of the Presence. And the prohibition here is direct; this is not a list of Shabbat ritual prohibitions compiled by commentators.

There are, however, situations in which even what is usually forbidden may be done. Shabbat cannot and must not turn into an end in itself; it is only a means, as is the whole cult and the whole ritual. Once this is forgotten and they are made the goal, religious ritualism and legalism take the place of spiritual life and communion with God, and they kill that life. These are simple things, but they have to be remembered, above all by people who are deeply and, in their own way, sincerely religious.

In the Pharisees' disputes with Christ about the Sabbath, the fundamental difference lies in what is considered important. The Pharisaic position, at first glance, is simple: it is written, "Do not do any of your work on the Sabbath," so we will not do it. Come what may, we will be at peace. After all, we have fulfilled the commandment, and we will not let anyone find fault with us, not even the One who gave that commandment. He will simply be forced to give the Pharisee the blessings of paradise, because everything has been fulfilled. Thus the Pharisee himself and his experience of his own righteousness stand at the center. The drive toward formal fulfillment of the commandments carries within it a hidden desire to shield all the "rest" of life, the part not reducible to commandments, from the Creator's intervention.

But for the Son of God, the living person stands at the center: the one who suffers and is in need. Formally the commandment may even be violated, but at the same time God's love and God's mercy enter the world and act within it. Rebuking the Pharisees, the Lord Jesus says that goodness and the salvation of the soul must be the true value: "Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it?" When we need to make decisions of this kind, it is important to remember the simple and practical criterion Christ Himself gives us here.

Why not on the Sabbath? How are we to understand this? Rest for God. Rest for the sake of prayer is understandable. But then there is this vulnerability and fragility of a glass rose that lies there and lies there and lies there... and what if a car suddenly passes over it and crushes it into shards? Everything seems to pass: the snowfall, the wind, and the moon; the pictures of the sky change. But the fragility of this rose is something special and precious. It seems to us that since this rose has endured so much, wind, snowfall, and blizzard, nothing will happen to it during the Sabbath. But it is fragile; it is made of glass. So it is with every human soul. It seems to us that Jesus our Lord treats every soul in this way, like a fragile glass rose which, once He has touched it, must be warmed and placed somewhere safe so that no car will crush it, and that place is His hands. As soon as He has touched it... what does it matter if it is the Sabbath? And prayer is breath.

Law and rules are only the starting point for any creative work. Let us liken them to scales. Every student must play scales day after day for many years in order to learn to perform Bach. The objections of the Pharisees then become obviously absurd, as absurd as objecting to a brilliant performance of Bach. Yes, unlike the Lord, we are still students. Therefore, we must play scales. But even a first-year student already tries to play simple études, understanding that scales are not an end in themselves; their performance serves a higher purpose. So it should be with all our rituals. This is what the words really mean: the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. For one often encounters a different, permissive understanding of these words, leading to a “philosophical” attitude toward fasts and prescribed prayers. We must be very sure that we play our scales well before allowing ourselves this.

The commandment about the Sabbath is given by God Himself in the Law of Moses; moreover, its observance is declared to be the sign of the covenant God made with His people. Can one call a human being (and the phrase "son of man," without capital letters, which do not exist in oral speech, simply means "a human being") lord over such an important commandment of God? Yet Jesus does exactly this. In what case is this possible? Not when the commandment is not fulfilled, but when it is surpassed. The meaning of this commandment is that a person should devote one day out of seven to the works of God. It is a kind of "tithe" offered to God, only not in money or fruit, but in time. Then it becomes clear that a person becomes not the slave of this commandment, but its lord, when he gives God more than one seventh of his life. For example, like the Son of Man, he gives his whole life. Once again we see that for Jesus it is obvious that service to God is not "calendar-based" but constant. He is free from slavery to this commandment because every day of His is a "Sabbath," a day given to God.

Why not on the Sabbath? How are we to understand this? Rest for God. Rest for the sake of prayer is understandable. But then there is this vulnerability and fragility of a glass rose that lies there and lies there and lies there... and what if a car suddenly passes over it and crushes it into shards? Everything seems to pass: the snowfall, the wind, and the moon; the pictures of the sky change. But the fragility of this rose is something special and precious. It seems to us that since this rose has endured so much, wind, snowfall, and blizzard, nothing will happen to it during the Sabbath. But it is fragile; it is made of glass. So it is with every human soul. It seems to us that Jesus our Lord treats every soul in this way, like a fragile glass rose which, once He has touched it, must be warmed and placed somewhere safe so that no car will crush it, and that place is His hands. As soon as He has touched it... what does it matter if it is the Sabbath? And prayer is breath.

The Sabbath is a day dedicated to God, a day on which one is commanded not to do any work of one's own, but only the works of God. What is one's own work? Well, work, for example. And what is God's work, that is, work pleasing to God? To answer this question one must either ask Him Himself directly or know well what He is like. Of course, it is simpler not to work and in general to prohibit whatever resembles work. The Pharisaic interpretation of the law followed precisely this path, and therefore Jesus was constantly accused of violating the Sabbath commandment because of His healings. But He tries to turn people toward the living God. His question means: people, what is your God like? Is He good or evil? What is His will: salvation or destruction? Do you know your God? These same questions are addressed to us. The Pharisees were silent in response. And what will we answer?

For a correct understanding of the meaning of the Epistle to the Hebrews, it is important to remember by whom and when it was written. According to the view commonly accepted today among biblical scholars, the author of the epistle was not Paul himself, but one of his disciples, and it was written after the apostle's martyrdom. He was apparently executed in the second half of the 60s. Most likely, the Epistle to the Hebrews came into being after A.D. 70, which became a turning point in Jewish history, and in many ways in world history as well. In that very year, after the anti-Roman uprising raised by the Zealots, Judea was crushed, and Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed to the ground in the literal sense of the word.

In scale this catastrophe was comparable to the catastrophe of 587 B.C., when the city and the Temple were destroyed by the Babylonian army and the period of the seventy-year Babylonian captivity began for the Jewish people. Such events inevitably produce a crisis: social and political, as well as religious. And the crisis experienced in the 70s by the Jewish people and the Synagogue could not help affecting the Church, which at that time was still predominantly Judeo-Christian both in composition and, more importantly, in worldview: Judeo-Christian views and traditions shaped the mentality of both the earliest Christian Church and, in part, the early Christian Church.

Meanwhile, one of the signs of the religious crisis was mystical messianism, which was rapidly replacing political messianism both in circles around the synagogue and in circles around the church. Later this messianism gave rise to numerous gnostic schools and movements. And if political messianism saw the Messiah as an ordinary man, an earthly ruler acting according to God's will, mystical messianism was more ready to see in him some superhuman being, more like an angel than a man. But the author of the epistle, whose name is unknown to us, never tires of reminding his readers that the Messiah is greater than any angel (vv. 1-4), that the way into the Kingdom was not opened to humanity by angels at all (vv. 5-12), and that angels are merely created spirits performing strictly service functions for God (vv. 13-14). He reminds his readers that the meaning of Christianity is not mysticism, but entering the Kingdom that the Savior brought into the world and becoming rooted in it, finding there what no mysticism and no angels can give a human being.

"And: In the beginning, Lord, You laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of Your hands; they will perish, but You remain; and they will all grow old like a garment, and like a cloak You will roll them up..."

In today's text the apostle refers to the text of the prophet Isaiah: "Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look at the earth beneath; for the heavens will vanish like smoke, and the earth will grow old" (Isa 51:6). But this is, of course, far from the only place in the book of the prophet Isaiah where the end of days is mentioned. It is part of every prophetic ministry to remind people about the end of the days of "earth and heaven," about the end of the existence of the physical universe. "And all the host of heaven will decay; the heavens will be rolled up like a scroll; and all their host will fall, as a leaf falls from the vine, and as a withered leaf from the fig tree" (Isa 34:4).

Sergei Averintsev wrote this: "The last light brightens the firmament, / White walls like peaceful death, / all times curl up like a scroll, / minutes linger and the cup is full." Peaceful death is something very important for us today, because pictures of the end can frighten us and therefore inevitably cast us into depression. And Averintsev's words are not some late interpretation whose comfort we may distrust because it is too modern, too young, and untested by time. No: the prophet himself says immediately after this, "say to those who are fearful of heart: do not fear; behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God; He will come and save you" (Isa 35:4). We need only enter God's peace, now, while still on earth, and then say with the apostle in joy: "You are the same, and Your years will not end."

Our own fate after death is not what matters to us; we love the Lord so much that we dissolve our selfhood in Him. The main thing is that "You are the same, and Your years will not end"; the main thing is that You, beloved God, will not die the death of decay. And in You are all who have entered Your peace, and all whom we love so much.

Today's reading is a short but rich description of Jesus' preaching in His native Galilee, where He, as is clear, often preached not only in houses and synagogues, but also in the open air (v. 13; by "sea" here is meant not the Mediterranean Sea, but Lake Gennesaret). People whose reputation in the society of believers was not very good often found themselves in the same house with Him and at the same table (v. 15).

In the Gospels, "tax collectors" are collectors of taxes and tribute, like Levi son of Alphaeus, who is mentioned in the passage (v. 14). In Jewish society they were considered traitors, because they collected taxes for the treasury of the Roman Empire, under whose power Palestine was at that time, and many regarded them as accomplices of the occupying authorities. It is no wonder that such respected people among believers as the scribes and Pharisees did not care for this kind of company (v. 16).

In the Gospels, "Pharisees" are members of special religious brotherhoods that existed at that time around the synagogues. They were the most active part of the Synagogue; the Pharisees devoted much time to preaching, not only among Jews but often among Gentiles, to charity, and to religious education. With good reason they considered themselves the core of the synagogue community, and being near people who, from this point of view, had no standing, people known for an obviously unrighteous way of life, of course had to offend them. Besides, they did not consider such people worthy of fellowship with a Teacher like Jesus, and they considered it shameful for Him to sit at one table with them.

As for Jesus Himself, on the contrary, He considers such people worthy not of rejection, but of help: each of them can repent of his sins and turn to God (v. 17). And He does not treat religious life as formally as many religious people did at that time. For Him both fasting and the Sabbath are not ends in themselves, but means for establishing a relationship with God, so necessary for the human person, who always remains the main goal (vv. 27-28). Such a position, of course, inevitably had to lead to conflict with religious formalists, for whom any departures from established norms and rules are unacceptable by definition. So the image of new wine poured into an old wineskin, or skins (v. 22), could hardly have produced anything in them except irritation.

In today's passage, three episodes can be distinguished: the calling of Levi son of Alphaeus, the conversation with the disciples of the Pharisees and of John the Baptist about fasting, and the conversation with the Pharisees about keeping the Sabbath. In all three episodes, the growing conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees is shown. The Pharisees cannot accept the newness in relations with God and with people that Christ offers them. In their view, the main thing is the letter of the law. They condemn Jesus because He associates with tax collectors, who collected taxes for Rome. Such people were considered traitors and great sinners. For a pious person, it was considered unacceptable to sit at the same table with them. But for Christ something else proves important: the thirst for salvation that makes many tax collectors and sinners follow Him. Levi leaves his profitable place and immediately follows Jesus.

Jesus' attitude toward fasting is also incomprehensible to the Pharisees. Fasting is an ascetic means to which ascetics have resorted since ancient times in the hope of drawing near to God. But Christ's disciples cannot fast, because the One toward whom they strive is already with them. The time for fasting will come when Christ is no longer nearby. Christ compares the Pharisees' lack of understanding to the way old cloth cannot be mended with a patch of new cloth, and old, fragile wineskins cannot hold new wine. In order to receive the new relationships that Jesus offers, people themselves must be renewed.

Thus Christ places the Old Testament law about the Sabbath not above the human being, but at the service of the human being. For God, the human being is more important. The Sabbath has no value in itself, but was established for the human being. Christ, God become man, the "Lord of the Sabbath," affirms the primacy of the human being over the letter of the law, replacing it with relationships of love and faith.

The question of Shabbat, of observing and violating it, arises constantly in the Gospels. This is understandable: the problem of observing Shabbat was one of the main problems in Judaism. Entire treatises were written by interpreters of the Torah to justify what exactly could be done on Shabbat and what could not, in what cases a given action would be a violation of Shabbat and in what cases it was permitted.

For example, with regard to treatment, the consensus came down to the understanding that on Shabbat one can and must save a person from death if death threatens him. This means that one can and must carry out the medical procedures that are necessary, to use modern language, for vital indications, emergency procedures without which the sick person will die. If there is no such urgency, however, there is no need to hurry with treatment, because that too is work, and work is forbidden on Shabbat.

For the sake of saving life, Shabbat may be violated; for the sake of immediate healing, no. The case of the man with the withered hand was precisely one in which there was no need to hurry: death did not threaten him, for he had already lived this way for more than one year, which means he could have been healed after Shabbat ended. Jesus, however, looks at Shabbat in a completely different way, returning it to its original meaning. The original meaning of Shabbat consisted not at all in ritual restrictions and prohibitions, but in spending the day in God's presence, devoting it entirely and without remainder to communion with God. All the prohibitions and restrictions were ultimately directed toward removing a person from that everyday rush which greatly hinders communion with God and at times makes it simply impossible. Meanwhile the healing performed by Jesus manifested to those gathered the very fullness of the Kingdom that opened the possibility of communion with God, previously unknown to the people of God. And now it turned out that ritual prohibitions, when understood in a purely formal way, began to hinder communion with God instead of helping it.

It is not by chance that Jesus asks the people around Him a question about saving the "soul," about saving life. In healing, He joins the person He heals to the fullness of the life of the Kingdom, and He is told that by doing this He violates Shabbat. So what, then, is Shabbat: the fullness of communion with God, or a system of prohibitions for the sake of prohibitions? Each person had to answer this question for himself.

In today's story Jesus touches on the very meaning of the Sabbath commandment. It was given to God's people in order to teach them to dedicate their life to God. To begin with - one day a week. In this connection the Lord asks the Pharisees what this dedication means: simply doing nothing on the Sabbath (and sometimes inaction is evildoing), or doing good? This question is addressed directly to us as well. Having entered into the New Covenant with God, we have dedicated our whole life to Him - all our deeds, words, thoughts, and every aspect of our being. What, then, does this dedication mean? And what should it be like? And how can we make our life dedicated not to fulfilling the Sabbath commandment as we understand it, but to God Himself, who is love?

At times Jesus' behavior looks frankly provocative. Why, one asks, did He need to heal a man with a withered hand specifically on Shabbat and specifically in the synagogue? This was a direct and obvious challenge not only to the Pharisees in particular, but also in general to the ideas already established by that time about the norms and rules of Shabbat, and in particular about the ritual prohibitions connected with it.

The usual rule was this: help to a person on Shabbat, including medical help, was given in the form and to the extent necessary for vital indications. If, for example, the healed man's withered hand had directly threatened his life, no one would have reproached Jesus for the healing.

If, however, there was no direct and immediate threat to life, treatment was not performed on Shabbat and was postponed until it ended. It is worth noting, by the way, that in medical institutions in Israel, for example, these rules are still followed today: on Shabbat only necessary planned medical procedures are carried out, and emergency help necessary for vital indications is provided.

The situation with the man healed by Jesus was clearly different: the presence of a withered hand in no way threatened his life, and the healing therefore could have been postponed until the end of Shabbat. But Jesus, as we see, does not do this and heals the man specifically on Shabbat. At first glance such a healing can look like a demonstrative and therefore provocative violation of Shabbat.

In reality, however, the situation is exactly the opposite. In this case the matter is not medical help, but healing: the manifestation of the Kingdom and its power. That is, the very thing for which Shabbat as such exists. In Gospel times there was much debate about the ritual norms and prescriptions connected with Shabbat, and amid the restrictions people often forgot the main thing: Shabbat is not a day of ritual prohibitions, but a day to be spent in God's presence.

Jesus is precisely striving to return Shabbat to its true meaning. Indeed, where can Shabbat be more itself, not in form but in essence, than in the Kingdom? To enter the Kingdom means to enter the rest of Shabbat, and in a fullness that is unthinkable anywhere else. This is exactly what Jesus offers those who witnessed the healing He performed: in fact, all of them, as many as were there, found themselves on the threshold of the Kingdom. But many of those present did not notice the Kingdom at all; instead, they noticed very clearly a violation of the religious prescriptions connected with Shabbat. This emphasis on the external at the expense of the essential, on religion at the expense of the Kingdom, was the chief obstacle on the way into the Kingdom for religious people. It was an obstacle that had to be overcome, or else one had to abandon the way into the Kingdom altogether. Here each person chooses his own. And bears all the consequences of his choice.

How can the behavior of the Pharisees in this passage be explained? — that is the first question. Parallel to it is the second: how can Jesus' behavior be explained? For a modern reader of the Gospel, raised on the values of humanism, it is easy to see the Pharisees as a kind of "spawn of hell." We ourselves are unreservedly on Jesus' side — and does that not mean that we are far better than they are, even if in daily life we do not remember God especially often? Let us think about it...

The Pharisees were a religious party with a tradition based on a scrupulous study of the Law of Moses. Many things seemed self-evident to them, for example, that a man with a withered hand had been punished by God for something. To accept the fact that spirituality could come from some other source was equivalent to losing everything. And if the miracle of healing on the Sabbath was plain to see, it was the fruit of some "other" spirituality... perhaps even satanic?

Now let us look once more at our episode. Here I am, a witness of an obvious miracle... It breaks into my habitually explainable world and destroys it. What is easier for me: in the exultation of my heart to bow before what has happened with meek gratitude, or to turn away, muttering that the miracle was performed "by the power of Beelzebul"?

On the other hand, what would it have meant for the man with the withered hand, who had suffered for many years already, to wait one more day? What would it have cost Jesus to wait one more day and not put the Pharisees to the test? After all, truly, a delay of one day against the background of an entire life plays no role. But apparently that is not so for the love of God. Can an unexpected meeting be postponed? Can loving wait? Could the Physician and the sick man who met in this Gospel text have delayed opening themselves to each other? The point is not Jesus' revolutionary spirit, not the deliberately provocative nature of His behavior. The point is simply that His love is real.