NOTES for Mar 8:30-34
Today's reading gives us an opportunity to reflect on the essence of love as the highest type of relationship possible between people and between a person and God. What is most frightening for us in love? That something will happen to the beloved, that he will fall ill or die - this is what is most frightening for us.
But is this not because we identify ourselves with the beloved so strongly that we are afraid and in pain for ourselves? We ourselves are not ready for the feat of bearing all the beloved's pain as our own cross. When the beloved dies, we do not rejoice that at last he has been released and is now with Christ, but we weep because the place he occupied in our life is now empty, and we have not learned prayerful connection. We have not learned to distinguish in our relationships what is not subject to decay.
On the other hand, when we love a person, are we always ready to tell him if he is doing something contrary to the commandments of Christ? We are afraid he will not understand us, will take offense, and so on; in other words, we often place our relationship above God's truth. And nothing is above it. And if the beloved is facing a trial, we must stand beside him, looking that trial in the face. But we want to run away and lead him away with us. And this even appears noble to us, as though we are saving someone. We are saving no one; we are inciting flight.
And one more point connected with today's reading. A person new to the faith may be surprised that in the Synodal translation the words are: "Get away from Me, Satan," while in the translation of Bishop Cassian (Bezobrazov) they are: "behind Me, Satan." It becomes somewhat clearer if one looks at a translation, for example, into English. There, in various translations, both new and old, the same phrase appears: get behind me, that is, stand behind me if translated literally, or do not stand in my way; stand where I cannot see you. We deliberately single out these three translations; from them, everything we have tried to say to you today becomes somehow immediately clear and alive.