NOTES for Mat 7:7-12

As we can see, readiness to grant good to the one who asks is presented as a distinctive feature of God, to which Jesus draws His listeners' attention. Of course, Hosea had already spoken of God's readiness to do more than deserved for His people, as well as for each individual person. The only thing required of the people for this is to turn to God and ask forgiveness for the sins they have committed. And the pre-exilic prophets already connected this readiness of God for undeserved benefactions with the very possibility of justification on the day of Judgment, whether for the people or for an individual person.

Jesus, as we see, connects with it the very possibility of the Kingdom as such. He says to the people listening to Him: you are able to do good deeds for those you love, for example for your own children, although in general goodness is contrary to your fallen nature; yet sometimes you are able to build concrete relationships with concrete people, even if only a few, despite your nature. But for God a good attitude toward every person is the norm; doing good does not contradict His nature. It is enough only to enter into relationship with Him in order to receive good, for there can be no other, non-good relationship with Him. And this in turn opens the road to the Kingdom for everyone: for the fullness of relationship with the Father and with Christ is precisely what brings a person into communion with it.

And Jesus bears witness that God is always ready for such relationships, so now it is up to the person. For Him, loving a person is no labor: relationships of love are the only relationships natural to Him. But in order to love, a person must always step over himself and build a relationship with another, whether God or neighbor, against his own fallen nature. Yet for a person the matter is made simpler by the fact that God is always ready to take a step toward him. And not only one step, but many steps in response to the one step taken by a person seeking relationship with God and the Kingdom.

Perhaps one of the most "frequently asked questions" that arises for many people when they think about God is the complaint that we are so unhappy. "Why does this happen?" Different people, with very different motives, ask God and one another this question. Why are we so unhappy? This question implies not only the incomprehensibility and meaninglessness of the existence of evil and suffering, but also the deep thirst for life built into the human being itself. Why do I have so little of it?

And today's words of the Lord Jesus Christ in the Gospel of Matthew answer exactly this question, but, as often happens, they answer it in a way that is very unexpected for us. Stereotyped thinking locates the meaning of life in possessing something: goods, time, health, or finally simply happiness. The Lord, by contrast, speaks about belonging. Life is not a matter of possessing the blessings of the Kingdom of Heaven, but of belonging to it. Everything else "will be added" and will be the consequence of this belonging.

These words of Christ can become an amazing source of joy for us if we let them penetrate deeply into our hearts. Incidentally, belonging to the Kingdom of Heaven also satisfies the thirst to belong to something great, a thirst that is also built into us and that we try to drown out with all kinds of murky substitutes, such as personal, social, and national pride.

Christ invites us to ask the Heavenly Father for everything we need. This alone is not easy to take in. Can this really be so, and can we really trouble Him about anything at all? But even more striking is the question of whom Christ invites to ask: us, the very people whom He Himself called evil. But the Lord asks us to open up the potential for mercy that lives in us despite all our hardness precisely because He Himself loves us. And if the generosity of the Heavenly Father is set against our human limitation, then we who ask and those who ask of us turn out to be in the same position.

It would seem not hard to see oneself in another person's place, but often we do not even have enough strength for this. Meanwhile, it has long been noted that Christ formulates the well-known moral principle called the "golden rule" somewhat differently from those before Him. If many ancient sages taught that one should not do to another what one does not want for oneself, Christ proposes that we act more actively and do for our neighbor what we want for ourselves.

And this means that the Gospel proposes that we not limit ourselves to refraining from evil while sitting with folded hands. It is a call to action.

Hoping for God’s help is as natural as it is for a child to expect care from its parents. If you cannot deceive your own child, how can the heavenly Father fail His children?... These words were not spoken for “naive believers” unfamiliar with life, but for perfectly ordinary people who knew that things are not so simple, that God does not always answer prayer, and that hunger, sickness, and death exist in the world. So what is this: yet another religious idea, opium for the people, or is it nevertheless true? And if it is true, how are we to understand it? It seems that it can be understood only in the context of the joyful News that the Ruler of the universe becomes Father to Jesus’ disciples. For it is one thing to know how to receive good and evil, suffering and joy, with gratitude from the hand of the Master; it is another to know that, in every circumstance, a loving Father will always be more faithful and closer than the people dearest to us...

There are several meaningful sections in today's reading. The first of them, perhaps, (vv. 1-5) is the clearest in meaning, although the hardest of all to put into practice! Verse 6 gives an example of a fairly typical stylistic device in oral speech called "chiasm," when a phrase is built on the pattern "ABba." In our case, "trampled underfoot" refers to the pigs, and "turned and tore" refers to the dogs.

But what is all this about? Are we really supposed to consider someone dogs and pigs? Let me recall that both were considered unclean animals. Hardly! The preceding verses do not allow that. It is probably about the fact that even the most objectively good things, whether objects or ideas, do not necessarily turn out to be subjectively good in concrete situations, and therefore wisdom is needed in using them. The next section (vv. 7-11) not only urges us to persistent prayer, but also assures us that the Heavenly Father always answers it, and specifically with what "gives good things." In another Gospel this passage says that He "will give the Holy Spirit," who, of course, is the ultimate "good thing." That is, the answer from God may be "not exactly" what we expect.

Today's reading is devoted to two themes that, at first glance, are not directly connected. On the one hand, it speaks about judgment and about the fact that Christ's followers would be better off not acting as judges (vv. 1-5). On the other hand, Jesus directly advises His disciples to ask the Father for everything they may need (vv. 7-11). And this advice is introduced by words about a careful attitude toward what is holy (v. 6). At first glance, these are completely different things; but if we think carefully, we can notice that here too Jesus is again speaking about the Kingdom. Indeed, if a person can "not judge," it is only and precisely in the Kingdom.

In our fallen world, any evaluation almost automatically becomes not only a judgment, which is permitted to us, but also condemnation, which is forbidden. Evaluation without condemnation is possible only in the Kingdom, where the very environment in which communication takes place is different. In such an environment one can compare oneself with others without at the same time determining whose step on the hierarchical ladder is higher. And not because everyone in the Kingdom suddenly becomes the same, but because the ladder itself loses its significance there. In the fullness of the Kingdom each person receives his own fullness given by God, and then the comparison so familiar to us in our world becomes meaningless.

But how can such vision be attained in our fallen world? Obviously, only by preserving the Kingdom that is already given to every follower of Christ now, in this world. It is no accident that the Savior reminds us of the need to keep what is holy pure, without defiling it with anything unclean (v. 6). "Dogs" and "swine" are mentioned here for a reason: they are unclean animals that in the Bible often become symbols of uncleanness as such.

And the call to treat people as we would want them to treat us (v. 12) also reminds us of the Kingdom. It would seem that before us is only the well-known "Golden Rule" of ethics, but that is still not exactly so. The point is not to treat people the same way they treat us, but to treat them as we would want them to treat us. In that case it becomes clear that we can treat people only with love and certainly without condemnation: it is hard to find anyone who would not want to be loved, or would want to be condemned, even if that person understands that there is not much to love him for and that there is plenty to condemn him for. Here it becomes clear that in our fallen world this is impossible. But what is impossible here becomes possible in the Kingdom.

If we relate to our neighbors exactly as Jesus commanded us, then the Kingdom has already become reality for us, and then we can ask as people ask in the Kingdom, where God gives without measure. The point is not that while we are here He cannot give us everything He could give there. It is simply that in the Kingdom, having learned to give without remainder and in fullness, we will also learn to receive in fullness - as people give and receive in the Kingdom.

Here we are again invited to come out of the captivity of our own egocentrism. How easy it is to revel in our own limitations, to regard our judgments about people, and about the world around us in general, as infallible. But Jesus lets us see the limits of our horizon. And although understanding another person can be very difficult, it is precisely by seeing the boundaries of our own understanding that we begin to overcome them, and therefore draw closer to understanding other people. Then we find ourselves in the place of the person we recently judged, and we begin to understand another person even better... The words about the speck and the log have been familiar to us since childhood; fortunately for us, this gospel wisdom turned out to be one of those things acknowledged even by many hardened atheists. True, there is a great temptation to poke at one's neighbor: "but you have a log sticking out," yet in substance there is nothing to object to here.

It is harder to notice that immediately after these words comes the warning about the inadmissibility of giving holy things to dogs and pearls to pigs. Let us recall, by the way, that in another place in the Gospel the Kingdom of God is compared to a priceless pearl. What unites these sayings? It appears that here Jesus is warning us about the danger of a hasty desire to become teachers. After all, even the preaching of truth can be turned into a way of self-assertion, when admiration for one's own eloquence hides from the speaker those to whom he is speaking.

But we should not amuse ourselves with illusions, even ones that look outwardly pious. Reality will inevitably break through the illusions, and it will be good if that happens without tragedy.

Have we been wronged unfairly again? Well, the most worthy response is to quote today's Gospel to the offender: there is no point looking at someone else's specks when you have a beam in each of your own eyes! But if, as the Apostle says, all have sinned and all believers are justified freely, is it worth deepening resentment and hostility? Would it not be better to receive from Christ the word of reconciliation and become a servant of His peace? And to begin with, simply do not judge.

"Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you..." Here it is fitting to recall an ancient wisdom spoken by Ovid, in order to see how close and at the same time how distant these two worlds are: enlightened, golden antiquity and the small community of the early Christian Church standing opposite it. "Gutta cavat lapidem, non vi, sed saepe cadendo." "The drop hollows the stone not by force, but by falling often." It would seem that this says the same thing: constancy in seeking. It sounds like a call not to despair when no result is visible, but to dare further. Yes, the similarity is obvious... But if we look at this picture a little more closely, we notice that there is something dead in this stone, some indifference to the drop, and a cold static quality shows through the whole situation.

Christianity is entirely different. The main thing that distinguishes Christ's words is the presence in them of a living answer. Yes, this too is a call to constancy in seeking, but in a completely different way: it will be opened to you, it will be given to you... What can a drop expect from a stone? Nothing, only dead silence. Here, however, we have a living answer. There is a striking expression: if a person, praying to God, does not expect an answer, he is simply an atheist. And sometimes someone hopes to get through to God with monotonous prayers, morning and evening, which, like that same drop, resemble one another day after day, performed without creativity and, most importantly, without dialogue... No, the way to Him is only dialogue, only creativity, only standing over the abyss.