NOTES for Ti1 4:1-10

It is difficult to determine how the same words of Holy Scripture sound in different centuries. Perhaps today's reading has often been relevant during the two thousand years of Christian history, but for us it can become a daily reading. Eat this, do not eat that. What was regarded as natural throughout human history is now considered harmful, and vice versa. Marriage and family are evil, and life is valued at nothing. What matters most is not godliness, but exercise, diet, and a gleaming white smile. Yet to all who reproach the Church and Christians for worshiping ritual and ceremonial, and therefore external, things, one can offer only the apostle's words, which remain to this day the rule of life for those who believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus: “...bodily exercise is of little benefit, but godliness is beneficial for all things, since it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.”

What does Paul call "teachings of demons," and why? Above all, evidently, those religious prescriptions of Judaism that are connected with kashrut, with the division of food into clean and unclean. It would seem hard to expect this from a man who never renounced his Jewishness. But after becoming a Christian, Paul no longer ever absolutized his religion or considered its norms obligatory for every Christian.

Meanwhile, in different church communities there often appeared "teachers" who considered it their duty to demand from their brothers, as obligatory, what only recently had been completely non-obligatory for them as pagans and what Jews themselves had never demanded of them. Another problem was preachers of sometimes excessive asceticism, what the apostle calls "bodily exercise."

The issue here is, of course, not physical exercises and not sports, but ascetic exercises; the word "ascesis" in Greek itself means "exercise." And Paul speaks sharply against bodily asceticism for its own sake. As can be seen, in the Church at that time there were also such "teachers" who demanded extremely strict bodily asceticism from their disciples without really understanding why it was needed. It should be noted that the Synagogue knows its own tradition of very severe asceticism, rooted in antiquity, though of course asceticism in the Synagogue never reached the scale it reached in the Church.

It was to this tradition that the "teachers," the zealots of strict ascesis, appealed. Meanwhile, both the absolutizing of religiosity as such and asceticism, especially bodily asceticism that has become an end in itself, represent the two main dangers on any spiritual path, and especially on the Christian path. Both distract a person from the main thing: from spiritual work as such and from that dynamic of spiritual formation which is its content.

Instead of spiritual dynamic, spiritual life, a person begins to concentrate on what at best forms its remote periphery, and at worst has no relation to it at all. Indeed, both religiosity and asceticism can easily exist outside the context connected with the relationship between God and the human person, and outside the space of the relationship of the Father and the Son in which the life of a Christian should normally unfold. And then instead of spiritual life there is a serious danger of receiving its substitute, leading into a spiritual dead end, which is what Paul reminds Timothy about.

"For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer." In connection with these words, the words of blessed Augustine come to mind: ama et fac quod vis, love and do what you will. The kinship of these words is twofold. Both, when taken apart from their context, give rise to a "bad interpretation" along the lines of: everything is possible, everything is permitted, as long as you are kind to everyone and thank everyone. And what is this "everything is possible" in the imagination of fallen man? It is complete "freedom." In reality, there truly is freedom here, but of a completely different kind. This is the second facet of the kinship of these words. Here there is most blessed freedom.

And this is easy to understand. We will resort to three maxims of ordinary modern Russian. The first: what is natural is not ugly. There is a point in this and a certain alliteration with the words: "every creature of God is good." We may greatly value this somewhat Rousseau-like impulse in today's person worn down by the city. But it turns out that some needs are quite natural by nature, yet forbidden by law. For example, relations before marriage, not to mention adultery, where things are more complicated because deception is also mixed in. So what then? We have also heard people cite these words to justify their unwillingness to fast. Though why justify it: fasting is joy, not obligation. Eat food, enter into marriage, the apostle says in the previous verse.

When a person hears from a priest, "I am afraid to tell you, everything is possible," and interprets these words as "he did not say it is forbidden," such a person still does not have access to this most blessed freedom. He is like a person who sat in prison for many years and all that time beat his head against the prison walls in despair that there was no one to rescue him. And then the one who will lead him out comes, and leads him out. The former prisoner looks around: what open space! Go wherever you want. He starts running, so filled with the feeling of freedom, but at the same time loses his bearings from the joy that has seized him and again strikes his forehead against the wall of his prison, now from the outside.

And finally two more maxims of ordinary language: "everything is possible, but not everything is beneficial" and "everything is possible, but some things can be done only once." Let us entrust ourselves with caution and sense to biblical, theological, and simply human wisdom. And no word can give absolute meaning; words are too precise to express the essence that is beyond words. If we remember this and hold prayerfully to God, we will never fall into deception.

Today we read Luke the evangelist's account of the conversion of Zacchaeus. Beginning with this day, the Sunday Gospel readings will give us food for reflection and prayer that will help us prepare for Great Lent and, therefore, to a certain extent, for Pascha. And this path begins for us with the story of Zacchaeus, the chief tax collector, who disregarded his social standing just to see the Lord Jesus.

A man of short stature, he could not get close to Christ because of the crowd. It is important to notice exactly what Zacchaeus had to give up. He was not only a wealthy man, but also the head of the tax office. He represented Roman authority, and his work of collecting taxes and duties touched every inhabitant of Jericho. The Jews despised tax collectors as traitors, but feared Roman power. Therefore, to "lower himself" in the eyes of the townspeople meant for Zacchaeus both countless difficulties and an outburst of social contempt. All this, to use the words of the apostle Paul, he "counted as loss."

We read this story because during the approaching fast every Christian is given the opportunity to seek Christ without thinking about how he looks in the eyes of those around him. That is why Zacchaeus's example is so important for us. And that is why it is so important that the Lord rewards him with the words: "Today salvation has come to this house."