NOTES for Mat 24:32-51

Those who reflect on the times of the Second Coming and the Last Judgment for some reason pay more attention to the cataclysms accompanying those critical times than to Jesus' very clear words that at that expected moment normal everyday life will continue: neither customary labors, nor weddings, nor even the taking of food will stop. The main upheavals will occur not in the earth's crust or in the atmosphere, but in people's lives, in their souls. The choice the Lord offers us is made already now, and it is made quietly and unnoticed by most of those around us. Completely similar people make the choice, but they make it differently. Until a certain time they are side by side, but the hour of parting will come, when each will go along the path he has chosen for himself.

It is interesting that here Jesus again mentions the fig tree, offering it to the disciples as an example of one that can sense the changes of the times. These words once more make us remember another fig tree, the one that gave no fruit. We are called to be constantly ready to bear fruit and place it in the Lord's hands.

Today's passage is the second part of Jesus' account of the end of time, given in the Gospel according to Matthew. Here we find an explanation for the apparent misunderstanding that had already perplexed representatives of the first Christian generation: history had ended, yet Jesus, contrary to the promise He had given, still was not returning. Here He says directly that everything He told the disciples about would happen during their lifetime (v. 34; by "generation" here, according to the meaning of the Greek word, "generation" is meant).

On the other hand, He tells the disciples nothing definite about the timing of His return; more than that, He says these times are known only to the Heavenly Father (v. 36). In that case it becomes clear that the events marking the end of earthly history and the Savior's return could be separated by some time, whose duration could not be determined precisely at that moment. Jesus, in fact, did not promise the disciples that He would return in glory during their lifetime; He only promised them that they would witness the end of that history whose final stage they had reached. After that, all that remains is to wait for the Teacher's return and, as far as possible, not to relax spiritually (vv. 37-51).

It is no accident that Jesus compares His return with the situation described in the biblical parable of the flood: in Noah's days no one seriously believed that catastrophe was possible, and only Noah himself took the danger hanging over humanity seriously. Evidently, Jesus' return can be expected above all when most people are not thinking about that return at all, having sunk into everyday affairs and forgotten Christ, and perhaps spiritual life altogether.

But why do the times remain unknown? In speaking of the times, Jesus refers to the fact that they are known only to the Father. Meanwhile, everything known to the Father is known to Him as well. In that case, one can only suppose that on the day when Jesus told His disciples about the last times, the times were not yet known even to the Father. This would be entirely possible if He had not yet determined the time at that moment. Of course, for God time is not a self-sufficient reality as it is for us, but all His decisions, if they have to do with our world, still fit within the framework of our familiar concepts of past and future. And from our point of view, His decision about the day of Jesus' return was then still a matter of the future. It was still too early to speak about it.

God has no predetermined plan for everyone in which each human step would be known in advance; if that were the case, the day of the Savior's return would also have been known and predetermined from the creation of the world. But God leaves each person his freedom. And He carries out His plans in accord with the free choice of specific people. Here nothing can be predicted in advance, at least for us, people living in a world where past and future remain absolute realities. That is why the day of the Savior's return cannot be predicted in advance. To a certain extent, it depends on the choice made by each of us.

Whatever the end described in this Gospel “apocalypse” may be, and whenever it may come, we are unlikely to learn anything about it in advance that would help us prepare for it better. As a model of proper conduct, Jesus offers His disciples the story of a steward in his master's house. This man simply did his work properly, and his master could return home at any time and find everything in good order. Thus, this is not a set of “survival instructions” for the end of the world, whenever that may come. It is a model by which Christ's disciples can “live and work” right now. This is the whole force of the Gospel's words about readiness for Jesus' coming: “Do not sleep; do not grow complacent! Live even now in the reality of the Kingdom that is drawing near!”

Perhaps the most important thing Holy Scripture tells us about the end of the world is that it will come. The Lord explains to the disciples in considerable detail that the end will be like a harvest, when creation brings its fruit to the Creator. But what He adds next is also very important: we do not know the hour at which our Lord will come. Later, after the Resurrection, the Savior will say this even more definitely: it is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by His own authority. It follows that we need to know the fact that the end will come, since the Lord Himself bears witness to it, but we are not meant to know the time of its coming. Moreover, in His parables Christ calls us always to be ready for that day.

The ancient Christians expected the end of the world to come from day to day, and this expectation, on the one hand, inspired them and gave them strength to withstand persecutions and temptations, but, on the other hand, after two or three centuries had passed, it became the cause of a certain perplexity, disappointment, and rethinking of the Gospel. In our time we have so forgotten the very essence of the coming end that dates and signs of its arrival trouble us more than what we will say at the Last Judgment.

The point is presumably that the news of the end of time is necessary for us not so that we might determine our actions and deeds in some different way. We must live in God’s truth always: on the day after the creation of the world and on the eve of its end. Rather, the fact that history is to be completed is needed so that we may have the right attitude toward this world and its realities. The heavens will grow old like a worn-out garment, and together with them evil and suffering, violence and lies, which we bring into creation, will disappear. This is at once a day of judgment and a day of hope. We will see Christ and we will see His creation in all the beauty He intended. Compared with this, the whole burden of dependencies and illusions that fills our consciousness and from which we will in any case have to part recedes into the background.

The texts for the first Sunday of Advent call us first of all to watchfulness. Not only because we cannot determine the moment when a child will be born. But also because our expectation of seeing Jesus now must be like what parents feel when they have already been waiting eight months for the birth of a child. There is no patience left at all: when at last will we be able to see, to know who this is, what He is like? Life is about to change at any minute, and there are too many of those minutes.

The changes in our life that Jesus gives us are immeasurably greater. He will come to us as a newborn infant, who cannot speak and who will not get anywhere unless we carry Him. In the time left to us before His birth, we must accustom ourselves to the thought that, like any little child, Jesus means cares, constant anxieties, and watchfulness at any time of day or night.

Is He well with us? Is He warm? Will we teach Him to smile? And will we unlearn how to wage war when He appears in our life?

The parables of the Lord Jesus Christ that we read today give us an incredible hope, one we have in no way deserved. Two days before Passover, when the Son of Man was handed over to be crucified, He shows His disciples from different perspectives what the Kingdom of Heaven is, the Kingdom to which He has called us.

The Lord tells His disciples that they must keep watch and be ready to meet the Day of the Lord. In the parable of the ten virgins, He says that the Kingdom of Heaven itself is like people awaiting an encounter with God. The central point of this parable is the call to wait for that encounter and desire it with all one’s heart.

The parable of the talents speaks of the gift of God given to each of us. This gift is likened to immense wealth: one talent amounted to more than twenty-five kilograms of silver! And the Lord calls us to put this priceless treasure to work. Judging by the text that follows, the talents mean not so much natural abilities and inclinations (that sense belongs to much later usage, which developed under the influence of the New Testament). The parable of the Last Judgment clearly shows us that people’s principal treasure is the ability to show mercy to one another as God Himself shows mercy to us. This is His silver, entrusted to us to make it grow.

And, of course, the central place in the passage we read is occupied by the parable of the Last Judgment. We read it before Lent, and today this text once again reveals what matters most in our life, what the Lord expects from us and, above all, where He has arranged to meet us.

In Russian, the word “apocalypse” is associated with something terrible, with an immense global catastrophe, a worldwide cataclysm. Indeed, the apocalyptic scenes depicted in the Bible make a powerful impression on our minds. But we must not surrender ourselves entirely to these impressions, remembering the measure of optimism contained in them. It is no accident that, in the passage considered today, the Lord compares the End Times with summer, the most favorable season, using the example of the fig tree putting forth its leaves. Yet it will still be a trial. Theophan the Recluse writes: “One must conduct oneself as a student awaiting an examination does: whatever he may be doing, the examination never leaves his mind; such remembrance does not permit him to waste a single minute, and he uses all his time to prepare for the examination.”

It would seem that today's text is all about fear: fear of being caught in bad occupations at the coming of the Lord and of suffering terrible punishment for that at the Last Judgment. Whole layers of the culture of both Western and Eastern Christianity were built on such an attitude toward these words. But let us think about whether we understand this fear correctly. Let us recall the words from the beginning of the Gospel according to Luke. "And the angel said to them: Do not be afraid. For behold, I bring you good news of great joy." The Lord calls us not to fear, but to joy. Still, how then should we understand today's text?

We are all very different. We all have different spiritual, intellectual, and moral levels. At the same time, the word of God is addressed to everyone, and therefore it must be multidimensional, reflecting all the complexity of the structure of human society. The main thing is to be able to read what the Lord is saying personally to you; this is what prayer consists in. For self-confident people, a measure of fear is useful. But there are people whom fear can crush; they are given hope. The Lord knows their sensitivity and gives them the image of the fig tree, by whose leaves we can judge the approach of summer. And then people who seemed weak suddenly gain the strength to rise above any fear, because they begin to understand: "He who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus" (2 Cor 4:13-18).

It is another matter that, to the extent that the history of the Church has been filled with imperfection and sin, human fear was pleasing to its unrighteous servants, because it produced servility, simply subjecting people to their power. But all this is passing. We must always be able to separate what is passing from what is true.

Speaking about His return and about the last times, Jesus specifically warns His disciples and followers against being carried away by false prophets and false messiahs. But where could such fascination come from among those who, as it would seem, had already settled the question of the Messiah?

The answer to that question may be found in the traditional ideas of that time about both the Messiah and the Kingdom. In those days, among the Jewish people, it was widely believed that the Temple in which Jesus preached would become the messianic Temple. The ideas about the Kingdom themselves still remained close to pre-exilic ones: in the popular religious consciousness, the Kingdom was perceived as an earthly state, though one ruled by the Messiah who would head it. And the apostles, it must be said, were not free from such ideas either; even on the day of the Ascension they were still sure that now, at last, their Teacher would finally begin building the messianic state whose appearance they had awaited so long.

Yet it was precisely the first, in part, and the second, mainly, generation of Christians who would witness the very tragic events Jesus is now speaking about. The messianic uprising of A.D. 70 and the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple became not only a national but also a religious catastrophe for the people. For the Jews it meant that they had not waited long enough for the Messiah after all, and for Christians it meant that He had not returned before the end of time, as He had promised. In such a situation confusion and wavering would be entirely natural. Self-appointed "messiahs" and "teachers" or "prophets" who wanted to "correct" or "supplement" the Gospel would have appeared. Indeed, if the Temple had already been destroyed and the Kingdom had still not come, did this not mean that something had been missed? Maybe the Founder of the Church had left something unsaid or unfinished?

Such doubts could become, and in their time did become, fertile ground for all kinds of theories and concepts that use Christian language but in substance have nothing in common with Christianity. Of course, the chief answer, as usually happens in the Church, was the new revelation received from Jesus about the era that had begun, about the spiritual meaning of the events taking place during that era, and about its completion; it found its embodiment in the Book of Revelation. But Jesus, as we can see, considers it necessary to warn His disciples and followers in advance. After all, the things at stake are too serious: the Kingdom and salvation.

Speaking of His return in glory, the Savior gives special emphasis to three points that are important for us. One of them concerns the thought that constantly troubles us: nothing is known about the time of His return. We would very much like to fill what seems to us to be this gap in the Gospel, perhaps because we think that God is trying to hide something from us, or perhaps because we are truly afraid: what if He finds us unprepared?

Jesus Himself says that this is entirely possible; to avoid it, we must not try to calculate what cannot be calculated, but live in constant readiness to meet the One whom, as we publicly proclaim, we await and are always glad to see. In His other parables about the Kingdom, He also speaks about what prevents us from being ready for this encounter, pointing first of all to distrust. The parable of the talents is a fine example: what destroyed the servant who returned what he had received to his master without profit was precisely distrust. He was clearly frightened by something that did not frighten the others: what if he proved to be a poor financier and failed to manage the money properly?

Meanwhile, the Kingdom—and the parable concerns the gifts of the Kingdom—can spread in the world only if everyone who has shared in its life increases, through himself, the fullness of that to which he has been joined; if he himself becomes a bearer of the Kingdom’s breath and love. This is all very well, but what about those who, despite all the efforts of its witnesses, still do not know the Kingdom? Are they all condemned? The Savior does not think so. Speaking of the Last Judgment, He says that everyone brought before the Judgment is judged according to how he treated “these least brothers,” by whom Jesus evidently means His disciples and followers. No one is cut off from the Kingdom and from salvation, not even those who, in the present age—the age of the advancing Kingdom—have remained outside it.

God will assess their lives in relation to the Kingdom and to those who lived its life. This is not about privileges for Christians on the day of Judgment, but about an objective reality: after the transformation of the world, each person’s destiny is determined according to the measure of that person’s objective participation in this process. For the day of the Savior’s return ultimately depends precisely on the measure of each person’s participation. It is undetermined because its nearness depends not only on God, but also on us.

The prophetic discourse on the Mount of Olives, which we read today in the Gospel according to Matthew, has aroused enormous interest from the moment it was written. At times this interest took on entirely unhealthy proportions, especially in certain heretical sects. But Christians who were "normal" from the point of view of confession and mental health also did not ignore this text. Perhaps only Revelation can compare with it in this regard... There is something in us that draws our attention to the end of the world... Perhaps the madness of the world in which we live, apart from our will, calls up thoughts of the end in us... Or perhaps this is a manifestation of an instinctive fear of responsibility for sins?

Yet in the content of the words of the Lord Jesus, what matters for us is not only what horrors and cataclysms will accompany the end of the world. Much more important is the revelation of the end as such. For our attitude toward the horrors and madness that already exist depends substantially on this. It is one thing if this will go on endlessly: our wars, hostility and foolishness, our cruelty and helplessness, only occasionally marked by flights of the human spirit inspired by the touch of the Almighty. It is something altogether different if we believe the Lord's words that against the background of evil's apparent triumph there will come the day of God's victory, the day when the Creator's design will be fulfilled in full. And still more important for us is that this Day of the Lord has already come, when the Savior of the world ascended the Cross for our sake.