NOTES for Isa 2:1-5

In today’s reading from the book of the prophet Isaiah, the Lord tells us three important things that express all our hope. First, He promises to cleanse His people. This is our only hope, because in the final analysis a person is unable to purify his own heart. Of course, purification is also impossible without the person’s own desire and effort. Repentance and fasting can become the point of support through which God fills our desire for purification with strength.

Second, the Lord once again speaks of what He expects from people. “Zion shall be redeemed with justice, and her converts with righteousness.” In this way, God shows us the path of purification and reveals His will for us in a few words.

Third, today’s reading contains Isaiah’s first messianic prophecy, which corresponds almost word for word to the words of his contemporary, the prophet Micah: “Now it shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established on the top of the mountains.” Repentance and purification, righteousness and hope—everything for us is centered on Christ.

"The strong shall become tow, and his work a spark; and they shall both burn together, and no one shall quench them." Following the path after the Lord means following the path of humility and humiliation, of making oneself small before the whole world. In each of us there is a secret and heavy striving for perfection and victory. At times it is not even clear over what. And we multiply envy and quarrels, trying to find our own path before people.

We want to occupy a higher position, receive more pleasure, and so on. This is like constant hunger. And in trying to satisfy ourselves, to indulge our desires, we condemn ourselves to death. Death from endless exhaustion, from emptiness, and in the loneliness of the heart. And the more stubbornly we persist on our path toward victories and achievements for our own sake, the more God resists us, because He knows that our works are vain and useless if through our labor we are not seeking His presence in the world. If we are not seeking peace and are not softening our heart for His sake. "For out of Zion shall go forth the law." The law of eternal life and peace.

The way of the Lord, of which the prophet Isaiah speaks, differs strikingly from human ways. The Lord Himself proclaims this through Isaiah, saying: "My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways, says the Lord" (Isa. 55:8). This qualitative difference is expressed above all in the fact that human ways do not lead into life; only the Lord, who is Life itself, can lead us to Himself.

And now we read at the beginning of the book of Isaiah that God does not abandon people, but that a day will come when He will teach all nations His ways. That means it is attainable, no matter how hard we try to prove the opposite. And it means that God's will is for us to find the way of life. It is also important that this prophecy was fulfilled in the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.

How easily love and hatred, friendliness and hostility, kindness and malice, peacefulness and belligerence coexist in a person. We even consider this "natural": it is normal to treat "our own" well and "outsiders" badly. So for Israel, too, other peoples are outsiders, and war with them is natural.

But the prophet Isaiah says that a time will come when God, who chose the people of Israel, will also be acknowledged by other nations. Then there will be no "outsiders," because all will become "our own" to God and therefore to one another. Then there will be only one "natural" state both for the human person and for humanity: peace. Peace not simply as the absence of war, but as the whole, harmonious ordering of the human personality awakening to positive relationships with others, and the same creatively active and fruitful existence of all humanity as a whole.

Only first one must break away from the proud stereotype of "fighting for peace," of arranging the world according to one's own ideas, and humbly accept another way of life and action: "acquiring the Spirit of peace."

The apostle's words about the daylight, in which it is better not to behave disgracefully, sometimes make people smile: reading them, one might think that under cover of night one may do what one would not do in the light of day. Meanwhile, Paul speaks of the day in a special, specifically Yahwistic sense. The Day of Yahweh, or, as it is usually called in Russian translations, the Day of the Lord, is a special time in the life of the people of God. It is a time when God directly and immediately intervenes in the people's life.

Times of natural disaster or war, for example, were called the Day of Yahweh. But such intervention was also connected with the idea of God's judgment. Judgment, however, was understood differently at different times. The earliest and simplest idea of it viewed war or natural disaster as punishment for a sin committed by the people.

But even before the Babylonian exile this idea gave way to another: judgment came to be seen as a kind of weighing of a person and his deeds on certain spiritual scales, much as neighboring peoples imagined divine judgment. Among those peoples, however, this judgment was usually postmortem, and the soul of a person appearing for judgment was weighed on the scales. Among the Jews, God weighed human deeds while the person was still alive, determining whether the person was worthy to be left alive or by his deeds had already deserved death.

The Savior speaks of judgment in a completely different way: according to Him, judgment consists in this, that light has come into the world. He clearly means the light of the Kingdom He brought into the world, and now it depends on the person himself whether he accepts this light or runs away because he understands that his life is incompatible with it.

Paul understands the Day of Yahweh in the same way: it is the day when light enters the world. And if before one could still delay making a choice, postpone repentance and conversion, now there is no time left: the decision must be made immediately, and once made, it must be carried out resolutely and unswervingly. Indeed, the issue is salvation, the Kingdom, what determines a person's fate in eternity. Hesitation is out of place here.

These words of Apostle Paul are the base of Christians’ conceptions about which means of the spiritual life need to be applied and how to behave towards it. The revealed religion distinguishes itself in practice from idolization first of all by the fact that its means do not become the purpose. In answer to the question to know what is necessary to do to inherit eternal life, the apostle says twice "put on " (endyo means to wear something on oneself or to be completely indulge in something): let us put on the armour of light and Lord Jesus-Christ.

Don’t "bring the flesh to the necessary aspect" (by vegetarian diet or by other means), but put on the amour of light. The material nature of man requires a known care, it is necessary to support its strengths and it is also necessary to tame it, so that it does not become the main, but: do not transform the care of the flesh into lusts.

Unlike the Stoics and the Epicureans, the apostle asserts that a good life and a wise care (pronoia, wisdom, caution, concern) of the flesh do not bring us automatically to the goal. Strictly speaking, this text does not welcome neither uncontrol of the carnal part of man, nor the mortification of the flesh as the main sense of life.

However, nowadays, as in the time of the apostle, the first danger is considerably more current, that the second. What does the call of the apostle really signifies in practice "put on the Lord Jesus-Christ"? Paul speaks about it in a context of talking of law, rules and Christians’ character. Its principal conclusion consists of the fact that "Love is the fulfilling of the Law ".

That’s exactly what the apostle implies, when talking about the necessity to put on the Christ. God commanded His followers to love one another, as He loved us. The fulfillment of this command will be the fulfillment of law; and we can also call it "put on" the Lord Jesus Christ.

All people's hopes in themselves and in other people are in vain... Only when the word of the Lord reaches people, when the Lord Himself reigns, when all nations believe and call upon His name—only then will there be true light and genuine peace on earth.

“The proud look of man will be abased, and the loftiness of man will be humbled, and the Lord alone will be exalted in that day...” The Lord alone will be exalted in that day... but the Lord is always exalted, the Lord is always far above all that is ours. What exactly does the prophet wish to tell us about “that day”, and what day is it? Has it already come, or is it still to come? We cannot give an unambiguous answer; it would be more accurate to say both yes and no. Yet once again the road to Easter lies before us, the road to the day of the Lord's greatest glory. Before the radiance of that glory all our deeds become insignificant. There is something special here. In the Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom, among the final words spoken by the priest before Communion are the words: “The holy things for the holy.” The Holy Gifts are given to us as to holy people, because it cannot be otherwise. For a moment, while we receive Communion, we become holy; the Lord brings us into His glory and exalts us, for an instant. But now this road to Easter lies before us, and except on Sundays there is no longer the Liturgy of Chrysostom... Why? Let us recall what the choir answers to the priest's words “The holy things for the holy.” It answers: “One is holy, one is Lord, Jesus Christ, to the glory of God the Father.” Truly, only the Lord is holy: “the Lord alone will be exalted in that day.” The Lord calls us to His glory, calls us to the likeness to Him that was given beforehand; but the day comes when we understand that we imagined ourselves exalted, whereas we are insignificant, because we cannot conquer death. We are capable of a great deal; a human being can attain real holiness and can heal as the Lord did, yet even the holiest person dies. No one, no one has risen from the grave. However great the veneration of incorrupt remains, there is no life in them. No... We noticed that in the Vulgate the words “the loftiness of man will be humbled” read “incurvabitur altitudo virorum.” The word “incurvabitur” literally means “will be bent”; one might say “will bow down”, and that is how the Synodal translation renders the word in Isaiah chapter 5: “And man will bow down” — “et incurvabitur homo” (Isa 5:15). But “bow down” is a translation “according to the sense”, whereas Russian has a very apt word close to “incurvabitur”: “извратится”, “will be distorted.” That is the rendering given by Dvoretsky's dictionary, and it is also clear from the structure of the words. This is precisely how our loftiness will be distorted. For there is a straight way upwards, while we follow a crooked way. In English, for instance, curve, which shares the root of incurvabitur, means a curved line; every mathematician or physicist knows that any curvilinear motion, any movement along a curve, can be resolved into the sum of rectilinear motion and rotation. That is why “distortion” sounds somehow especially clear in today's Vulgate. We must feel and understand this: the road to Easter lies before us, and there are only forty days for this road. Our choice is to go straight and arrive, or to follow a curve, to become distorted, and fail to arrive in time.

"For now salvation is nearer to us than when we first believed." From the moment of our conversion to Christ, we look at the world with different eyes. For each of us something changes in life. And, receiving Communion, we become closer to Christ: we receive Him and the path of salvation that He offers us. And each of us "will be upheld, for God is able to make him stand."

We fall and rise on our path after Christ. A fall in the eyes of this world is prepared for us as the path of salvation. We ourselves will see the depth of our fall in repentance - but He will raise us up by His mercy, raise us on the day of the resurrection of the dead into eternal life.

Today's reading from the Letter to the Romans is one of the most important passages of Scripture, if among them there can be any more or less important than others. It should lie at the foundation of Christian ideas about which means of spiritual life should be used and how they should be regarded. In practice, divinely revealed religion differs from idolatry first of all in that its means do not become its goal. To the question of what must be done to inherit eternal life, the apostle twice says "put on" (ενδύω, endyo, means to put something on oneself or to give oneself wholly to something): put on the armor of light and put on the Lord Jesus Christ. Not "bring the flesh into the proper condition" through a vegetarian diet or other means, but put on the armor of light. A person's material nature requires a certain care; its powers must be sustained, and it must also be restrained so that it does not become the main thing. But: do not turn care for the flesh into lusts. Unlike the Stoics and Epicureans, the apostle asserts that a good life and wise care (πρόνοια, pronoia, wisdom, prudence, care) for the flesh do not automatically lead us to the goal. Strictly speaking, this text approves neither a lack of control over the fleshly side of the person nor mortification of the flesh as the chief meaning of life. In our time, however, as in the apostle's time, the first danger is more pressing than the second.

The second and no less important point in today's passage is this: receive the one who is weak in faith, without disputes over opinions. The apostle affirms that we should not argue about the means of spiritual life (specifically, the issue is fasting). We give account for them before God, not before one another. Incidentally, one cannot help noticing that throughout our history, as also at the present time, fulfilling these words is an impossible task for many of us. On the other hand, the apostle extends this freedom to the realm of the means of spiritual life, but by no means to the content of the faith, as some sometimes try to present it.

Finally, it is useful to hear the word in the original: in the first verse of chapter 14 the apostle says, "the one who is weak in faith..." Άσθενής τή πίστει, astenis ti pistei, asthenic in faith. And there arises before the eyes, as in a mirror, a gaunt asthenic figure with a bloodless face and limp, hanging hands. In Russian we call this a pale infirmity. That is how we believe. And that is why we concentrate on ourselves, on our own spiritual infirmity, and on the outward manifestations of piety. This is overcome, as is known, only by the Blood of Jesus Christ.

One of the chief shortcomings of the law, and not only in the religious sphere, is that it is very extensive. In order not to break it, let alone fulfill it, one must know it well and constantly remember to observe it. And since the law contains God’s will for how we should live in this vast world, its scope is too great for weak human beings. Judging by the apostle Paul’s words, there is nothing surprising in this, because in the Creator’s design it was not the law that was meant to govern our life. Not the law, but the Lawgiver. It turns out that there is a perfectly understandable and reliable, though by no means simple, way to fulfill the law: to love one’s neighbor. This is precisely what the apostle Paul means when he writes to Christians that we live not under law but under grace, for love is a gift that God gives us freely and undeservedly.

And since love is the fulfillment of the law, its absence is a violation of the law, that is, sin. By its nature, sin is nothing other than a lack of love. This is important because it gives us a practical way to determine whether our actions are sinful or not.

We are used to taking disorders in human relationships as a given, and if we are upset by them, it is often simply because they throw us off balance. But for the apostle, our quarreling and dark feelings toward a neighbor who has done something a little better than we have are things of the same order as feasting, drunkenness, and sensuality. This is exactly because both drunkenness and quarrels are the result of self-will, the result of our concerns for ourselves, both bodily and emotional, subordinating our striving for the good.

It is not for nothing that Paul, a little earlier, repeats Christ's words about the greatest commandment, which embraces all the others: to love your neighbor as yourself. After all, quarrels and envy, that is, sins against our neighbor, have their source in our lack of love both for our neighbor (and this is more or less obvious) and for ourselves (and this is no less important). This second part of the commandment is often not fully understood by us. Love is acceptance, and its foundation is self-acceptance, an adequate understanding of our abilities and their limits. To accept ourselves, it is very important to understand that we are not superhumans and never will be, that our abilities are not unlimited, and that we often take on too much and from exhaustion begin hurting our neighbors. Many quarrels can be avoided simply by acknowledging our tiredness and realizing that a constructive conversation should be put off until later. And our flesh often experiences many needs that require satisfaction. But for food not to turn into gluttony, it is important to understand ourselves and our needs well; it is important to understand that simple food is in fact enough for us. This is what Paul is talking about: "make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires."

And if we love ourselves as we are, accepting and recognizing our sins without turning repentance into self-torment, it will become much easier to love our neighbor. Because others are exactly the same as we are, just as imperfect. And God gives us only one means to cope with our human limitation: love.

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.

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!”

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.

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.

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.