NOTES for Luk 10:19-21

At first glance, the Savior's call to rejoice not over victory against the spirits of darkness, but over sharing in the life of the Kingdom, since Jesus says in this case that the names of those who share in it are "written in heaven," sounds a little strange. In truth, one thing is inseparable from the other: the powers of darkness flee from those who share in the life of the Kingdom not because the citizens of the Kingdom are frightening in themselves, but because the life in which they share becomes, for the spirits of darkness, a power that kills them. Yet on closer examination it is not hard to see that Jesus has in mind, above all, the priorities that determine the whole pattern of spiritual life. First the Kingdom, and only then everything else, even successes in the spiritual warfare that awaits, in our transforming but still untransformed world, everyone who shares in the Kingdom.

And this may be the hardest thing: not to rejoice in anything by itself. It is not so hard not to be enticed by what one already considers vanity, foolishness, or especially sin. It is much harder to remain calmly detached when thinking about something that clearly testifies to progress on the path into the Kingdom. Yet the spiritual gaze must be directed toward the Kingdom itself and toward the One who brought it into the world, and toward nothing else. It is not for nothing that the Savior Himself says that such a gaze belongs more to children, who have not yet lost the ability to be carried away by what truly interests them, self-forgetfully, to the point of complete disregard for everything around them. If only we could be carried away by the Kingdom with the same self-forgetfulness, our path there would be, if not simpler, at least shorter.