NOTES for

The prophetic books and the psalms say a great deal about God accepting the humble in spirit and the brokenhearted. Today we often read these lines in the context of the emotions that accompany repentance and a renewed turning to God, which often turns out to be a consequence of repentance. But are emotions really what is at issue here? After all, in the Bible the heart is not the container of emotions, but the spiritual center of the human person.

That means that, when biblical texts speak of humility, as well as brokenness, it makes sense to speak not in an emotional or intellectual aspect, but precisely in a spiritual one. Meanwhile, in the biblical books (regardless of genre), humility means above all a special state of the will, a state in which a person is ready to make only those decisions that God will approve, or to follow the decisions God will make concerning him. This, of course, is not coercion: such submission to God's law and His will is completely voluntary, itself becoming the consequence of a person's freely made decision to obey God.

Yet there is a serious difficulty on the path of humility: it is far from simple for fallen humanity to understand and accept God's will, especially in a concrete case, not when the matter concerns keeping the commandments (there everything is usually clear without explanation and carried out without doubt), but when it concerns choosing among several entirely possible and by no means sinful alternatives. Very often the main obstacle is the human heart: for it is with the heart that one not only makes a choice and decisions; in the heart a person carries the system of values and priorities that determine his whole life. And many things influence values and priorities: from traits of character that have become habits to religious norms and rules that a person considers obligatory for himself. And often these influences not only strengthen but also distort a person's value system, influencing choices and decisions in a harmful way.

That is when it may happen that God permits a human heart to be broken. There may be many external causes: from a deep personal spiritual crisis to a national catastrophe, when the value system and worldview of entire peoples collapse (for the Jews, the Babylonian captivity became such a catastrophe in antiquity). Such a crisis is always a serious, sometimes critical, spiritual (and sometimes not only spiritual) test. But precisely when everything that had previously shielded a person's heart from outside influences has been destroyed, he begins to perceive those influences with special acuity.

Of course, it is not easy to live this way, but in such a state it is easier to hear God and accept what in another situation, in a settled and peaceful life, would have seemed completely impossible. This happens with an individual and with an entire people. But if the person or the people does not try to turn back, to return to the past, the spiritual crisis can bring this person or this people to a new spiritual level, qualitatively changing his or its relationship with God. And then a new spiritual stage will begin in the life of the person or the people, one that before the crisis he could not even have imagined.