NOTES for Luk 11:1-28

It is probably not wrong to say that the principal Message of Christ’s preaching is about the Father. In many other parables the Lord portrays an image of God that is close to Jewish ideas and perhaps sometimes necessary for us: the image of a King who has absolute authority over his subjects. But in today’s parables no images are found for God except those of a father who loves his children whatever they may be, and a friend ready to help even at the most inconvenient moment. Jesus’ listeners know from their own experience that however gloomy and unkind a person may be, he is still capable of showing tenderness and care toward the dearest thing he has—his children. They also know that people are able to help one another in time of need, even when doing so is unpleasant. And now Jesus says: understand one simple thing—God is better than you, kinder and more generous. Can He really be a worse Father to you than you are to your own children? Seen from this perspective, the prayer “Our Father” becomes not merely one possible form of addressing God, but an astonishing revelation of the mystery of the Father’s love, stronger and more tender than anything else in the world.

Today's reading includes two episodes joined by the evangelist into one account. It begins with the disciples' question about prayer, in response to which Jesus offers them, and through them all of us, the "Our Father" (vv. 1-4). Luke, as one can see, focuses chiefly on the importance of asking, and of asking persistently, as a necessary condition for receiving what is asked (vv. 5-13). It would seem that God is not a human being who needs, like a forgetful or unfriendly steward, to be reminded again and again of what is requested. On the other hand, persistence in this case turns out above all to be evidence that a person remembers his request and that it is truly important to him. Indeed, is it worth granting a request that the one who asks forgets the very next day? One can ask this way only for trifles; important requests are those that a person who truly cares about them is ready to repeat again and again, confirming the seriousness of his intentions.

The same seriousness is at issue in the second part of today's passage. The point is not only that the very idea of casting out demons by the power of their ruler was absurd (vv. 17-18, 21-22). The point is also that for those arguing, everything Jesus did was a kind of game, something remotely resembling their own disputes, which were undoubtedly fascinating but, in essence, demanded no commitment. This explains the demand for a sign that would prove Jesus right (vv. 14-16).

The proof had to be theologically correct; it had to correspond to the "right" ideas of the "right" rabbinic school in order to be accepted. And until such proof was presented, anything would do as an explanation of what was happening, including absurd claims about the "prince of demons." But Jesus Himself was not going to play these games, because for Him everything He did was absolutely serious. And He tries to explain to His listeners the full seriousness of what is happening (vv. 24-26). The games are over; what is at stake is a person's spiritual life and spiritual death.

But professional disputants, as one can see, have no concern for that. What matters to them is whether Jesus will manage to outargue them or not. And in their disputes they lose the Kingdom without noticing it. For the Kingdom is not a game; it is serious. And forever.

There is something common to today’s readings from Genesis and the Gospel of Luke. Abraham speaks with his guest (guests?), while understanding that he is speaking with God. This transforms the entire conversation into prayer. Does this prayer achieve its purpose? If the purpose was to intercede for Sodom and Gomorrah, then no! But if its purpose was to deepen the relationship with God, to discern His will and to penetrate the depths of His mercy, then yes, that purpose is achieved! The entire passage from Luke’s Gospel concerns the same thing. What should our prayer be like, and what is its purpose? Jesus’ answer is the prayer “Our Father” and the acquisition of the Holy Spirit.

In the Lord's Prayer, we ask the Father to give us our daily bread, understanding this as the material goods without which life could not continue. For example, when translating the Bible into an Eskimo language, specialists had to use the word “fish” instead of “bread,” which for that people is more a luxury than the basis of the daily diet. This idea can also be interpreted more broadly, with this line of the prayer understood as a request for strength for each day. But precisely for each individual day, not for an entire lifetime. Christ calls us to ask for “daily bread,” for today, and not to worry about tomorrow. Yet how often we begin to ask for something in the future, something that exists only in our plans and dreams.

The Lord Jesus Christ proposes to His followers the prayer of "our Father" and completes it with a brief recommendation in answer to the demand of these last ones to teach them how to pray. The brevity of Christ’s answer to a so important question is in itself astounding. Conversations about prayer in the contemporary Christianity are more ample than what says the Lord. Besides, we can find in His words some very important moments. Firstly, Jesus tells His followers nothing similar to these words: "you cannot understand this now", as He did sometimes to the followers and especially to the Jews on the mystery of Incarnation. His recommendation is of a rather simple and practical character; He doesn’t make of the prayer an esoteric thing, which means accessible only to the elected ones and the initiated and veiled from laymen.

The Lord Jesus proposes to turn to His Heavenly Father with worship and ask for the fulfillment of His will and His vision for the world. He also suggests making a very brief request of our daily needs, a request for forgiveness, the ability to forgive others, and protection against evil. And further, Jesus speaks only about insistence and humility in prayer in His explanation to the followers. All the rest, what is written in tomes concerns in essence not only prayer, but also the fact that we have to gather together our personality that is divided in parts.

The Lord Jesus Christ proposes to His followers the prayer of "our Father" and completes it with a brief recommendation in answer to the demand of these last ones to teach them how to pray. The brevity of Christ’s answer to a so important question is in itself astounding. Conversations about prayer in the contemporary Christianity are more ample than what says the Lord. Besides, we can find in His words some very important moments. Firstly, Jesus tells His followers nothing similar to these words: "you cannot understand this now", as He did sometimes to the followers and especially to the Jews on the mystery of Incarnation. His recommendation is of a rather simple and practical character; He doesn’t make of the prayer an esoteric thing, which means accessible only to the elected ones and the initiated and veiled from laymen.

The Lord Jesus proposes to turn to His Heavenly Father with worship and ask for the fulfillment of His will and His vision for the world. He also suggests making a very brief request of our daily needs, a request for forgiveness, the ability to forgive others, and protection against evil. And further, Jesus speaks only about insistence and humility in prayer in His explanation to the followers. All the rest, what is written in tomes concerns in essence not only prayer, but also the fact that we have to gather together our personality that is divided in parts.

The apostle Paul tells us: now these three remain: faith, hope, and love (1 Cor 13:13), and through his word faith, hope, and love became the most important Christian virtues. People speak often and at length about what faith and love are. But what is hope? "Put not your trust in princes, in sons of men" (Ps 145:3), we sing at every liturgy. This is a kind of apophatic definition of hope. Our hope cannot dwell in the world of passing human relationships. This is sometimes hard to understand and accept, because we are used to hoping in one another; that, it would seem, is our brotherhood. But something else is meant here. Each of us is weak and sinful, and for that reason alone cannot always give another person what he asks for.

But we have another kind of hope, the holy promise that the Lord will always give us what we ask of him. Only one thing is needed: that we have faith, hope, and love. Faith, so that we direct our gaze toward God; hope, so that we have the strength to wait, knock, and seek; love, so that we give the fruits of God's kindness to others. But reasoning this way, one gradually comes to the thought that the division between these three virtues is to a certain extent conditional. Faith is akin to hope, for it is just as strong; hope is akin to love, for it is just as radiant. One without the other is meaningless. And perhaps even corrupt. Think what today's passage about hoping that God will answer would mean if there were no faith and no love. Then we could be called consumers of divine grace, and nothing more.

What do we usually ask God for? Well, of course, health... What else? Good weather, money, protection in danger... And do we always receive it? And if not always, why not? Are we asking for the right thing?

After all, it is said: "seek first the Kingdom of God..." The Kingdom of God is when God reigns in us, when we strive to fulfill His will, not because otherwise we will be punished, but by consent, out of love, because He is the Father. But only by receiving the Holy Spirit do we receive the spirit of adoption, which makes our relationship with the Father real. "All the rest will be added to you"; so the Father gives the most important thing: the Holy Spirit.

Why, if God loves us so much and so wants to show us His love, must we ask Him, knock, and seek? He Himself commands us to ask, and He also says that He already knows what we need; for greater persuasion He even gives parables.

The answer to this strange feature of God's character is hidden in this short verse. God does not give merely bread, or money, or spiritual benefits. He gives the Holy Spirit. And this encounter with the Spirit can only be voluntary. The Spirit is given only to those who want this with all their heart, and such a desire cannot help being expressed in prayer.

What can God give a person? A strange question, it would seem: obviously, everything He wants to give. But what does a person really need from God? No less obvious: what he can never, nowhere, in any way, and from no one else receive. As for earthly goods, a person receives them in an earthly way, from this world and in accordance with its laws.

Of course, God can help a person in this and often does, showing him where he can find what he needs and how to obtain it, but in the fallen world such things are often acquired without direct divine participation. The Holy Spirit, that breath of God with which the Kingdom is permeated and which is present in the world, can be received only from God. It would seem that if God's breath is poured throughout creation, why can it be received only from Him?

But the point is that it opens itself to a person only in the context of his relationship with God and in connection with it. God's breath does not exist by itself, apart from the Divine Person in all the fullness of His existence, and one can experience its reality only when firm and conscious relationships have been established with this Person.

In fact, without such relationships no spiritual life is possible at all, and life in general will be rather poor without them. Indeed, from the very beginning God conceived man as one who should be in a state of continual communion with Him; it is precisely God's "breath of life" that makes man human. And breath, meanwhile, implies a continuous process; one cannot manage with a single inhale and exhale.

But man is free, and in the fallen state he often used his freedom to ignore God's presence in his life, including His breath. Yet this did not lessen God's love for man, and He is always ready to meet the one who returns to Him. And then, after conversion, after a person's relationship with God again becomes firm and conscious, he will receive what he will never receive anywhere, from anyone, in this world: God's breath in all the fullness accessible to man. And life too, in all accessible fullness.

Jesus once said something similar to verse 23: “Whoever is not against you is for you” (Lk 9:50). At first this may cause slight confusion—these lines look so very similar, yet seem to convey completely different meanings. But their meaning is one and the same: to teach us to love. Only afterward do we notice that in one case Jesus addresses His disciples and instructs them, while in the other He addresses all people and speaks of their attitude toward Himself. If a person is not filled with love for God and does not act according to His will under the guidance of that love, that person does the opposite, squandering time, life, and the strength that the Lord gives. When similar words are spoken to the disciples, however, they concern our human relationships. The Lord calls us to love our friends and our enemies, to say nothing of those who show us no hostility, those who are not against us. He seems to speak of the potential inherent in human relationships for shared creativity, work, and life in community. He warns us against any preconceived views and impressions of someone we barely know.

In response to the outrageous claim by the Jews that He casts out demons by the power of their own prince, the Lord offers a rather simple argument. If, He says, this blasphemous idea is true, it means that the rule of that prince has ended and the Day of the Lord has come. If it is false, then all the more “the kingdom of God has come upon you.” Either way, such “explanations” cannot avoid acknowledging the accomplished fact of Christ’s coming. The Lord then says that, faced with this fact, each of us must make a choice: to be with Him or against Him. It is extremely important that there is no third, neutral, or intermediate option in our relationship with the Son of God: “Whoever does not gather with Me scatters.” In today’s circumstances these words are especially important, for they deprive the most widespread religious phenomena of our time of any foundation: external, nominal Christianity in the style of blessing offices, and magical practices in the style of “health at any cost.”

Jesus' short parable draws a clear picture for us. Life is not exhausted by the absence of evil; it is fulfilled by the presence of Good. This is where the beneficial role of law, even God's Law, ends: it points out evil and demands that we renounce it, but it neither defines the Good nor gives us the strength to do it. It is not enough to drive out sin, though even that lies beyond our strength; we must receive righteousness. Christ reveals this righteousness, not merely sinlessness. The Holy Spirit descends upon the apostles at Pentecost precisely to give them strength to practice righteousness. This is precisely why the baptism of repentance is completed by birth from above.

We often spend a long time asking God to deliver us from some fault of ours, from a sin we lack the strength to fight, from temptations. If we also make efforts toward this, then the Lord, of course, helps us. If we do not make those efforts, then He does not help us not because He does not hear us, does not want to help, or cannot help, but because that would be violence against our will. After all, if we ask for something but in reality do nothing to fulfill our desire, it means that we do not fully want to change; we may simply be afraid of it. Therefore the Lord waits, and when we take even a very small, but still first, step, the Lord adds a thousand to it.

But what happens after that? The Lord helps us overcome a temptation, or even fully frees us from some sin or fault... and we stop there, quite satisfied. Most often we are satisfied with ourselves. At best, we thank God for it. Yet the Lord has freed a place in our soul for good, for His Light, for the Holy Spirit; but He never enters without being asked. He does not want violence, because He is Love, and love is possible only in complete freedom. He "stands at the door and knocks" and waits for us to call Him, to invite Him into the place where He helped us clear space for Himself. And if we do not call Him, the freed place in our soul again becomes clogged with dirt and dust, overgrown with weeds, and the second time it is often harder to pull them out by the roots than the first.

A simple question: should biblical texts be applied directly or not? Should the words written there be related to what is happening in the world?

After reading the beginning of the book of the prophet Joel, one wants to say that the ways of responding to what is happening described there should be put into practice. After all, as human beings improve their ways of fighting others like themselves in defense of their own opinion, they improve the means, but their goals do not change. In the same way, the ways of responding to evil in the world that the Bible offers do not change: fasting, prayer, and faith that only One has conquered death. The strong man's house has already fallen; the demons have already been driven out.

Looking at the world even from the standpoint of human logic, it is clear that no human powers can protect us from evil. It can be fought with faith that turns into confidence that Jesus, who drives out demons, will also give us the strength to stand against them.

There is a type of person, especially common among intellectuals, who call themselves agnostics and in their own way take pride in their spiritual neutrality. As a rule, these are people of high morality and deep education, people who are worthy in the highest degree. Such a position seems very attractive in its noninvolvement, its hovering above the fray, and its visible purity.

But the Lord does not accept such a position, and in today's Gospel He explains why: because there is only the appearance of neutrality in it. Pontius Pilate also thought he was washing his hands. Yet in the main text of our confession of faith, the Creed, he alone bears responsibility for the evil that was done.

There is deep meaning in this. Nature abhors a vacuum. If we do not do good, by that alone we do evil. If we do not fill our soul with faith in God, it will be filled with faith in the principle opposed to God. Agnostics think that inside them everything has been swept and put in order, that there is no disorder, no tossing about, no searching, and they do not notice how they let in still worse demons: demons of indifference, demons of insensibility and egoism.

Speaking not of imaginary but of entirely real dark forces, Jesus compares a person freed from the power of dark forces with a cleaned and carefully ordered house, which, however, is by no means safe: the forces of darkness can again take possession of such a person, just as they can again take possession of a house that has no owner. It should be noted that the image of a person as a house into which hostile forces can enter is also characteristic of the Jewish tradition of the Second Temple period.

Hillel, one of the great teachers of that era, says while reflecting on passions and their power over a person: "Passion first looks into your house like a passerby, then enters it like a guest, and in the end settles there like the owner." As can be seen, the thought of a person being seized from within by dark forces was not foreign to the teachers of Torah in the Gospel era, just as it had not been foreign to their predecessors. But when Jesus speaks of a person freed from the power of dark forces as a cleansed house, He has in mind above all the Kingdom by whose power He frees those who need liberation. And judging by His words, for a person in the fallen world there is only one choice: between the Kingdom and the evil in which the world lies. To receive the world apart from this evil, as can be seen, is impossible: even a carefully cleaned house without an owner will not stay clean for long. Of course, the situation was not always like this: before Christ's coming into the world, one could remain clean, ready for sanctification, but not sanctified. As can be seen, in our age, the age of the advancing Kingdom, intermediate states of this kind become impossible: for the Kingdom is now entering the world and changing it, and every action in the world now takes place either in the Kingdom by the power of God or in the untransformed world by the forces of that evil in which the world lies after the fall.

There is no middle ground anymore, not because God has become more demanding, but because the formerly existing illusion of the spiritual "neutrality" of some part of creation has disappeared, the part that once seemed not to participate in the spiritual confrontation. This is no surprise: the history of the Kingdom, begun on the day of Pentecost, is the final stretch of history, leading to the complete transformation of the world, after which the forces of evil will have no place in it. And everyone now has to choose whose side he is on. Liberation from the power of dark forces is only the first step on this path. It is by no means the last.

"Whoever is not with Me is against Me, and whoever does not gather with Me scatters." These words, which the Lord speaks today, give us an exhaustive mental picture of what at the same moment is described very vividly by the parable of the seven spirits more evil than the first. "Whoever is not with Me..." What does this mean? As for those possessed by demons, things are more or less clear: they are not with the Lord. But now there are no demons; they have been driven out...

Let us pay attention to the words: coming, he finds it swept and put in order. In this tidiness one sees a symbol of emptiness, for a house can be tidy if its occupants have gone away for a long time, while in a house where people live, such tidiness does not occur. Because when we tidy up, we immediately disturb the order achieved for a moment; this is natural. There is even an English proverb: "this house is clean enough to be healthy and dirty enough to be happy." But in the swept condition mentioned in today's reading, we see a symbol of the absence of life, a symbol of abandonment, in other words, a symbol of emptiness.

But what is emptiness, since we know perfectly well that "nature abhors a vacuum" (Aristotle)? Here, it seems, is a metaphysical parallel to our parable. Let us pause for a second and think about what relation this order has not to summer-home settlements in winter, but to our souls.

There exists a type of person, the type of the rationalist, the positivist, the scholar, or let us recall at least the old prince Nikolai Bolkonsky. These are people of enormous intelligence and diligence. But they value above all else the inner order gained by such enormous labor. Moreover, their considerable knowledge gives them an understanding of what ignorance and error are. Therefore they always maintain neutrality. Intellectual, spiritual, religious, political. Because they see so much falsehood, error, and misunderstanding among people and texts...

But a great man said: "The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of the greatest moral upheaval (that is, at every time, as we understand it), maintained neutrality" (Dante). Because neutrality, whatever it may be, is the main thing opposed to love. Where there is neutrality, there is no love. Someone may point to the words: "...bearing with one another in love" (Eph 4:2, in Bishop Cassian's translation), saying, there you have a kind of neutrality in love. But here some purely linguistic misunderstanding arises. To bear with someone means to accept, to be together despite incongruity, while neutrality means leaving and closing the door behind oneself. Not slamming the door and running out, but leaving and quietly closing the door.

There is one more thing worth paying attention to today. St. Silouan the Athonite said: "Keep your mind in hell and do not despair." It is impossible to exhaust the meanings of this phrase here; dissertations could be written about it, but one blade of grass can be taken out of the bouquet of its meanings. Coming to God does not consist in soaring in thought and soul toward His unearthly perfection, but in entering the very filth of hell, the filth of lies, stupidity, error, misunderstanding, and cruelty, and being there. Not being afraid of filth, for hell is very filthy. However, perhaps for this one will have to take off the professor's suit...

Few are those whose Jesus’ sharp words would have pleased. We would have preferred something on forgiveness, salvation, love, eternal life … But it is indeed of them that He speaks about: it is just that, it is necessary to be with Him to be able to receive all this. It is not the same situation as in Luc 9:50, where Jesus says: "he that is not against us is for us ". There in Luc 9:50, Jesus admonishes His followers for hostilities towards those who differ from them, but aren’t their enemies. While here He speaks about another thing: God revealed Himself in all his plenitude only in Jesus, the way to eternal life is opened only by Him or through Him {Jesus}; that is why every second lived with Him leads to eternity, and time lived without Him is cut of eternity. Furthermore, halfness is impossible here, we cannot go at the same time to eternity and death. That is why every moment - is either gathering, increase of life, either its dissipation.

Every person lives simultaneously in two worlds: an inner and an outer world. The inner world is the world in which we are alone with ourselves and with God, where we pray, rejoice in the sky and the sun, grieve and weep over our own sins and those of others, seek paths, shape ourselves, make decisions, and are exactly what we truly are. There is also the outer world, where a small part of what exists in the inner world is realised, made actual, clothed in matter, and serves as a real connection with people and the world. If we are to pray for the ordering of these two worlds, then we should ask Mary for the inner world and Martha for the outer.

It is impossible to say which world is more important, just as it is impossible to compare two living people whom Jesus loved, Martha and Mary. We cannot assign them grades and say that this one behaved correctly and the other incorrectly, as one so often hears when people say that we should imitate Mary and not Martha. It is better to imitate no one, but to listen to the spiritual call with which the Lord addresses you and to consider creatively how you can respond to it.

If we return to the interpretation of this parable, largely shaped by R. Guardini's work “The Lord,” as a parable about a person's inner and outer worlds, then perhaps the most important thing we see is the love between Mary, Martha, and Jesus. Someone may object: but Martha grumbles at Mary and even complains about her to Jesus. Yet we should not judge superficially here. It is better to try to live through this situation and hear the intonations of its participants. One has the impression that without a special love and closeness between them, such a dialogue simply could not have taken place; it could happen only between people who were truly close to one another.

And this, it seems, is the main thing: the harmony of our thoughts (Mary) and actions (Martha) in God. Harmony despite outward contradictions; let them remain, while harmony exists somewhere at a very deep, personal level.

Like Peter's words near Caesarea, this phrase is a form of confession of Jesus as the Christ, the promised Messiah from the line of David.

Later, when the Pharisees demand that the Lord stop those crying out "Hosanna to the Son of David," He will say: "If they keep silent, the stones will cry out." In the same way, if this woman had kept silent, the stones would have cried out, because if we believe that Jesus of Nazareth is the incarnate Son of God, then we cannot fail to glorify the One through whom this incarnation took place.

Her blessedness as the Mother of Her Creator is the pledge and condition of our salvation; without the Son of Mary we would still remain in hell. Eastern hymnographers of the first millennium often speak of the All-Pure One as the new Eve, whose obedience corrected Eve's sin, just as the obedience of Her Son healed Adam's sin. And for us it is important to remember two more things with reverence and love. First, standing at the foot of the Cross, the Most Holy Virgin gives Her Son to God and to us, so that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. And second, in making the New Covenant with us, the Lord Jesus gives us His Flesh and Blood as food and drink, which He received from the Most Holy Virgin.

Jesus' answer to the woman's exclamation is astonishing. In the Synodal translation ("But He said: blessed...") this is not visible at all, and in Slavonic ("And He said: therefore indeed blessed...") only partly. The point is that He says: "menoun makarioi..." The Greek menoun is an expression of agreement, used in the sense of "of course," "without doubt," "truly." That is, He says: "Of course those who hear the Word of God and keep it are blessed." In this form, these are words precisely about the Most Holy Virgin: "Undoubtedly, She is blessed, for She heard the word of God and fulfilled it." And this is not only a statement of fact, but also a signpost for us.

Today we read a composite passage from the Gospel according to Luke. The second part of the reading tells how "a certain woman from the crowd lifted up her voice and said: Blessed is the womb that bore You and the breasts that nursed You." These words, like Peter's words near Caesarea, are a form of confessing Jesus as the Christ, the promised Messiah from the line of David.

Later, when the Pharisees demand that the Lord stop those crying out "Hosanna to the Son of David," He will say: "If they keep silent, the stones will cry out." In exactly the same way, if this woman had kept silent, the stones would have cried out, because if we believe that Jesus of Nazareth is the incarnate Son of God, then we cannot fail to glorify the One through whom this incarnation took place.

Her blessedness as the Mother of Her Creator is the pledge and condition of our salvation; without Mary's Son we would still remain in hell. Eastern hymnographers of the first millennium often speak of the All-Immaculate One as the new Eve, whose obedience corrected Eve's sin, just as the obedience of Her Son healed Adam's sin. And it is important for us, with reverence and love, to remember two more things. First, standing at the foot of the Cross, the Most Holy Virgin gives Her Son to God and to us, so that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. And second, in establishing the New Covenant with us, the Lord Jesus gives us as food and drink His Flesh and Blood, which He received from the Most Holy Virgin.

Jesus' answer to the woman's exclamation is astonishing. In the Synodal translation ("But He said: blessed are...") this is not visible at all, and in Slavonic ("He said: therefore blessed are...") only partly. The point is that He says: "menoun makarioi..." The Greek menoun is an expression of agreement, used in the sense of "of course," "without doubt," "truly." That is, He says: "Of course blessed are those who hear the Word of God and keep it." In this form, these are precisely words about the Most Holy Virgin: "Without doubt, She is blessed, for She heard the word of God and fulfilled it." And this is not only a statement of fact, but also an indication of the path for us.