Notes for  1 July 2020

Christians and representatives of many different religions like to reason about humility. At the same time they put forward very different criteria for this spiritual state, sometimes quite intricate ones. Meanwhile Paul gives a simple and clear definition: humility is the state of a person when God establishes him, not the state in which he establishes himself.

The corresponding Greek word has many meanings, but its main sense is connected with the idea of being established on some foundation and then moving forward. The issue, as can be seen, is precisely this foundation. Humility begins where and when a person refuses to establish himself. And the point here is not to be sure of nothing and to waver all the time, unable to make a choice or a decision. The point is where a person finds, in modern language, his existential support, what he leans on in life.

This is, of course, not about religion, and not about some religious ideology or some doctrine. It is precisely about the living God, about that "breath of life" that God breathes into each of us at creation, and about how much we sense this breath, how much it becomes part of our life, and to what measure it defines it.

And, correspondingly, to what measure we lean on it, on this breath of God in our heart. Ideally, completely. Then God's presence becomes an inseparable part of each of our choices, decisions, and actions. Here we have to learn humility, for one can sense this breath and the presence of the One who stands behind it only when one is ready to accept any decision of His and hear any answer of His, to hear and do as one is told.

This, strictly speaking, is humility. Then one can be established on this breath and on the will of the One who stands behind it. Or one can pay little attention to this breath, or even ignore it altogether. Then one will have to look for another support in life: in one's abilities, possibilities, social status. There are many options, but they are all united by one thing: all of this is human. And to lean on it means to lean on oneself. Here lies the boundary between communion with God and its absence. For God will not enter the life of one who neither seeks nor awaits Him. Then the person remains with what is his own, with all the consequences that follow.

The demon-possessed men did not live in burial caves by chance, for submission to the will of dark powers is already a path toward spiritual death. Therefore the casting out of demons from the two unfortunate Gergesenes meant not only the healing of specific people, and not even only the triumph of God's power over the powers of darkness. It was another foreshadowing of Christ's coming victory over death.

It would be too simple to see in the fear of the local residents, shaken by the circumstances that accompanied the casting out of the demons, only displeasure at the death of the pigs and therefore at material loss. No, the people of the Gergesene region sense that the One standing before them is able to change their whole life. But this is exactly what they do not want, because familiar life is so understandable.

So often we too, indignant at evil that has become familiar, do not want to notice that we ourselves have grown together with it so completely that if someone tries to free us from it, we become uneasy. But if we choose Christ, we must be ready to accept what he brings us. Even if, as a result, we lose something like a herd of pigs.

The accusations that the Lord, through the prophet, hurls at the chosen people surpass to a considerable degree many earlier angry reproaches, as well as later ones. The Lord does not merely accuse them of sins and compare the apostates to a prostitute; He had already said such things more than once through the prophets. But now the prophetic speech reminds its hearers that the people chosen for union with God, after betraying the Covenant, are no different from the pagan neighbors from whom they try to separate themselves. The very separation from neighboring peoples loses the meaning given by the Lord, a meaning that consists immeasurably more in keeping God's commandments pure and remaining faithful to Him than in ethnic distinctiveness. But now the apostates commit the same pagan abominations, and even worse ones: the higher you climb up a mountain, the farther you fall from it.

But He not only remembers the Covenant with the people; He also preserves it. He keeps faith not only with the Jews of the Old Testament but also with all of us, who constantly violate it. Not according to the merits of sinners, but according to His mercy, He is again and again ready not only to forgive but also to cleanse us from the filth in which we again and again gladly wallow.

Sin will be forgiven, but a sense of shame for the evil committed will remain. It is left not so that former sinners will constantly torment themselves by remembering the past, but as fruitful memory of bitter experience and as a warning for the future.