Notes for  25 June 2026

It is impossible to believe anyone if no one tells you about that person. So it is with Christ: you will not believe Him or entrust yourself to Him until you become acquainted with Him. The main meaning of Christian witness is precisely to give everyone the opportunity to become acquainted with Him. Of course, acquaintance by itself does not mean that a relationship of trust will arise. In fact, acquaintance by itself does not obligate us to any relationship at all: how many people do we have to meet? Not all of them become our friends afterward. But much depends on what the acquaintance was like and what the communication was like. One can communicate in different ways: seriously, or superficially. And if a person does not want real, deep relationships, they will not exist even after a very long acquaintance.

One can know a person for years and still not know that person at all. It is the same with God: one can know Him, and not know Him. Trust is born from what is heard, and hearing from the word of Christ, or from the word about Christ; the expression used by the apostle can be understood both ways. In any case, one is not so far from the other. For behind the word about Christ, if it is heard and if one trusts the one who speaks it, the word of Christ Himself will then surely begin to sound, provided, of course, that the person is ready to hear.

And here problems sometimes arise. It happens that a person does not want to hear, because sometimes it is simply easier to pretend that nothing has been heard. Such a peculiar selective deafness is at times very useful to deceitful people. But conscious deceit is not always hidden here: sometimes a person unconsciously turns on this mechanism of a kind of mental filtering. For example, when he senses that if he takes what he has heard seriously, his life will have to change, and change radically. And he does not want to change, and is afraid. Then the protective mechanisms turn on, the very filters about which a person does not think and which he may not even know about precisely because they work automatically. Yet this automatic system is initially turned on by the person himself, by his fear or his laziness. Therefore Paul speaks in this case about human responsibility, for in the end it is precisely a person's position that determines whether mechanisms will start working in his soul that reliably separate their owner from God, from Christ, and from the Kingdom, or whether they will not.

Jesus sometimes describes the Kingdom in a completely astonishing, paradoxical way. What, for example, are we to make of a "good yoke" or a "light burden"! And yet such definitions very accurately describe what the Kingdom is for fallen humanity.

For a normal person, hardly anything positive can be associated with a yoke: in the original sense of the word, a yoke is a collar symbolically placed on an enslaved person as a sign of the person's new condition. And a burden is more readily associated in our minds with a weight that must be carried simply because it cannot be thrown off, and certainly not with the lightness of being. Yet for fallen human nature the Kingdom really is a burden, just as the fallen person can walk the path into the Kingdom only by taking upon himself what the learned rabbis of those times called the "yoke of the Torah."

On Jesus' lips, the "yoke of the Torah" becomes the "yoke of the Kingdom," for the same inner struggle is in view, the struggle characteristic of every fallen person who wants to walk the way of righteousness. It is no accident that Paul also said that through the Torah comes the knowledge of sin: it is precisely the attempts to walk the way of righteousness, to follow the Torah, that reveal to a person his true sinful nature, and then the way of righteousness becomes hard, and the Torah becomes a yoke voluntarily taken upon oneself.

But Jesus speaks of more: He brought into the world not the Torah, which the world knew before His coming, but the Kingdom, where the one walking the way of righteousness could finally receive relief by reaching the goal. Now even the burden of one's own sinfulness, which begins to be felt only when one tries to keep the commandments, becomes light, for now not only the fallen world is real, but also the Kingdom with its life; and the heavier one's own sin becomes, the more one senses the breath of the Kingdom easing its weight. This duality is inevitable. It will remain until the end of time, until the complete transfiguration of human nature. But this duality itself inspires hope, for it testifies that the Kingdom entering the world is not fiction, but reality.

Fallen humanity tends to hope in the magical power of the word. Even in prehistoric antiquity, when pronouncing a word, naming something, the human being was sure that one could influence the thing named. Later this attitude was transferred to people and to gods. It was believed that by a word one could compel not only a person, but even a god or spirit, to do what the one pronouncing the word needed. Spells could be laid on gods and spirits, forcing them to serve a human being.

Of course, Yahwism, just like later Judaism, always had a sharply negative attitude toward magic and all magical practices, including incantations. But deep in the subconscious, even among religious people, confidence in the magical power of the word continued to live. And if in pagan antiquity it gave rise to the magical practice of spells, then in Yahwist life, as indeed in Jewish life and later in Christian life, it gave rise to the practice of solemn sacred oaths and doctrinal declarations. Publicly and solemnly proclaim the Nicene Creed, and you are "Orthodox." Just as publicly and solemnly swear eternal loyalty to Jesus, and you are a "Christian." And if the oaths are repeated again and again, if declaring one's "faith" becomes a profession, then no doubts remain at all: surely God cannot leave such activity without attention, surely the Savior will not turn away from those who have spoken so many words, perhaps even very correct ones, in His defense!

But it turns out that He can leave them without attention. He can also turn away. For Jesus needs neither advocates nor brilliant orators playing with words; He needs witnesses of the Kingdom, and that is something very different.

Through the prophet Jeremiah, the Lord rebukes His people for idolatry and lawlessness. Yet the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Judah, where there were "as many gods as cities," were hardly very distressed about this. To the rebukes they respond with bewilderment: what sin is there in this?

Do we know how to see our shortcomings and sins? Or do we prefer to judge others, which is much easier? To find peace with God and our neighbors, it is very important to recognize our wrong before Him in time, and then He will surely help us correct and renew our life.

Here the evangelist John speaks about the essence of what he witnessed: the earthly life of Jesus Christ. Looking back sixty years after the events described, he sees and names the main thing: the pre-eternal Logos, the One in whom the whole meaning of the universe and the whole design for creation dwell, the One who is God, became incarnate, humbled His life to human life, and dwelt on earth, communicating with John and other contemporaries. Here, into our world, descended the fullness of grace and truth, becoming visible, audible, tangible, revealing to all that human flesh can contain the presence of God, can be pure from sin, can be raised to eternal life. The very word "glory," "the glory of God," means the visible, comprehensible manifestation of the invisible and incomprehensible God, not merely a symbol but the fact of His active presence. And the apostle John bears witness to this manifestation of God Himself in the person, the hypostasis in patristic terminology, of the only-begotten Son: the Son of God and the Son of Man, Jesus Christ.

Here two questions arise. The first: do we believe this testimony? This is not easy, for we are used to having everything proved to us, thereby being forced to agree, while here there is and can be no proof, no coercion. One must make one's own decision, a completely free one...

And the second question: even if all this happened, does it have any relation to my life? If we think carefully, all this reveals to us how high human life can be, how full of meaning and righteousness. More than that: if there is the presence of God in this world, then one can enter into it; and if God was able to enter a human body, then He can enter us as well. Thus a two-way union of our life with God's life, eternal life, is possible. Quite significant, is it not?

Sometimes we are struck by the harshness with which God's judgment and human judgment were carried out in the Old Testament. Yet it is worth remembering two things: first, the consciousness of ancient people did not contain at the same time the concepts of "freedom of conscience" and faithfulness to God. And second, what is at issue here is not simply "religious traditions" or culture, but life and death. We, accustomed to living in an atmosphere of religious tolerance and having the commandment not to judge others, often lack an understanding of this contrast between faith and unfaithfulness, though they bring us life and death respectively.