Notes for  1 July 2026

Both the Torah and other biblical books often emphasize the immutability of God's will and God's decrees. Meanwhile, situations involving specific people and circumstances can change very quickly. Sometimes it may appear that God simply lets things run their own course, allowing events to develop with almost no control.

More than that, it often happens that God does not prevent even those who directly oppose Him and, as far as possible, work against the fulfillment of His plans from acting. In fact, this state of affairs is connected with the freedom that God gives to man. A person can use his freedom even against God. And God does not prevent him from doing so. Quite often He allows human self-will to unfold to the end. And then it turns out that after doing everything he wanted and planned, a person suddenly receives a result quite different from the one he counted on.

Even the story of the Messiah turned out this way: those who crucified Christ were sure that by killing Him they would rid themselves of the One they hated. And they did what they wanted. But it all turned out not as those people thought, but as God had designed. And the point is not some special cunning of God or any particular cleverness of His. The point is simply that God and His opponents act in different worlds, in different dimensions of one and the same reality.

God acts in the great world He created, while His opponents act in their own small little world, separated from the great world of God. In their little world they can, of course, quite easily win. But in the great world of God, victory will always belong to God. For it is His world, and in His world His plan will always have priority. Therefore His word is always fulfilled and His will is carried out, as soon as the small world, isolated from the great one, again becomes part of that from which the will opposing God had separated it.

Both the scribes and the Pharisees ask Christ to perform a sign, and many among the people would, perhaps, have joined in such a request. It appears that the crowd not only knows in advance what such a sign should be, but also would like to dictate the conditions under which it is performed. Refusing to let the crowd see what it can imagine and is already prepared to interpret according to its own understanding, Christ gives another sign: His Resurrection. It will be rejected by many people, but it will still become a sign for the whole world, completely unexpected and impossible to fit into consciousness, yet grasped by faith. Signs by themselves may not lead to faith, but faith gives the ability to see the meaning of signs.

The words about what can happen after an unclean spirit is cast out apply not only to those who cast out demons "without proper qualification." Here we see a warning about the difficulties that arise on the paths of spiritual life, about its seriousness, and about the responsibility to preserve what has been received. For we risk handing the swept room over to seven more evil unclean spirits every time we voluntarily return to habitual sinful inclinations that had supposedly already been cast aside. It is hardly accidental that these words stand next to the warning about the inadmissibility of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Yes, the Lord is merciful. But is it possible to receive mercy while turning away from its Giver?

Perhaps the hardest thing in today's reading is demons. Many people do not know what they are, many shift their own guilt onto them, and others see only them everywhere. How should we relate to this extremely difficult concept in Scripture? After all, even in the Lord's Prayer we say, repeating after Jesus: "...deliver us from the evil one." This means that understanding what this power is and recognizing its existence is a necessary condition for praying the Our Father consciously.

The first and main thing to understand here is this: demons, whatever mental form we give them, are creatures, just as we are. In this sense they are on the same ontological level as we are, or even lower, for we are in some measure joined to God and to His true being. Therefore, in any case, they are not stronger than we are, and there is no need to fear them. On the contrary, they fear God and in fact are subject to Him. This is shown to us very clearly today in the story with the Gergesenes: we see how obediently they are ready to come out when they see the true power of Christ. The apostle James says this exactly: even the demons believe, and tremble (James 2:19).

The second important observation, and it is visible from today's reading, is that they recognize God faster than ordinary people do. Why? This is very easy to understand: they are the ones who resist Him, and for that very reason they know Him well. So one should not simply recoil from the mentally ill, fearing them as if they were lepers; at times one must listen very carefully to what they say, because amid delirium one can discern flashes of meaning that are inaccessible to us.

And finally, when we are afraid and it feels as if demons are tempting us, we must call upon Christ in all simplicity, and that alone will be enough for them to fall silent, because they fear Him greatly. Better still, do not let go of the hem of His garment at all. Then, when asked whether we know demons, we will be able to answer with a clear conscience: no, we are not good with demons.

Jeremiah's sermon, delivered at the entrance to the Temple (v. 2), raises several questions. For example, it is not entirely clear what "Baals" (v. 9) he is speaking about, given that this concerns a time when King Josiah's religious reform had already become an accomplished fact. It is not excluded, of course, that the sermon was delivered under one of Josiah's successors, when pagan cults again began to spread in Judah and pagan altars appeared even in the temple court. But here, it appears, the issue is rather the household cults that even Josiah could not overcome.

Paganism, as is well known, always penetrates deeply into everyday life, and it is especially difficult to fight it there, because everyday life is entirely determined by the spiritual content of the lives of those who arrange it. That is why public, official religiosity often differs noticeably from domestic, everyday religiosity. Apparently, a significant part of those newly minted "Yahwists" who appeared in such numbers in the country after Josiah's reform remained essentially pagans, while not doubting their own orthodoxy for a minute.

Such a situation was worse spiritually than open paganism: pagans at least know who they are and are not deceived about themselves, while the imaginary "Yahwists," like those whom Jeremiah addressed, on the contrary remained in a pleasant delusion about their religiosity. Yahwism was, perhaps, for these people not the foundation of spiritual life but merely a kind of national ideology; in Yahweh they saw the Patron of the country and the people, who nevertheless did not touch their hearts, so that in their everyday life there was still room for the Baals and for the cult of the Great Goddess (vv. 17-18).

But such Yahwism became the basis for the rapid growth of a distinctive religious nationalism. The inhabitants of Judah were convinced that nothing threatened them: in Jerusalem they now had the only place on earth where sacrifices were offered to the true God, and therefore neither they nor their country had anything to fear (vv. 3-4). In addition, they were, as can be seen, completely sure that salvation from troubles and the messianic Kingdom were guaranteed to them by definition, since they were the people of God, regularly attended temple worship, and took part in sacrifices, while not thinking at all about keeping the commandments or even about at least leaving behind the pagan cults so dear to their hearts (vv. 9-10). This kind of self-confidence spiritually devalues any cult, as the prophet reminds his fellow countrymen (vv. 21-24).

Such were the fruits of a religious reform carried out from above: the external result was achieved comparatively easily and quickly, but the people's spiritual state turned out worse than before. Now paganism, which had left the streets of Jerusalem and hidden itself in the homes and hearts of the city's inhabitants, was joined by self-confident nationalism thickly mixed with very superficial Yahwist religiosity. This mixture made repentance impossible and catastrophe inevitable.

These words of John the Baptist are perhaps the best description of the life of a person who has learned why he lives. For as long as the basis and meaning of human life remains the person himself - his life, his love, his faith, his ascetic labor - he will never be able to say: "I must decrease." On the contrary, he will say: "My goal is my growth; I want to know more, see more, experience more, do more..." The line separating such a life from the life of the prophets and apostles (where, in Paul's words, "it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me" - Gal. 2:20) is very thin. Yes, we really do need to learn, understand, experience, and do very much, but only on this path of our decrease does the highest calling in the world await us: to become the Friend of the Bridegroom, and not remain "earthly, speaking of earthly things."

The statute about vows before the Lord and responsibility for fulfilling them reveals to us an important aspect of life in a family or in any community where there is someone who bears greater responsibility than others. For God, right relationships in the family turn out to be more important than the fulfillment of the vow itself. Therefore a husband, or the father of an underage daughter, can annul her vow to God. Here, as always, God calls us to be more attentive to His word than to the formal fulfillment of our "duty" before Him.