Notes for  13 July 2026

Paul writes that he is carrying aid to the Christians of Jerusalem and Judea, collected in the churches of Macedonia and Achaia. And for the apostle this is not simply something done along the way, as today we sometimes deliver a package to friends or to friends of our friends when going to another city on a business or private visit. For Paul, taking the donations collected for the Jerusalem church is part of his apostolic ministry. And this attitude toward such donations reminds us once again that works of mercy for Christians are not only a matter of material or social support for those to whom it is given.

In church life there is no social service in its pure form: the Church knows only spiritual ministries. And helping those who need it is no less a spiritual ministry than preaching, mission, or apostleship. This is understandable: Christian life is not divided into “spiritual” and “worldly.” Such a thing would be possible if we were one kind of people in church, another on the street, and still some third, fourth, or fifth kind at work, among acquaintances, on vacation, and in the other places where we have to be.

Nevertheless, this is often exactly how it is, and then what are called religious duties enter our life. Among these religious duties, one of the most important for Christians is considered to be “works of mercy,” or “social service.” There is nothing surprising here. If our “spiritual” life exists separately from our “worldly” life, there must necessarily be a connection between them. “Spiritual” life penetrates the “worldly,” and at this intersection there appears what we perceive as our “religious duties.” These are the duties that may be a joy to us or a burden, but that must still be performed simply because they are duties. Having performed them, we receive the right to “spiritual” life in church, to prayer, to participation in the breaking of bread, and simply to communion with God as such. If you do not perform religious duties, do not go to church!

Of course, in practice everything is not quite so: the practice of church life has long since developed mechanisms that presuppose a certain compromise between the right to communion with God and the scope of those same religious duties. But the logic still does not change; the principle of the interconnection between “spiritual” life and “worldly” life remains exactly the same.

For Paul, however, life is not divided into “spiritual” and “worldly.” To deliver the collected donations is for him not social service, but the same act of love as his whole apostolic ministry and the whole Christian path: a path where there was no division into “spiritual” and “worldly,” and therefore no religious duties that included works of mercy. There was only the Kingdom and its life, one and indivisible.

In the Gospel the possibility of a miracle is often connected with the faith of the person or people who await or ask for that miracle. It was the same in pre-Christian times: God revealed them according to the faith of those awaiting, or not awaiting, a miracle. If God’s action was too obvious, outwardly it always looked in such a way that, if one wished, everything could be explained by natural causes.

Christ’s miracles were at times more visible and obvious, but He always performed them for specific people who trusted Him and expected help from Him. For the rest, who became involuntary witnesses of what was happening, there remained only to accept the situation as it was. Of course, much in this case is explained by the fact that God is unobtrusive. He will not drag a person to Himself by force, striking his imagination with supernatural phenomena. For God wants a person to commune with Him out of love, not out of fear or self-interest. Therefore the Savior does not drag anyone into the Kingdom by miracles.

But when the matter concerns the Kingdom, it is important to take something else into account. The Kingdom is entirely permeated with God’s light and God’s breath; they are its nature, or more precisely, what in the Kingdom takes the place of the nature of our world. But the Kingdom also has its own structure. A structure formed by the relationships of its inhabitants: their relationships with God, with Christ, and with one another. And the relationship of the Savior Himself with His heavenly Father is the foundation of the Kingdom, its chief spiritual support.

And all relationships in the Kingdom can be only and exclusively voluntary. Here no deceit, no ambiguity, no half-said things are possible. Any unwillingness to see Jesus, any unwillingness to commune with Him, places a person outside the Kingdom. For all the Savior’s miracles are nothing other than the manifestation of the Kingdom, its power, its breath.

It is no surprise that where there is no trust in Jesus, there is neither the Kingdom nor miracles. It is not that they are impossible there; they are simply meaningless. One cannot be made loving by force, and to demonstrate the power of the Kingdom to someone who does not want it means in effect to compel a person toward something to which compulsion is completely impossible. Jesus can only leave, giving those who refuse to trust Him over to their own fate. In the end, it is their choice, to which they have every right.

Sometimes the words of Jesus seem too harsh. What, in fact, does He mean when He says that one cannot love father or mother more than Him? And then comes the explanation: whoever wants to save his life (“soul”) will lose it, but whoever gives it up for Christ’s sake will save it.

At first glance it may seem that this is about some life after death, about the paradise that awaits martyrs. But in fact here too the point is the Kingdom. The Kingdom that is not somewhere “in heaven” and not later, but here and now. And not some other life that awaits the faithful in some other dimension, but that very life to which every Christian can and must, if he truly is a Christian, be joined already here and now.

But in order for participation in the life of the Kingdom to become possible, it is necessary to renounce one’s own life. Not because it is life, but because it is one’s own. And one’s own not in the sense of unique and unrepeatable, given by God to me and to no one else, so that no one but me can answer for it before God, but in the sense of belonging only to me alone: the life into which I will let no one and which I will share with no one, fearing to lose even a small portion of my so precious life. Such a desire to hold on to one’s own life, separate from the rest of God’s world and from the Kingdom, in the end inevitably turns into catastrophe: all attempts to preserve the little that remains to us in the fallen world from the fullness of the life once given us by God end with our losing even that little. Only by renouncing such spiritual and, in the language of modern philosophers, existential self-isolation can we receive the fullness of the life of the Kingdom that the Savior has prepared for us.

But then one will have to give up the small for the sake of the infinite, limitation for the sake of fullness. And not only with regard to one’s own life, but also with regard to relationships with people, even the closest. For relationships with them too must cease to be part of our small, isolated little world in order to become part of the Kingdom. Then there will no longer be those irrevocable losses to which this little world condemns us. For the life of the Kingdom is, according to the Savior’s word, “life in abundance.” And it is given to everyone who enters the Kingdom. The one who enters brings into it all the relationships that bind him to those close to him. Relationships that also become part of the Kingdom.

In the story of the birth of Jesus Christ in the manger, with the cave, the shepherds, and the angels, there is nothing sentimental or sweetly touching. But there is much that is majestic and solemn. We should not be embarrassed by the modest setting of a village stable and the poverty of the guests: this is a true messianic feast.

Everything here points to Jesus’ distant ancestor and the most famous anointed king, that is, in Greek, Christ, David: his native city Bethlehem, the occupation of the shepherds, for David himself was a shepherd for his father, and the striking parallels with the One who will also be Shepherd for His Father. He too is born to be King, Anointed One, Christ; He too, as the “least of the brothers,” will by a miracle, by God’s power, defeat the Enemy and “remove disgrace from Israel” (compare 1 Sam. 17 or Ps. 151). The evangelist, knowing the whole subsequent story, was able to discern glory in the ordinary and poor life of a family overtaken by childbirth at night in a stable. We too know this story, but do we know how to truly see?

Speaking with the Pharisees, Jesus again and again tries to explain to them who He is and why He came into the world. But it was not easy for them to understand Him, because they wanted not testimony but proofs, formal proofs of the kind required from witnesses in an ordinary earthly court over ordinary everyday matters. Jesus speaks to them about the life that He can give to everyone who is ready to believe Him (v. 12), and in response He hears: where are Your witnesses? And if there are no witnesses, how can we believe You (v. 13)? In answering those who question Him, Jesus tries to speak with them in their own language. He says: there are two witnesses, I and the Father (vv. 16-17).

But such language does not change the essence of the matter: in order to believe Jesus, one needs not legal proofs but simply the ability to see the situation with spiritual sight. One need only understand who Jesus is, where He came from and where He is going, but this cannot be done by relying only on formal legal procedures, even if they are based on the norms of the Torah (v. 14). You, Jesus says to the Pharisees, evaluate (“judge”) everyone only by external, formal criteria (“according to the flesh”); I, He says of Himself, evaluate no one (v. 15). In this way Jesus lets His interlocutors understand that it is pointless to measure His ministry and testimony by earthly measures and formal criteria, for the Kingdom does not fit within any human framework. And Jesus Himself too, according to His own words, judges no one: as can be seen, He did not come into the world for that. His goal was to free people from the sin from which otherwise they would never be freed, and the question of accepting or not accepting Jesus therefore becomes a question of life and death both for those who accept and for those who reject (vv. 21-24).

And although, as can be seen, the listeners still did not fully understand the Savior (vv. 25-27), among them there were many whom Jesus’ words convinced and who believed Him (v. 30). Apparently a division took place among those present between those who were ready to disregard the opinion of the majority and of religious authorities for the sake of the Kingdom, and those who preferred not to risk it. A division between those who seek the Kingdom and those who are ready to live as before, remaining with their religion.

Who is God? What is important for us to know about Him? The God of heaven and earth, invisible and unimaginable, appearing in darkness and flame, gives people the law, the commandments. Through understanding these commandments we can come to know Him Himself.

We will never know everything about Him: He is incomprehensible. But we can know Him, know Him personally, as a friend. This is all the more possible now, when we have heard the joy promised to all people: God became Man, opening for everyone the possibility of a personal relationship with Him.