Notes for  27 July 2026

The apostles’ preaching touched the hearts not only of Jews but also of Gentiles, since the Kingdom from the very beginning was open to everyone who was ready to entrust himself to the Savior. Something else is interesting: these recent Gentiles who come into the Church are perceived by the sacred writer as an integral part of the new people of God, as those who were “appointed beforehand” to eternal life, to the life of the Kingdom. In principle, of course, there is nothing especially unusual in such a vision of the Church as the new people of God. According to the ideas generally accepted in the synagogue milieu of that time, the people of God had been conceived by God before the creation of the world, just as the Messiah had been. And already during the lifetime of the first Christian generation the Church transferred this understanding to itself as the new people of God.

But with regard to the Gentiles the situation was not so unambiguous. Of course, the prophets said more than once that with the coming of the Messiah the Gentiles would turn to the God of Israel and enter the people of God as an integral part of it. But such entry evidently did not mean that God’s plan for His people included the Gentiles too from the very beginning. It was a manifestation of God’s mercy: though He had promised the Gentiles nothing in advance, through the Messiah He nevertheless gives them the possibility of becoming participants in His plan for the salvation of the world. And the Church, as can be seen, extended this idea of God’s providence to all its members, regardless of origin.

Such a rethinking of the boundaries of the people of God was extremely important. Under the traditional Jewish definition of those boundaries, no Gentile, even one who believed in the God of Israel, fell within them unless he accepted Judaism in its fullness and became a Jew. The Church, however, from the very beginning linked the boundaries of the people of God not with the Jewish people as an ethnic group and not with the Synagogue, but with the person of the Messiah. The people’s boundaries were expanded by such an approach, but the former covenants that God had made with His people were not thereby devalued: relationship with God is a single and spiritually whole process, in which every stage is important, beginning with Abraham and ending with Christ. And there was also the covenant with Noah, that collective image of all the righteous of the Gentile world, to whom the new view of the people of God opened a path into the Church without passing through the Synagogue. Thus the Kingdom united the former people of God with every righteous person who sought true life in all its fullness.

The question of evil's origin and nature in the world has long occupied and tormented humanity. Hardly anyone could have told us more about it than Jesus, who was to confront the world's evil. Yet He does not say very much to His disciples about the devil and the world's evil; He tells them only that the devil is defeated and that the day will come when this becomes clearly visible to everyone.

Instead, He speaks to His disciples and followers at length and in detail about how to resist evil in everyday life. One of this life's most serious temptations regarding evil deeds and actions is the temptation to imagine oneself powerless before the evil being done. The issue is not even whether it is possible to stop those who do evil, but whether refraining from evil is pointless. The logic of evil suggests that your participation or nonparticipation will change nothing: if not you, then someone else. By trying to resist evil, even simply by refusing to participate in it, you only make your own life more difficult without accomplishing anything at all, for there will be no less evil in the world.

This logic seems temptingly simple, and it would be conclusive if the untransformed world were the only and final reality. Fortunately, it is not. A person who refuses to participate in evil has good reason to act as he does. The issue here is not only, or even chiefly, the world lying in evil, but the person and his spiritual destiny—whether he will be able to enter the Kingdom or remain in “outer darkness.” Even if a situation in the fallen world is indeed often beyond human control—“it must needs be that offenses come”—a person's own choice is always within his power. Jesus apparently gives no weight at all to what is called environmental influence, social determinism, and other similar justifications for the evil a person commits.

Of course, this does not mean that He fails to take account of the situation in which a person must make his choice. He says only that one must not consent to evil or inwardly surrender to it, accepting it as normal simply because it is normal in the fallen world. The norm of the fallen world is no norm but a perversion, and everyone who agrees to become a conduit for the powers of evil must remember this, for “woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.” It may certainly happen that even by refusing to participate in evil, a person will be unable to prevent that evil. But he can keep evil from entering his own heart and thus preserve it for the Kingdom.

The chief feature of the Kingdom of Heaven revealed in the parables of today's Gospel reading is that it is hidden from human sight and acts unobtrusively. The seed sprouts unnoticed, the leaven works unnoticed, and no one can see the treasure found by a man in a field. Moreover, the seed and the treasure are placed within the earth, and the leaven within the flour. Later Jesus will tell the Pharisees plainly: “The kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21). This is important, because we murmur and claim that God has abandoned us, is absent from among us, or does not exist at all, since His actions cannot be seen. The whole problem is that we are looking in the wrong place.

The Kingdom of Heaven is not found in society or the state: it is impossible to imagine a state as a seed cast into the earth. The Jews greatly wanted to see God's Kingdom in the power and prestige of their state, since they were the God-bearing people. The result: “Behold, your house is left unto you desolate” (Matt. 23:38, Luke 13:35). The First, Second, and Third Romes placed their hope in the manifestation of the Kingdom of Heaven through Orthodoxy, autocracy, and other forms of national identity—where are they now?

The Kingdom's place is within human life. Like leaven, it gradually transforms your will so that it obeys the laws of the Kingdom. Like a seed, it grows gradually, imperceptibly giving you life so that you bear fruit for others and not for yourself alone. Like hidden treasure, it is a joy that no one will take from you.

Outwardly, the Kingdom of Heaven is manifested and acts through people—not through someone else, but only through you. To see this Kingdom, you must begin to fulfill its laws without expecting those around you to do so. And there is one more essential detail: the Kingdom of Heaven permits no dual citizenship. Either you agree to become a subject of the heavenly King and gradually become godlike—or you do not.

The story that took place in the house of the Pharisee, a man who was undoubtedly deeply religious, shows us once again how paradoxical the Kingdom and its life must have seemed to the religious mind. For a religious person, sin is something objective and absolute. To him, a sinner is only a sinner, and fellowship with that person is inadvisable for anyone striving to live righteously; sin can be caught like an infectious disease. To the religious mind, sin is a spiritual and moral classification that makes a person unfit for spiritual life as that mind understands it. Following this logic, Jesus should have driven away the sinful woman who approached Him, regardless of any repentance. All the more so because in this case the sin must have been not accidental but entirely deliberate, and its consequences insurmountable even if the sinner repented.

Jesus sees the situation differently. For Him, sin is not a person's spiritual and moral classification but his ordinary condition after the Fall. The issue is not whether a person is worthy to enter the Kingdom. Here everything is obvious: after the Fall no one can be worthy. The only question is whether a particular person can be saved, whether a particular sinner can be brought into the life of the Kingdom.

Naturally, to do this the sinner will have to cease being a sinner, and he will be able to enter the life of the Kingdom only to the extent that he can accomplish this task. Yet in principle it can be accomplished, if only the person himself wants it. The sole question is whether someone seeking the Kingdom resolves to enter a relationship with Jesus, who brought the Kingdom into the world. The woman who wept as she embraced Jesus' feet clearly had such a relationship. The Pharisee... it is hard to say with certainty. But he is plainly not drawn to Jesus as the woman in the evangelist's account is. After all, he thinks that everything is generally in order with him, not yet knowing that he is mistaken. The woman no longer thinks so; her sins are more obvious to her. She has something to ask of the Teacher.

And so, paradoxically, the one who has sinned more proves closer to the Kingdom than the one who has sinned less. Not because sin brings a person closer to the Kingdom, of course. It is simply that an evident and serious sin, once recognized, forces a person to think seriously about his destiny and to hold more tightly to the One who can help him. This really does bring a person closer to the Kingdom, despite the sins he has committed.

We are called to abide in the vine because, when separated from it, the branches are cut off from the source of life and quickly wither. The branches are free to break away, but they themselves will gain nothing from it. None of the branches grafted into this vine can remain fruitless. The Gardener calls us to bear fruit precisely because He constantly prunes the branches and enables them to do so—each branch according to its own measure, and there is no need to be troubled that each has a different measure. But if we refuse to bear fruit and intend to settle comfortably on the vine without making any effort, we will fall away from it. We are warned that in that case we will be cast out and wither. In fact, we will begin withering even before visibly separating from the vine, for a branch that has not completely broken off but is separating inwardly already deprives itself of life-giving sap.

It is no accident that fallen vine branches are used as a symbol of spiritual barrenness. Once cut off, their weakness when dry makes them unsuitable for use in objects such as baskets or fences. Even as fuel they are inferior to other branches: they burn quickly and give little heat...

The three principal feasts, headed by Passover, annually gather all Israel “before the Lord” at the sanctuary where the ark of the covenant stands. By having the people stand before the visible place of the Presence, the law nurtured in them the desire and the search for an encounter with their God. It is no accident that the righteous of the Old Testament are said to have desired to see and hear Him even though they did not see during their lives God's final revelation in Man. Without this desire, it is impossible even today either to see or to hear God. For us too, therefore, a religious feast can become a place of encounter with the Lord, kindling in us the desire always to stand before His face, rejoice in Him, and live by Him.