Notes for  17 August 2026

How are we to understand the Savior's words about the house that is now left empty? Judging by the context, He means the events of AD 70, which He foresaw: after the anti-Roman uprising organized primarily by the Zealots, the Romans would suppress it and destroy Jerusalem and the Temple to their foundations. In that case, Christ's words can and must be understood first of all literally: after the terrible devastation, the city and the Temple—or rather, what remained of them, and very little would remain—would indeed be deserted.

There is, however, a second and deeper meaning in the Savior's words. He understands better than anyone that the events of AD 70 would be the consequence of the spiritual choice the people were making during His earthly ministry. He is naturally pleased neither by this choice itself nor by the catastrophe that would follow from it, but He knows that nothing can be done: both the people as a whole and every individual person are free in their choice, and no one can be forced into anything here. He brought into the world the Kingdom, which could have become the possession of the whole people, but only a minority paid attention to it. In the immediate future, salvation for the Jewish people was now inevitably to become the lot not of the majority but of the minority.

Here lies the tragedy of the Savior's earthly ministry. He could not even proclaim publicly that He was the Messiah He truly was—not because people would not have believed Him, but because, on the contrary, they would have believed and immediately tried to place Him at the head of yet another messianic movement that would grow into an anti-Roman uprising. They wanted to see not the Messiah He actually was, but one who would satisfy the expectations of a crowd inflamed by religious and political slogans. A crowd is always aggressive; it hates those who refuse to follow its slogans and meet its expectations, and its hatred is all the greater when its expectations of a potential leader had been greater. The Messiah is rejected, and His place is taken by those whom He Himself calls ravenous wolves, for whom sheep are of interest solely as food.

And the house becomes empty. The Temple, which according to the prophets was meant to receive the Messiah, admits Roman soldiers in place of the rejected Messiah, and they will not leave one stone upon another. Such is the price of the Kingdom offered and rejected, the price of salvation rejected: a price equal to destruction.

The Saviour's earthly ministry begins with the descent of God's Spirit, followed by the trial in the wilderness (described in greater detail by the other evangelists) and the ministry itself, the testimony to the Kingdom (Mark describes all this briefly and concisely). What, then, do we have before us: a unique feature of Jesus' ministry as Messiah, or a certain universal spiritual algorithm (insofar as one can speak of algorithms in spiritual life at all)? Or perhaps both?

Of course, Christ's path is unique. Yet, on the other hand, Jesus was not born as a human being in order to have nothing in common with us, including in matters of spiritual life. We will probably not face trials like those that awaited Him in the wilderness, although something similar may quite possibly await us as well: the devil is not as inventive as he is sometimes thought to be. We will in any case have to bear witness to the Kingdom, provided that we are Christians not merely in name. And the descent of God's Spirit will also certainly become part of our spiritual life, unless, of course, we remain forever, in the spiritual sense, children who have taken the first step towards the Kingdom and stopped as soon as they crossed the threshold.

But how all this will happen remains an open question. Similar or identical spiritual processes sometimes take very different forms under different external conditions. They take their own form for each person, and there is no point in imitating someone else's spiritual life: it is useless in any case and almost always brings only harm.

Quite apart from the fact that, in the Messiah's case, such efforts look simply ridiculous as well. Jesus did not come into our world so that we would imitate His life, nor to force each of us to travel the same path that He travelled (in the end, none of us is capable of this, for one would have to be free from sin). Jesus came into the world to give us the Kingdom, to give it to everyone who wishes to enter it, and also to help us get there.

Of course, the way into the Kingdom is no less difficult than the way of righteousness in pre-Christian times, and it is just as impossible to travel it without God's help as it was to travel the way of righteousness without His help. But on the way into the Kingdom there is an obstacle that is in principle insurmountable for a human being: the sinfulness of fallen human nature. Even if a person is somehow able, with God's help, to walk the way of righteousness, any one of us can only be carried into the Kingdom in His arms. And Jesus' entire earthly path was necessary precisely so that He could later carry each of us into the Kingdom in His arms.

This, of course, by no means implies that there will be no trials in our lives or that we will not need the help of God's Spirit. It is impossible to travel the whole way in the Messiah's arms, and life in the Kingdom also requires the ability to walk. But He will help us overcome what is insurmountable for us. Otherwise we would have to forget about the Kingdom forever.

The dialogue between Christ and the rich young man in today's Gospel is one of the best known and most disputed passages in the New Testament. It provokes strong emotions in most people, for we immediately become frightened that such a call might also be addressed to us, and that fulfilling it would be as difficult for us as it was for this young man. No logic works at such a moment. It is pointless to explain that this call is not addressed to everyone, since in that case, ideally, there would simply be no one left to buy the property that everyone was selling. It is pointless to recall that the Lord Himself says that whoever follows this path gains incomparably more than he loses. Fear of parting with our possessions grips us to our fingertips. We so stubbornly see property as the source of our existence and dignity...

This is exactly what the people of Israel experienced after leaving Egypt. Slavery guaranteed a “subsistence minimum,” and so it proved more desirable than such difficult freedom. We too remember sausage costing 2.20, at least those of us old enough to have known it, not because it was good, for it was exceptionally nasty, but because it was the spectre of security: one could quietly eke out an existence in a tiny burrow and avoid the labour of trusting God.

This is precisely why this call of Christ is so important to us. Even if He is not personally calling you at this moment to sell your possessions, it is still a call addressed to you. A slave differs from a free person in being unable to part with his master. If you cannot part with the spectre of security and with owning property, then you are its slave, that is all. What we see here, then, is a particular instance of the call to freedom in Christ that resounds throughout the Gospel.

Today's reading is entirely devoted to describing the spiritual state of those who come into contact with the Kingdom. It is no accident that it begins by affirming human spiritual freedom (vv. 1–2). Of course, in a world lying in evil there will always be sinners, until its complete transformation, but this in no way excuses those who choose the path of evil and sin: each person is answerable before God for his own choice. Yet in the Kingdom a choice, like repentance for any sin, remains possible until the end of time, when the Kingdom is revealed in all its fullness. That is why Jesus commands us to forgive a brother who has sinned if he repents and asks forgiveness for what he has done (vv. 3–4).

But genuine repentance is impossible without the inner spiritual wholeness that the disciples have in mind when they ask Jesus to “increase our faith” (v. 5). In reply, Jesus not only points out what the faith of a spiritually whole person can do (v. 6), but also explains how such faith can be acquired (vv. 7–10). He compares His disciples with slaves not in order to belittle them, but to explain how a person seeking the Kingdom must regard his ministry. Just as it does not occur to a slave that by carrying out his master's command he has earned something or may lay claim to something, so a person who has fulfilled what God entrusted to him must under no circumstances think that he has deserved anything or has a right to anything. Such an attitude is evidently possible either out of having no alternative, as is usually the case with a slave who has nowhere to go and knows that he will receive no reward for his work, or out of the fullness of trust, when the relationship with God and with people is so deep that His will is fulfilled as something self-evident and a person does not even think of demanding any reward for his labour. Such relationships require a person to surrender himself completely to God's will, and if he resolves to do this, he truly acquires the spiritual wholeness that makes faith able to “move mountains.”

But what comes to the fore here is, of course, neither the possibilities that open up nor even the spiritual state in itself, but the relationship with God and with the One Whom He sends into the world. It is no accident that Jesus pays such attention to one of the people He healed, who returned to thank Him (vv. 12–19). Of course, Jesus recedes into the background here: the healing itself takes place on the way, as though without His direct participation. But perhaps He acts in this way so that those who were healed will look upon Him not as a wonder-worker, but as the One Who brought the Kingdom into the world. He leaves them free: anyone who does not wish to thank Him need not do so, and will not fall ill again. It then becomes clear that a relationship with Him mattered to only one of the ten. Ten people came into contact with the Kingdom, but only one entered it: the one to whom not only health mattered, but also the One Who brought this Kingdom into the world.

The danger of false prophecies still exists today; it has not diminished since Ezekiel's time. They may come not only from deliberate deceivers, but also from people who are mistaken “in good faith.” If someone desperately wants to hear God's voice, excessive desire can make the voice of his own subconscious seem like God's voice—or even lead him to mistake the whispers of opposing powers for it! Therefore, the phrase “God told me” should not be used lightly or thoughtlessly.

Yet the need for caution and spiritual sobriety in spiritual life does not justify rejecting out of hand the very possibility that He can still be heard by us today. May He Himself lead us after Him, keeping us from yielding to extremes or straying from the path!

In the song whose words were given to Moses and Joshua at the Tabernacle, a sad truth about the future is revealed to them. God's people will inevitably fall prey to self-deception and pride in their achievements. Almost every success will become a temptation to claim the victor's laurels for themselves. This “psychological” trait (in reality, a sinful one) is characteristic of nearly everyone: in a moment of danger God becomes our only salvation, but the instant we receive it, we forget Him. More than that, we take pride in our talents and strength—a cult of our own personality. When it is plainly impossible to attribute success to ourselves, we thank good fortune (which is already a pagan deity, called Fortuna by the Romans). There is only one way to fight this paganism within ourselves: acknowledge that all our successes and victories belong to God and, consequently, give thanks.