Notes for  22 August 2026

“Go and do likewise,” the Lord says today. Like the merciful Samaritan—for who are you, if not a Samaritan? You are a mixed person; there is no purity of faith in you. You seem to believe in God, but what God, how do you worship Him, and what rituals do you invent for yourself or copy thoughtlessly from others? Of course you are a Samaritan, and nothing else.

But it is worth looking at these words in another translation, that of one of the greatest philologists of our day, Sergei Sergeyevich Averintsev: “Step forth and act likewise.” What draws attention is that this great philologist suddenly seems to violate the rule of literary style that forbids such close repetition of the same root: in Russian, “stupai” and “postupai.” Yet he clearly did this under divine guidance, for it yields an abundance of new meanings.

“An act is a step along the vertical. It has no other meaning and no other consequences”—these are the remarkable words of another philologist of our day, Olga Sedakova. An act is a step. Here again is the same connection with walking. What did the Lord say to Sergei Sergeyevich, and through him to us, in these words that seem so “unmusical,” yet in fact sound so astonishing? Every day we take thousands, sometimes tens of thousands, of steps, but we are fortunate if, between one confession and the next, we have managed to perform even one true act. Such closely related roots, and such mathematical divergence...

An act is a step along the vertical. It is clear that this is only a poetic image, though a very powerful one. But “it has no other meaning and no other consequences.” And what of the Samaritan? What are the consequences for him? If a Jew helped a Jew, he performed a deed pleasing to God, and God's mercy became the consequence for him. So people thought. But the Samaritan... he saved an outsider, someone who would later thank God in the “wrong” way, and therefore He might not even hear.

It may seem that we are reading too much into this. But we are only trying to sweep away the Christian-cultural Gestalts of our own time. The correlation is absent: the God of my people—a person of my people; I enter this bond and join myself to their wholeness. But the God of my people and a person from another people are in no way connected, and there is no wholeness to which I can join myself. I must join myself to a rupture, and that threatens to tear me apart as well.

This, as it appears today, is what a “step along the vertical” means: a step across a fracture in the earth that is rapidly widening. Therefore: step forth and act; bring together these numbers that stand so far apart on the number line—1,000 steps a day and 0.001 acts a day.

The people's attempts to silence the blind men do not look like concern for quiet and public order. The fact that there were two blind men makes us remember that Jewish law required precisely two witnesses to confirm the truth of anything. By recognising Jesus as the Son of David, the two blind men not only addressed Him with a messianic title but also proclaimed it before all the people. In that case, however, those around them had to decide how to respond to what they had heard. They would now have to choose how to live and act in a changed reality, and they did not want to. Better to evade the choice by plugging their ears, or better still, the mouths that announced such unwelcome news...

When addressing Jesus, the blind men initially ask Him for mercy but make no specific request to be healed. They leave it to Christ Himself to decide how mercy should be shown, and in this their trust in Him is revealed. Only after He Himself addresses the blind men do they ask to receive their sight. And it is given to them—not only physically.

Many of those who asked Jesus for healing returned to their affairs after receiving what they wanted. These two, however, did not follow Christ because they had been healed; they were healed because they had accepted Christ.

The beginning of the twenty-third chapter of Matthew's Gospel is a very joyful text. There are at least two reasons for this. The first great joy is that the power of Truth is so great that our sinfulness, which is felt especially acutely and painfully when it concerns ministers of the Church, is no obstacle to it. What news could be more joyful? For what is the source of all the sorrow and anguish of atheists and apostates of every age and nation? They cannot believe what comes from the mouths of unrighteous priests, and therefore transfer their rejection from the person to what he says. This is a very powerful psychological phenomenon, and it can be simply impossible to overcome; hence anguish, disappointment, absurdity, and the rest.

But in reality this is not so. We must destroy this terrible cliché in our consciousness, the idea that priests are a kind of chosen people of God who stand higher than the angels. On the one hand, for example, Symeon the New Theologian often writes that the priest approaches a Sacrament before which even angels tremble: “this will show me like the angels of God, and perhaps make me greater than they, O my Master.” And this is so. But on the other hand, the priest pronounces very important words in the prayer of absolution after confession: “And I, though but an unworthy priest, by His authority given to me, forgive and absolve...” And this too is a prayer sanctified by the Church. In other words, the miracle of which the Gospel tells us today is that Truth is not damaged by our sinfulness. Although we are all people, all human beings, Truth sails down the river of generations as though in an ark, suffering no harm. Truly, this is a miracle and a joy.

And there is a second joy. We very often desire a “spiritual guide,” and people pray endlessly for one. But is there not in this a desire for someone finally to take upon himself our own burden of responsibility? We think ourselves so humble, ready to be disciples: let someone come and teach us how to live, and we shall obey. But the Apostle speaks against this: “Brethren, do not be children in your thinking; be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature” (1 Cor. 14:20). Be mature in your thinking; take responsibility for your own actions. This is precisely what is expressed by the very important words, “call no man your father on earth,” which the Lord says to us today. In essence, we violate them; the entire structure of the Church violates them. Let us not break the structure of the Church, but let us at least understand this.

Then there will be such joy in communion with a spiritual father: he is not your teacher or father, but your brother, perhaps an elder brother, but a brother, while your Father is in Heaven. There is so much joy in this, in everyone being equal, so that no one suppresses another's person, no one punishes anyone, no one forbids anything to anyone, but only advises and helps. Yes, we all have different experience and different wisdom, but the Lord is so much more perfect than we are that before Him we are all equal. It is impossible to understand this while remaining only on earth, but as soon as you raise your mind to Heaven, both the little houses and the tall bell towers appear almost the same from there. In the same way we are all equal before the Lord, and this is wonderful.

Today's reading contains the disciples' rejoicing and the Lord Jesus' sorrow. True, genuine faith is indeed always joyful. This does not mean that a Christian must always be in high spirits, but even amid trials and sin our darkness must not smother the light. If joy seems to us incompatible with reverent fear of God, with the seriousness of prayer and penitential weeping, then we become like the Pharisees “from among the crowd,” to whom the Lord said that if we do not rejoice, the stones will have to do it for us!

And the second aspect of this encounter between God and man is Jesus' sorrow over Jerusalem, which never recognised His coming. This sorrow is one expression of His love for sinful people. The Lord is not angry; He does not curse the city or punish it, but only weeps. He brought us life, and we turned away from His gift.

Often the memory of these tears restrains us from sin far more strongly than fear of punishment or of God's wrath. We encounter God—in prayer, in reading Scripture, in worship—almost every day. Let us remember the rejoicing and the tears in today's chapter.

In chapter 18, through the mouth of the prophet Ezekiel, the Lord once again opposes the human idea that guilt and punishment for sin are inherited. This idea, so widespread and understandable among people, likens God to ourselves, because it is we who do not distinguish between people, but judge them by categories. God tells us instead that He builds His relationship personally with each one of us; each person is judged separately according to his own deeds. This Revelation anticipates the New Covenant, which people will enter not as whole nations, but one by one.

The Lord speaks of this in great detail, examining specific cases. If the father is righteous and the son is wicked, the father has found favour with God, while the son will perish in his sins. How unwilling the Jews are to hear this! When other prophets, and Christ Himself, say the same thing, it provokes a fit of rage in them. Look, we had such wonderful holy ancestors, yet we ourselves will be judged according to our deeds, without any allowance for heredity... This is why they hated the prophet Jeremiah, John the Baptist, and the Lord Jesus Himself. It should be noted that our convulsive exclamations about Holy Rus' also often fit this logic. Yet much more important for each of us is the Lord's promise of His favour to the righteous person even if his ancestors were wicked: this applies to us who live in the post-Soviet world far more than nostalgia for past greatness does.

But the Lord does not limit Himself to these genealogical definitions. In the second half of the chapter He proclaims the great Revelation of mercy towards those who repent. The repentant sinner will be accepted by God, and all his transgressions, the Lord says, will not be remembered against him. And here for the first time the great words are heard: “Do I desire the death of the wicked?... Is it not rather that he should turn from his ways and live?” This is said of every human being, because, as the word of God repeatedly says, all of us are in one way or another guilty before the Creator's love. But He desires the salvation of everyone, even the most hardened sinner. At the same time the Lord also speaks of the other side of the principle that people are responsible for their actions: evil must be answered for, and repentance for it is necessary for salvation. No merits will cover evil deeds; only a contrite heart can deliver a person.

Chapter 18 ends with a sorrowful exclamation that the house of Israel does not agree to such mercy from God, because it does not wish to bear responsibility and repent of its transgressions, relying instead on past merits. This is denied both to them and to everyone who comes to God. In the final verses, once again repeating that He does not desire people's destruction but wants them to find salvation, the Lord addresses an appeal to the people: “Make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit... why will you die?”

On the one hand, this is a call to change one's life, to the very repentance of which God said that it would blot out all transgressions; it is a call to draw near to God with all the strength of one's heart. At the same time, however, this call sounds profoundly ambiguous, because it is hardly possible to fulfil it. The Lord had said practically the same thing, though in somewhat different words, a little earlier through the prophet Jeremiah, and the prophet exclaimed bitterly: “Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then may you also do good who are accustomed to do evil” (Jer. 13:23). Who can make himself a new heart and a new spirit? Even if a person's heart seeks repentance, how can he uproot sin from within himself? These words reflect the tragic hopelessness of the age and pose the most important question: “What is to be done if this is impossible for human beings?” In the second half of the book, the prophet Ezekiel will answer this question when he speaks of the coming of Christ and the establishment of the New Covenant, when God Himself will give the repentant person a new heart and a new spirit.

The evangelist notes an interesting fact: it is Jesus' victory over the “unclean spirit” that makes the strongest impression on the people. In principle, of course, there is nothing surprising here: the Kingdom is indeed fatal to the dark powers, and the breath of God that permeates it proves to be a force that kills the spirits of darkness, so it is entirely natural that it should torment them.

Yet the power of the Kingdom manifested itself in other ways in Jesus' presence, but such manifestations evidently made far less of an impression on people's minds. Why was this so? Probably because fallen man associates strength and power (after the power of earthly rulers, of course, which is always in plain view and manifests itself all too clearly) precisely with the actions of dark forces. There is nothing surprising in this either: fallen man lives in a world that is under the dominion of these very forces and always senses this deep down, even when considering himself a materialist and an atheist. And he always watches with apprehension (quite appropriate in this case) and curiosity (wholly inappropriate and superfluous, by contrast) the manifestations in surrounding life of the power that represents his true master, in whose hands all earthly rulers are merely toys and pawns in a great game.

But, of course, the greatest commotion among people is caused by the appearance of the One who, as is obvious to everyone, can not only challenge the dark ruler but also put his subjects to flight. For every fallen person (sometimes without realising it) understands perfectly well that this cannot happen. And if something like it has nevertheless occurred, it can mean only one thing: something truly radical has changed in the world. Such testimony may prove more impressive than many words about the Kingdom drawing near.

Of course, in itself it still does not guarantee that everyone impressed by Jesus' victory over the powers of darkness will follow Him. But there can be no guarantees here at all. And for someone, perhaps, it is precisely such a visible victory of the Messiah over the “unclean spirit” that will become the event that leads them to reflect on the Kingdom and on their own salvation.