Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Heartfelt congratulations with the feast of the Resurrection of the Lord, as well as with the day of the finding of the relics of the Holy Hierarch Joasaph of Belgorod!

Two weeks ago, we noticed that during the last days of our Lord Jesus Christ’s earthly life, He spent quite a lot of time in discussions with the Jews. Christ offered for their consideration three parables in which He undertook to awaken their conscience, turn them away from their plans to kill Him, and to accept Him as their Messiah. In their turn, the Pharisees, Sadducees and the other Jewish elite came to the Lord, tempting Him with treacherous questions and hoping to find some kind of fault in Him for which they could condemn Him to death. The Apostle and Evangelist Matthew in his Gospel recorded three such questions. In today’s Gospel reading, we heard the last of these three questions and the Lord Jesus Christ’s answer to it, as well as the subsequent question of the Lord to the Jews about how it is possible that Christ is the son of David, when David in the 109 (110) psalm calls Him Lord. With this question, the Lord once again gently hints to the Jews that He is the son of David, while at the same time being the Son of God who sits at the right hand of the Father and is equal or of one essence with the Father.

Christ gives a very simple answer to the question of a certain lawyer, that is a specialist in the Jewish Law, who asks: “Which is the great commandment?” He cites a passage from that part of the Old Testament which every pious Jew would recite twice daily, during his morning and evening prayers. (This prayer rule, called by the jews the ‘shema,’ consists of two excerpts from Deuteronomy (6: 4-9, 11: 13-21) and one from Numbers (15: 37-41)). The Lord Jesus Christ notes that all of the Law depends on two commandments. The first is to love God “with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind,” and the second – to love your neighbour as yourself. Everything is very simple and understandable, but how can this type of love be practically realized, for the Lord God commanded us to Love Him with all our being. A person is not a simple being, but a mixture of spiritual and physical. He is composed of a body, a soul (that life-giving power that animates the body), as well as the spirit, the more elevated part of the soul, were the highest and most divine attributes of a person are located. Example of such qualities are our thirst to find and join ourselves to God, sacrificial love for our neighbour, spiritual sensitivity to seeing the works of God around us, etc. When the Lord notes that we must love God with all our heart and soul and mind, perhaps He is pointing out that man, composed of three elements, is obliged to serve God with all his being with his body, soul, and spirit.

This is, of course, not that simple, and therefore our Lord Jesus Christ adds the second half of today’s Gospel reading (the question to the Jews about the son of David, in which He hints at His Divinity). It may appear that the first and second parts of today’s Gospel are not particularly linked one to another, but this is not the case. The key to having perfect love for God as well as our neighbour is Jesus Christ Himself and faith in His incarnation and death on the Cross. The Holy Hierarch Theophan the Recluse explains this thus: “Such faith excites love for God, for how could we not love someone who has loved us so much as God, who did not spare His only Son, but gave Him up for us?” Therefore, when it is difficult for us to love God or our neighbour, let’s remember that God the Father surrendered His only Son to be crucified for the sake of the forgiveness of our sins, and that His obedient Son willingly accepted all the unpleasantness of human life on earth and even the most humiliating and agonizing death for the sake of our eternal life.

Through the prayers of St. Joasaph, let the image of the incarnate and crucified Saviour always be present within us so that we always love and serve God with all our heart, soul, and mind!

priest Alexis