Main news for 8 January 2025

As seen, James puts top the patience. Like his contemporaries he puts the ancient prophets, and Job, the hero of the eponymous biblical book. Of course, Jesus Himself warned many a time of the imminence of the suffering. And if we consider that the persecutions, which it is about, were rather considered as a standard of the Christian life, than episodes, it becomes clear that it is necessary to get ready to endure, and endure for a long time. But the problem all the same limits itself apparently not only to the imminence and the practical necessity to patience. Indeed, the patience generally depends of what? In principle, short-term even intense suffering, as is known, is sometimes easier to bear, than the long-term, even if the long-term suffering is not so intense.

There is nothing surprising here: The resources of the organism of a healthy man are all the same rather usually big, and with appropriate motivation their short term mobilization gives an appropriate effect, sometimes even allowing bearing what before seemed unbearable. Of course, such a motivation can be the faithfulness to Christ, but not only it: it is also possible here an emotional ascent, the intellectual conviction, and the religious exaltation. One should not say that all this has no relation with the spiritual life: because we suppose here the deliberated choice and the respect for a decision taken once. But such a spiritual life does not go yet beyond the frame of the not yet transformed world.

But when it is about faithfulness to Christ, the relationship with Him, it is already necessary to speak directly about the life of the Kingdom, because relationships with Him are possible only in the Kingdom. We have here, by the way, an inexhaustible resource, allowing to bear the difficulties and the trials during not only this short period, during which are all the same exhausted the human strengths not so really big, but also during a long time, for which would have been enough no human strength.

That is why the apostle appreciates in particular the patience during trials: he witnesses the spiritual quality of life of those who bore these trials. About quality, which is conditioned by the fact that his life, although it passes still partially in our world being transformed, but not yet transformed till the end, is defined all the same not by the laws of this world, but by the laws of the Kingdom.