"...For yet a very little while..." Sometimes we do not want to believe this, and we say: you are only comforting us, Apostle Paul. But before this Paul says: "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God!" (Heb. 10:31). And in the Greek text the word is "phoberon," which is somehow clearly associated with the Russian word "phobia." In Russian usage, phobia means precisely an inner painful state when there is no real external danger: just darkness or height, just an enclosed space, and so on. We have this inner state: we both want the End and fear it. Because of this uncertainty, because of our inner confusion, this End does not come.

For the Lord, as the Bridegroom, comes when love has been established. Imagine a bridegroom and bride who are preparing to be married, but the bride is afraid, unsure, wavering; she does not yet have that radiant, happy, calm love that longs to give itself in service to the beloved. Would their wedding be right in that case? Still, it would be premature.

In the same way, even if we speak only about the Church and its members, we do not yet have this deep, quiet, calm love. We still fear ourselves and frighten others. We fear punishment, vengeance, recompense; we simply fear, without ourselves knowing what, because "no one has ever returned from there." What kind of "wedding" (that is, the End) can we speak of?

But this does not mean that we are alone. We can say that we were "betrothed" by Christ's First Coming, and we need to build our relationship with Him. In any case, He is here, He is near. And of course, it is "a little while longer," because when there is love, time flows in a special way: separations are endless, meetings seem to fly by so quickly, and overall there is this feeling that there it is, just a little longer, and eternity will pour into the soul.

Today the Lord addresses to us one of the most important questions: "How do we listen?" We regularly read the Bible, and even visit Bible sites on the Internet, but do we have ears to receive the Word, let it take root in our heart, and bear fruit?

The Lord says: "With the measure you use, it will be measured to you, and more will be added to you who hear." In essence this means: what a person wants to find in Scripture, and in God's revelation in general, is what he will find. The Bible can provide us with the richest material for history, literature, philology, mysticism, and so on, but only the one who seeks in it the knowledge of God, that is, living personal relations with Him built on trust and love, will be able to find God in reading Holy Scripture.

And here the words that "to the one who has, more will be given" acquire their meaning. In listening to and understanding the Word of God, we can only deepen and multiply what we already have; that is, we must approach it from within an already existing bond with God, in faith and prayer.

Continuing the conversation about Christian life, the author of the letter calls his readers not to turn aside from the path on which they have set out and along which they have already managed to travel some distance. As can be seen, the author, being a disciple of the apostle, together with him and with some others experienced persecution for Christ, which he mentions in general terms but quite clearly. Unlike his teacher, the author of the letter was not executed, but at some point the threat to his life was real.

Others were in a similar position. The fate of Paul and of other Christians may have been different if the anti-Roman uprising in Palestine, which began at about this time and proceeded under religious and, in particular, messianic slogans, had not started. The Romans then apparently began to look at the followers of Jesus in the same way as at all messianists in general: as rebels actively opposing Roman authority.

In such a situation, persecution naturally could not help intensifying, at least until the uprising was completely suppressed. And judging by the testimony of the author of the Letter to the Hebrews, many of his addressees showed themselves to be faithful disciples of Christ. But now, after hopes for Christ's imminent return had dissipated, they were evidently in some confusion, not understanding what to wait for next and, one can think, looking closely at various messianic groups and sects of a gnostic kind; gnosis in those times was no less characteristic of the Jewish environment than of the pagan one. It is in just such a situation that the author writes his letter to some Christian Jewish community, possibly a community of Roman Jewish Christians.

There could have been many such people: the Jewish community of Rome was one of the largest in antiquity, and there were many there who had turned to Christ, in particular under the influence of Paul's preaching. Of course, these people experienced everything connected with the catastrophe of AD 70 as deeply as the whole Jewish community did, whether one speaks of orthodox Jews or of messianist Christians. And the author of the letter, remaining faithful to the teaching both of the Savior Himself and of his teacher Paul, calls them not to despair and to remain faithful to what had been revealed to them at their conversion and to the faithfulness they had witnessed during persecution.