Today's reading touches on another theme, one very important for understanding what life in the Kingdom is. But the meaning of what Jesus says becomes clear only in the context of the situation of that transitional era which began with the coming of the Savior and in which we live. It could be called the era of the advancing Kingdom, and it will be completed by Jesus' return. But since we do not know the exact timing of this return, readiness is required always, every day and every hour.

In fact, this is the meaning of the parables Jesus tells (vv. 36-48). When the Gospel speaks about the nearness of the Kingdom, what is meant is not the date of Christ's second coming, but the fact that the Kingdom has already entered the world, that its presence for us today is no longer future but present; and if we notice nothing of the sort, it is only because we do not want to notice. Of course, sometimes for those to whom God entrusts ministries connected with the Kingdom, the apparent remoteness of the time when the process will be completed has a relaxing effect, like the effect produced on the unrestrained servant in the parable by the thought that the master was far away (v. 45).

It is not surprising that those who knew everything and, despite everything, allowed themselves to relax are called to a more serious account than those who knew less (vv. 47-48). What is interesting is something else. In the world there are those who know more and those who know less, but, as one can see, there are none who know nothing. It is no accident that Jesus compares the signs of the advancing Kingdom to the signs by which people in those days recognized a coming change in the weather: they were just as obvious and just as understandable to everyone, so that it was simply impossible not to notice them at all and understand nothing (vv. 54-57).

That is why the coming of the Kingdom divides people, and the division, as one can see, does not run along any national, class, or religious border, but across all borders, separating those who accept the Kingdom from those who reject it, people sometimes living not only in one country and one city, but even in one house (vv. 51-53). And this happens not because God needs divisions, but because the Kingdom is an absolute reality; it is impossible to enter it partly or halfway, and even entering it "almost completely" will not work: one enters the Kingdom either to the end and without looking back, or one does not enter at all. That is why in the Church, according to the word of the Apostle Paul, there can be "neither Greek nor Jew": if the Church remains the Kingdom and does not turn into a religious organization, one among many, then only one division remains relevant for it: between those who accept the Kingdom and those who reject it. All other divisions are conditional and relative; this one is absolute, as absolute as the division between eternal life and eternal death can be.

Speaking to the disciples about the Kingdom, Jesus describes it above all as a new life opened to those who seek it. But it can be found only in the case of absolute openness on one's own part. To live the life of the Kingdom, one must renounce one's own life. Not one's life-space as such, not that flow of life which the Bible calls the soul, but the attempt to appropriate this space and this flow for oneself, to regard it as one's inalienable property, belonging to oneself by right.

In the Kingdom everything is different. There life is shared. One life for all. It is not owned; it is given for use. And the measure of this use is limited by nothing except the spiritual potential of the person himself. As much of the life of the Kingdom as he can contain, that much he will receive. But it does not become anyone's own in the sense in which we are accustomed to use that word with reference to property relations in our world.

The life of the Kingdom is yours insofar as you can live by this life. And therefore Jesus advises surrendering oneself to the flow of the life of the Kingdom. Enter it like a river. And move together with it. Without trying, as people say today, to fix anything in place. Without trying to evaluate one's own states, achievements, or failures. Without clinging to anything that attracts and holds a person in this world. And certainly without trying to fit the life of the Kingdom into religious frameworks: the new life cannot be kneaded on either Pharisaic or Sadducean leaven. The Kingdom does not fit into any human frameworks, but it does fit into the human heart. If, of course, it becomes the person's chief treasure. For where the treasure is, there is the heart.

Paul formulates the essence of Christian life briefly and concisely: if we live by spirit, then we must also walk by spirit. That is how the corresponding Greek text sounds literally. What does he mean? The answer depends on what one understands by "spiritual life." Often even Christians mean by it something more or less figurative. By "spirit" they understand certain new principles of life or a changed worldview. At the same time it is supposed that one or the other appears in a person when he becomes "spiritual." And a life corresponding to these new principles or this new worldview is called "life according to the spirit."

Meanwhile, that spirit, or more precisely, that breath of which the apostle speaks, has no direct relation to any principles or to any worldview. Of course, a person who lives by this breath may have his own principles and his own worldview. And as long as the person remains consistent, both will correspond to the life he is living. But what is primary is still life itself, not principles. It is life in accordance with the divine breath that permeates the Kingdom. That is what Paul is speaking about: this breath. It is not principles, not rules, not a worldview or a way of sensing the world. It is a real experience of the real, living presence of God. It is the experience of that presence in one's own life, outer and inner. This presence is what makes a person a Christian. Contact with it makes life spiritual in the proper sense.

Of course, a certain measure of spiritual life was opened to the human person even before Christ came into the world. After all, the breath of life that God breathes into the human person at creation is also presence. God's breath can be nothing else. And if such breath is in everyone, this means only one thing: every person, regardless of what he thinks about this breath, or whether he thinks about it at all, lives in the presence of God. Not an external presence, but an internal one. And it already depends on the person himself how much this God-given breath will define his life, how much it will be spiritual in the proper sense of the word. But the breath of the Kingdom, which entered the world with Christ, is not given to everyone, but only to the one who has entered into real and living relationship with Christ. Yet it is still the same breath, only in a greater, one may say absolute, fullness. In such fullness that it can make a person's life spiritual also in all fullness, up to the complete transfiguration of human nature that makes it an inseparable part of the Kingdom.