In spiritual life, reason often does not occupy the most honored place. We take care to act well, to follow the commandments, and not to harm either our neighbor or ourselves - and that is wonderful, for this is exactly what the parable of the Judgment speaks about (Matt 25:31-46).

We are attentive to the movements of the heart, to feelings: we strive to have compassion, to rejoice with others, to love God and neighbor. Most often we turn to our reason when we read Scripture: here too, of course, it is important to measure our life against the Word of God, important to listen and hear it, as Mary listened by the manger, 'keeping all these words and pondering them in her heart' (Luke 2:19), but it is no less important still to strive to understand, to read deeply into the meaning.

And we really do this. But how often do we pay attention to how exactly we think? Do we consider this important? Yes, of course, at every service we proclaim our faith, listing the dogmas on which it is built. But how often at that moment do we ponder every word, trying to understand why the fathers of this or that Ecumenical Council established exactly these words as the foundation of our Church?

Sometimes we say: all this can be left to theologians, while I believe as my heart tells me, for the foundation of faith is prayer, the Encounter with God, the reading of the Word of God. Of course, all this is true. But from Jesus' conversation with the scribe it is clear that our Lord values reason no less than feelings, the will directed toward good, or deeds performed out of love.

The scribe says to Him: 'You have spoken the truth.' Truth belongs to reason, to how we think and what we agree with. These words already bring the scribe nearer to God, for he and God have one common truth. The scribe pronounces words that affirm his faith. We know nothing about his deeds, about how he prayed, or how sincerely he conversed with God. We do not even know how attentive he was in studying Scripture, although his membership among the scribes shows that he devoted much time to interpretation. We know exactly one thing: he understood the essence of Scripture in the same way as Jesus and agreed with His words in his mind. And Jesus, 'seeing that he answered wisely, said to him: You are not far from the Kingdom of God.' It follows that not only prayer, not only good deeds, but also precision of thought brings us nearer to the Kingdom.

Jesus does not break the familiar world, but He radically changes it from within, filling established ideas with the right understanding. Out of the many commandments, so familiar, He singles out two, and the meaning of a person's relationship with God and with the world immediately comes into clear focus. True, the scribe is interested in only one commandment, since from a human point of view only one thing can be most important. Yet Christ unexpectedly places two commandments side by side.

That the commandment to love God is named first is natural and could not be otherwise. But that the commandment to love a human being is placed beside it, and that no other commandment can compare with these two, was a breakthrough in grasping the highest Reality. The high dignity of the human person, the calling to deification, is something absent from non-biblical religions and is the reason God became man. Understanding this is one of those golden talents given to us by the Savior that we ought not bury in the ground, but put to use more often.

The scribe who understands this (a very modern figure, by the way) is not far from the Kingdom of God. Someone who is near is not yet inside; he still has to take a step toward Christ, and that step can be so hard to take. People like this scribe often find it hard to decide on such a step, but because they have drawn near, it would also be easier for them to enter.

Today's passage is devoted, as we will soon see, to the theme of Tradition and to how differently different people can make use of it depending on their intentions. This passage consists of three dialogues that the Savior conducts with different interlocutors.

The first of them (vv. 13-17) is plainly provocative in character. The question of whether it was permissible to pay taxes to the Roman authorities, under whose rule Palestine then was, was usually raised by representatives of the most radical part of the Synagogue of that time, whom the Gospel calls "Zealots," that is, "the zealous." These people held views of the Kingdom of God not very different from those that were generally accepted in the times of Joshua and the Judges. For them, the Kingdom of God and Roman power in Palestine were incompatible things. They considered armed struggle against Roman rule a religious duty for every believing Jew, and the payment of taxes to Roman authority a violation of the Law. To all that has been said, one need only add that all who looked at things less radically, even if they were their fellow believers, were considered by the Zealots to be apostates and enemies of the faith, deserving death. The question about taxes, asked of Jesus publicly, in a crowd where both Zealots and secret agents of Roman power were certainly present, placed the One answering in an obviously losing position: to answer "yes" meant bringing upon Himself the wrath of the Zealots; to answer "no" was equivalent to a state crime in the eyes of the Romans, for under Roman laws public calls to refuse payment of taxes to the lawful authority were treated as rebellion.

The second question (vv. 18-27) most of all resembles a problem from a theology textbook, or one of the traditional "hard questions" of its time that opponents of faith in the resurrection used against believers. Of course, to this question, as to all similar questions in all times, there existed an answer, and perhaps more than one, well known to everyone who had received the corresponding education. But what was known about Jesus was precisely that He had not studied theology, and it was all the more interesting to those asking the question what this, as it appeared to them, ignorant man from Galilee would answer.

The third dialogue (vv. 28-34) was caused, evidently, not by a desire to catch the Teacher in His words, but by a real desire to understand what He thought about the Law. Apparently the questioner understood that this astonishing Man truly had to understand something important and central in the Law, and he wanted to learn what it was. And Jesus, in reply, refers him to those traditional answers that were perfectly well known to the questioner himself. It is interesting that in this answer only the first part, speaking of love for God, has a direct correspondence in the text of the Law (Deut. 6:4-5). The second part of the commandment is a formula of rabbinic tradition that in Gospel times had already become generally accepted. And in this case Jesus confirms Tradition by His own authority.

In neither the first nor the second dialogue does He do this. Of course, in these cases too the questioners appeal to Tradition, but here the matter evidently has more to do with abuse of Tradition than with relying on it. This is no surprise: authentic Tradition always reflects the experience of real, living communion with God preserved in the memory of the community. But if the goal turns out not to be communion with God but something else, for example the desire to catch an opponent in his words or to assert oneself at the expense of one's interlocutor, the spirit of Tradition disappears, and only its empty, dead form remains, giving nothing except support for equally empty, dead religiosity and human pride.