Orthodox readings for 19 June 2026

King James Version (en)

Romans, Chapter 9, verses 6-19

¹ Paul is sorry for the Jews, ⁷ All the seed of Abraham were not the children of the promise, ¹⁸ God hath mercy upon whom he will

⁶Not as though the word of God hath taken none effect. For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel:

⁷Neither, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children: but, In Isaac shall thy seed be called.

⁸That is, They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for the seed.

⁹For this is the word of promise, At this time will I come, and Sara shall have a son.

¹⁰And not only this; but when Rebecca also had conceived by one, even by our father Isaac;

¹¹(For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth;)

¹²It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger.

¹³As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.

¹⁴What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid.

¹⁵For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.

¹⁶So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy.

¹⁷For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might shew my power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth.

¹⁸Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth.

¹⁹Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will?

Matthew, Chapter 10, verses 32-36

¹⁶ comforteth them against persecutions

³²Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven.

³³But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven.

³⁴Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.

³⁵For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.

³⁶And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.

Matthew, Chapter 11, verse 1

¹And it came to pass, when Jesus had made an end of commanding his twelve disciples, he departed thence to teach and to preach in their cities.

NOTES

Jesus' words are very difficult for us. We would like things to be simpler... Is everything really so stark? Are His ways of ordering the world truly...

Sometimes the words of Jesus seem too harsh. What, in fact, does He mean when He says that one cannot love father or mother more than Him? And then comes the explanation: whoever wants to save his life (“soul”) will lose it, but whoever gives it up for Christ’s sake will save it. At first glance it may seem that this is about...

At first glance it may seem that this is about some life after death, about the paradise that awaits martyrs. But in fact here too the point is the Kingdom. The Kingdom that is not somewhere “in heaven” and not later, but here and now. And not some other life that awaits the faithful in some other dimension, but that very life to which every Christian can and must, if he truly is a Christian, be joined already here and now.

But in order for participation in the life of the Kingdom to become possible, it is necessary to renounce one’s own life. Not because it is life, but because it is one’s own. And one’s own not in the sense of unique and unrepeatable, given by God to me and to no one else, so that no one but me can answer for it before God, but in the sense of belonging only to me alone: the life into which I will let no one and which I will share with no one, fearing to lose even a small portion of my so precious life. Such a desire to hold on to one’s own life, separate from the rest of God’s world and from the Kingdom, in the end inevitably turns into catastrophe: all attempts to preserve the little that remains to us in the fallen world from the fullness of the life once given us by God end with our losing even that little. Only by renouncing such spiritual and, in the language of modern philosophers, existential self-isolation can we receive the fullness of the life of the Kingdom that the Savior has prepared for us.

But then one will have to give up the small for the sake of the infinite, limitation for the sake of fullness. And not only with regard to one’s own life, but also with regard to relationships with people, even the closest. For relationships with them too must cease to be part of our small, isolated little world in order to become part of the Kingdom. Then there will no longer be those irrevocable losses to which this little world condemns us. For the life of the Kingdom is, according to the Savior’s word, “life in abundance.” And it is given to everyone who enters the Kingdom. The one who enters brings into it all the relationships that bind him to those close to him. Relationships that also become part of the Kingdom.

FAQ

In the Apostle Paul's Epistle to the Romans, there are the following words: ch. 9, v. 18: "Therefore He has mercy on whom He wills, and whom He wills He hardens." How does this align with the fact that God calls everyone to repentance and humility, and at the same time can harden a person's heart and that person simply will not accept God's call because such was God's will regarding this person, and how then can anything be demanded of this person? After all, who will resist God; if He so desired, then so it will be. What should be made of this?

The Apostle Paul quotes here the Book of Exodus, which tells of how Pharaoh, unwilling to submit to the will of God, becomes hardened. Paul himself, however, speaks precisely about the fact that...

Why did the people of Israel leave their homeland, and can this be regarded as a punishment for this nation, sent by God because they did not accept His Son and the New Covenant?

You are almost right, with the exception of the word "punishment." It does not reflect the essence of the matter, and indeed the Lord, through the prophets, rejects such a way of reasoning...

You are almost right, with the exception of the word "punishment." It does not reflect the essence of the matter, and indeed the Lord, through the prophets, rejects such a way of reasoning. The Gospels quite definitively link the destruction of Jerusalem and the subsequent wave of the dispersion with the rejection of Christ. However, this was not a purposeful retribution for what the Jews had done; rather, I would call it the result of rejecting the Lord Jesus. It is highly significant that the Lord Himself speaks of this with tears, thereby setting an example for all His disciples for all time. The Jews themselves (non-Christians) of the second half of the 1st century AD associated the destruction of Jerusalem with the murder of James the Just, the brother of the Lord, the first bishop of Jerusalem.

The entire history of biblical faith (both Old Testament and New Testament) testifies that the betrayal of Christ's love and the substitution of faith with lesser things always leads people to disaster. So it was in the days of the fall of Samaria and the first destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar; so it was in the 1st century AD; and so it has been in the history of the Church. The issue, in fact, is not about punishment... Simply put, if we are not with God, we are defenseless against the evil that reigns in this world, and we ourselves only multiply it. However, two important points must be noted. On the one hand, the Bible tells us that the Lord judges each person individually, and not entire groups and nations. On the other hand, His relationship with the chosen people, judging by the words of the Apostle Paul, remains special, comparable (though not identical) only to the relationship between God and the Church. As far as the Apostle Paul can be understood, in his view the conversion of Israel will be the final, culminating moment of Salvation History, and through this the chosen people continue to serve God and other people.

Finally, the traditional notion that the Jews did not accept Christ is highly biased. After all, the Most Holy Virgin and Joseph the Betrothed, John the Baptist and all the apostles, and the majority of the early Christians were Jews. A portion of the Jews accepted Christ, and a portion did not; but was this not the case with everyone else as well? And to accept the New Covenant "collectively," as a nation, is fundamentally impossible; the Lord establishes it with each person individually.

If the way to God is through Christ, what will happen to Israel?

Unlike the Old Covenant, the New Covenant is made with each person individually, regardless of a person's origin...

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