The chief feature of the Kingdom of Heaven revealed in the parables of today's Gospel reading is that it is hidden from human sight and acts unobtrusively. The seed sprouts unnoticed, the leaven works unnoticed, and no one can see the treasure found by a man in a field. Moreover, the seed and the treasure are placed within the earth, and the leaven within the flour. Later Jesus will tell the Pharisees plainly: “The kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21). This is important, because we murmur and claim that God has abandoned us, is absent from among us, or does not exist at all, since His actions cannot be seen. The whole problem is that we are looking in the wrong place.

The Kingdom of Heaven is not found in society or the state: it is impossible to imagine a state as a seed cast into the earth. The Jews greatly wanted to see God's Kingdom in the power and prestige of their state, since they were the God-bearing people. The result: “Behold, your house is left unto you desolate” (Matt. 23:38, Luke 13:35). The First, Second, and Third Romes placed their hope in the manifestation of the Kingdom of Heaven through Orthodoxy, autocracy, and other forms of national identity—where are they now?

The Kingdom's place is within human life. Like leaven, it gradually transforms your will so that it obeys the laws of the Kingdom. Like a seed, it grows gradually, imperceptibly giving you life so that you bear fruit for others and not for yourself alone. Like hidden treasure, it is a joy that no one will take from you.

Outwardly, the Kingdom of Heaven is manifested and acts through people—not through someone else, but only through you. To see this Kingdom, you must begin to fulfill its laws without expecting those around you to do so. And there is one more essential detail: the Kingdom of Heaven permits no dual citizenship. Either you agree to become a subject of the heavenly King and gradually become godlike—or you do not.

Comparing the Kingdom to a mustard seed and to leaven, Jesus draws attention to some of its features that at first glance can appear paradoxical, although, if one thinks about it, the matter concerns an antinomy characteristic of spiritual life in general. Indeed, if the Kingdom, at some stage of its formation, can be completely unnoticed, like a mustard seed or leaven in dough, if it fits within the human heart, then the matter would seem to concern a purely subjective reality, an inner spiritual state of a person. On the other hand, at the end of the path the Kingdom turns out not to be subjective at all; on the contrary, it is hard to imagine anything more manifest and objective, anything that so fully determines not only the eternal destiny of individual people, but the fate of all God's creation as a whole. So what is the Kingdom: an inner experience, or an objective reality revealing itself more and more in the world?

Judging by Jesus' words, it is both at once. And if one thinks about what the Kingdom is, it turns out that it cannot be otherwise. Indeed, when speaking of the Kingdom, both Jesus Himself and all the apostles have in mind above all relationships: the relationships of Christians with one another, their relationships with Jesus, and finally the relationship of Jesus Himself with the Father. But relationships are born, to use biblical language, in the depths of the human heart; they are manifestations of that spiritual "I" which determines the whole quality of a person's life, his intentions, his system of values and priorities. That is why the path into the Kingdom begins in the heart of the seeker - as, indeed, does the path of righteousness. But when relationships between a person and God are established and strengthened, they acquire their own dynamic, their own spiritual space, existing as objectively as God and the person who seeks Him. And when the matter concerns Christ and the Kingdom, He Himself enters into this dynamic, He who brought the Kingdom into the world and is ready to open the way there to every seeker.

That is why the Kingdom is born first of all in the heart: a person's relationship with Christ is established in the same way as any other relationship - from the same spiritual depth. And if sprouts of new life, the life of the Kingdom, can appear somewhere in the untransformed world, it is precisely there, in the depth of the human heart. There is no other place for the Kingdom in a fallen world. And then these sprouts, having broken through, will reach toward what is kindred to them. And the Kingdom will be revealed in the world in all its transforming fullness.

The Lord compares the people He drew near to Himself to a belt fitting as closely as possible to the body. But now the belt has rotted; there is only one road for it, to the trash heap. The people have rotted too: the sins that soaked through them have made them good for nothing. Alas, the people do not want to admit that in their present condition they are good for nothing and must share the fate of old rags.

How can the rejection of the sinful people spoken of here be reconciled with the idea of the Lord's mercy, long-suffering, and forgiveness, spoken of on many other pages of the same Scripture? Is there a contradiction here? If one wishes, of course, such different words can be considered contradictory, but it is better to call them complementary. After all, to truly value forgiveness, one must fully feel the vileness of sin and see what it brings with it.

The Lord still spares us; He does not even show us in full the whole horror of the abyss into which we can sink, carried along by the weight of our sins. And it is not the Lord who pushes us there; He constantly warns us about the dangers of crooked paths. In His stern warnings, His love for us appears far more strongly than in sugary permissiveness. But again and again we keep trying to turn into some swamp...