In today's reading, the apostle Paul offers us a kind of verbal icon. It may be compared with Isaiah's vision in the Temple in Jerusalem or with the images of the Apocalypse. This icon reveals the God to Whom we offer thanksgiving. Thanksgiving makes us not merely spectators but participants in what is depicted—such is the law of spiritual life.

The apostle then speaks of God in action, of the One Who said of Himself: “I brought you out of Egypt with a strong hand and an outstretched arm.” His action is limited by no conditions; He always leads us in triumph in Christ. But here is the wonder: what kind of triumph is meant? Triumph in Christ turns out to be God's spreading the fragrance of the knowledge of Himself, like the blowing of a gentle breeze revealed to the prophet Elijah.

“The fragrance of the knowledge of God” is a somewhat refined expression, for the Greek original simply says “the smell of the knowledge of Him.” Who does not remember the children's tales in which it was said that “it smells of Rus'”? A smell is a perceptible sign of the presence of something invisible. God is invisible, but the people come to know Him, and this wafts in the air, making His presence perceptible.

"Religion is an ecological niche," "religion is a social game." This is how many thoughtful and serious people speak about religion. A game... That is exactly what Jesus calls the Pharisees: devout people who know and fulfill all religious prescriptions, who live solely by this and nothing else: "Actors!" It is not that He condemns acting as such; these people are simply playing at what must not be played at.

However much our life resembles theater, God cannot be part of a performance. That is why this social game is completely unacceptable for Jesus: God is too important and too near to Him for such playacting, first praying for show and then deceiving and humiliating, preaching and then forgetting about God, being honest before Him in the meticulous counting of a tithe from vegetables and then deceiving Him with one's whole life. Perhaps this is our human need: to portray someone, to present ourselves as someone... But the Heavenly Father does not play house. His love is real.

The most terrible thing is that the higher a person's calling, the more tragic and painful his falling away, his unbelief, becomes. The Pharisees were religious teachers of God's people, guardians of tradition, law, and Scripture. Jerusalem is "the city of the great King," but it is precisely there that Christ dies. The Jews are the chosen people, "God's own," yet "He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him."

We Christians are also a people chosen by God, children of Abraham by faith, guardians of the Gospel Tradition. Therefore we too walk along the edge of the abyss; we too are in the risk group. At any moment our piety can turn into hypocrisy, conviction in faith into a sense of our own rightness, respect for traditions into legalism. How can we avoid "the leaven of the Pharisees" and still remain God's people? How can we preserve faithfulness to the Gospel without losing Christ?