The Pharisees could not do this, and all the signs from heaven were powerless to make them accept such a view and submit to the spirit of Christ's teaching.

Are there only Pharisees?

There are many people whose very spiritual constitution prevents them from being true sincere disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ and from being imbued with the above-mentioned motives, which are indispensable for the success of the Christian life. In the soul there are often those underwater reefs and shoals on which the most winged ships of Christian hope are wrecked. Often the constitution of the heart requires fundamental changes, and much work is needed to make the soul receptive to the spirit and to the voice of Christian truth.

We need to know these shoals. It is necessary to know what clogs the fairway of Christian life, so that progress becomes completely impossible. Only then will we learn how to bypass the shoals and how to protect the soul from clogging.

Where are the most dangerous reefs of mental moods?

In the same Gospel passage (Mark Ush, 11-21) the Lord indicates the types of people who are unfit for the Kingdom of God in their spiritual makeup.

"Take heed," He said to His disciples, "beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod. And in the Evangelist Matthew it is added: and of the Sadducees (Matt. XVI, 6).

Here are three different world views, or rather three types of spiritual structure, incapable of perceiving the words of eternal life and doomed to a permanent break with Christ: the Herodians, the Sadducees, the Pharisees.

What kind of people are they? And what prevents them from taking upon themselves the good yoke and the light burden of Christ?

Herodians are people who joined the party of Herod the ruler and supported him, despite his foreign origin. Many of them were courtiers under the tsar, having achieved their position by flattery, adulation and various shady services. They valued this position very much and were very afraid of losing it. Career, high position, amenities and luxury of life - this was everything for them. They didn't care about anything else. The requirements of religion, the interests of social life, the sufferings of their native people worried them very little. They were opportunists in the worst sense of the word. For a personal well-fed, sorrow-free existence, they were ready to sacrifice everything. Love for others was not a requirement of their beliefs.

The mainspring of activity and the basic background of their life was the crudest, unpainted, bestial egoism. The rules of higher morality, the teachings about the necessity of self-denial for the good of others, all the ideological aspirations of a soul trying to tear itself away from the earth for heaven, could only evoke a smile on their lips. These subtleties were not for them.

What could the teaching of Christ give them and how could it attract them? Suffering, deprivation, voluntary poverty and straitness of life, the constant cross of patience, service to others to the point of complete oblivion of one's own interests, everything with which the Christian life was inseparably linked - all this was just the opposite of what they desired and sought.

Was it for them, the pampered courtiers, who loved only the luxury and splendor of life, to understand and appreciate the joy of a poor, homeless existence, rich only in spiritual freedom and purity of religious experiences?

With the followers of the Lord, they probably could not even find a common language, could not understand them and could not unite with them either mentally or spiritually, just as oil cannot unite with water. They were people of two different cosmoses of life and completely opposite world views; To the brilliant courtiers, the poor Galileans, with their incomprehensible asceticism, must have seemed simply madmen, deserving nothing but contempt.