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.

If they join the ranks of the Lord's enemies, it is chiefly because they see in His work a dangerous political phenomenon, given His influence on the masses, and sharing the prejudices common among the Jews about the Messiah as a conqueror and liberator from the Roman yoke, in the maintenance of which, and in general of the entire existing governmental system, which provided them with an idle, well-fed life, they will, of course, were interested.

Thus, selfishness, personal selfishness, which permeated their nature and life, irresistibly pushed them away from Christ.

And to this day this human selfishness is one of the most dangerous pitfalls of the Christian life. If it is not broken and removed, then it is impossible to follow Christ. It is impossible to unite with Him someday.

"Whosoever cometh unto me," saith the Lord, "shall not hate... of his very life, he cannot be My disciple... Whoever does not renounce all that he has, cannot be My disciple (Lk. XIV, 26, 33).

In order to be worthy of the Lord, one must forget, lose oneself and renounce everything. A person who values his own comforts and does not want to sacrifice anything for his neighbors cannot enter the Kingdom of God.

There is an old pious legend.

In one of the monasteries there once lived an abbot of a lofty ascetic life, who unceasingly prayed for the brethren and persistently, with great fervor and tears, asked God that all the monks of his monastery be vouchsafed the Kingdom of Heaven.