No one can serve two masters, – says the Lord further, – for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or he will be zealous for the one, and neglect the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. Can two wheels of a cart go forward and two wheels go backward? Can a person look east with one eye and west with the other? "As one eye cannot look at heaven and the other at earth, so the mind cannot unite the care of the Divine and the worldly" (Abba Isaiah). Can a man walk with one foot to the right and the other to the left? It cannot. In the same way, he cannot go to meet God while remaining in the embrace of the world. A person cannot serve God and sin, but either he will hate God and love sin, or vice versa: love God and hate sin. In order to emphasize this truth even more, the Lord repeats it, but only in other words: either he will be zealous for the one, and neglect the other. If a person is zealous for God, then he cannot be zealous for the enemy of God. And love for this world is enmity against God. God demands all our hearts, and therefore offers us all His help and all His gifts. For the eyes of the Lord survey the whole earth, to support those whose hearts are fully devoted to Him (2 Chronicles 16:9). Faithful, that is, pure and freed from faith in the world, hope for peace, love for the world, and filled with faith, hope, and love exclusively for the Living and Immortal God. Whoever is zealous for the Lord should not truly be concerned about all the mortal, deceptive and perishable sweetness and charms of this world. On the other hand, he who has given himself wholly into the embrace of the deceptive hopes and promises of this world will utterly despise God and not care for Him. But do not be deceived: God is not mocked (Galatians 6:7). For whoever denies God, God will also deny it, and God will remain God, and this man will be blotted out of the Book of Life in both worlds. Therefore, be constant in your devotion to God, and do not divide your heart, but when you put your hand to the plough in the field of the Lord, do not look back. And if you once began to flee from the sodomic corruption of this world, do not turn around so as not to be petrified, like Lot's wife, then you will not be able to move forward or backward. And if you once managed to escape from the black Pharaoh of Egypt, do not desire to return to him as a slave again, even if such obstacles as seas, deserts, hunger, thirst and countless enemies stand in your way to salvation. The Lord always walks before those who are saved from the fire of the flames of sin, and He Himself paves the way for them through the seas, and through sandy deserts, and through the armies of the enemy.

You cannot serve God and mammon. Again, the Lord wants to emphasize the first idea: No one can serve two masters. That is, two gentlemen who think oppositely wish the opposite. Righteous Abraham also served three masters (Gen. 18:2), but these three masters were one in essence and in spirit. And we can serve thirty angels of God or three hundred saints of God, but these are not thirty or three hundred masters, or even two, but one: God's army of light, truth, and righteousness under the leadership of one and only Lord, God. Thus, so that we do not think that we cannot serve two good and holy people, the Lord explains His first thought, showing that He has in mind two opposite masters, who have nothing in common with each other, like noon and midnight. God and mammon are two opposite masters, to whom we can assign ourselves to serve: God for salvation and life, and mammon for perdition and death. Mammon means wealth. This word is Phoenician. It is said that this name was also borne by the idol, which the pagan Phoenicians worshipped as the deity of wealth. Why did the Lord use a foreign word to denote something that is contrary to God? To express His deep contempt for the deification of wealth, for the service and slavery of wealth. For the love of money is the root of all evil (1 Timothy 6:10). Love of money means not only a passionate love for silver, but also for any superfluous and suffocating wealth. The Lord could say: "You cannot serve God and lies, for God is the truth." In the same way He could say, "You cannot serve God and robbery, for God is mercy; God and fornication, for God is purity; God and envy, for God is true love; God and any sin, for God is sinless and an opponent of sin. Why did our Lord Jesus Christ oppose service to God with service to wealth? Because the service of wealth causes, excites and makes possible all other sins and vices. Whoever clings with all his heart to earthly riches will not be able to refrain from lying, stealing, robbery, perjury, or even murder, so long as he preserves and increases his wealth. Nor will he be able to refrain from envy and hatred of those who are richer than him. In addition, wealth will easily open before him the gates of all other sins and vices: drunkenness, gambling, fornication, adultery, and all outrages. And when he sees that people fear and honor him because of wealth, he will cease to fear and honor God, he will look with contempt at the law of God and the Church of God, and soon he will become a complete blasphemer and apostate. That is why the Lord chose precisely the service of wealth - or mammon, the demon of wealth - as the service most opposite to the service of God. Service to wealth leads a person to slavery and completely kills the soul in a person. St. Basil the Great wrote: "Miserable is he who has a need for much; the need in many ways generates in life the insatiability of desires. A fire that burns consumes all the fuel, and no one can stop it until it burns everything. So it is with the lover of money - can anyone stop him?" (On the love of money). On another occasion the Lord said: "What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul" (Matt. 16:26)? The world is God's, and it will remain God's, but the rich man, when he dies, will remain without peace and without a soul, and will be poorer at the judgment of God than the poorest of his laborers and hired servants in this life.

Therefore I say to you, - continues the Lord, - do not be anxious for your soul what you will eat and what you will drink, nor for your body what you will wear. Is not the soul more than food, and the body more than clothing?

Therefore I say to you. Why? Because wealth is so dangerous for the soul. Because serving mammon does not allow you to serve God. For it pleased me that you should be lords of all the world and of all things, to which God predestined man at creation, and not servants of his servants and slaves of his servants. Therefore, do not be oppressed by heavy concern for food, drink and clothing. It is more difficult to create a body than to provide it with food and clothing. And God, having created the more difficult, will also create the easier. Your Father in heaven knows that you have need of these things. His eye is constantly watching over you, and His generous hands are constantly stretched out to you. Do we not see around us, wherever we look, how the Creator nourishes, waters, and clothes all His creatures? He feeds the ants in the dust, He feeds the beasts in the mountains, He feeds the fish in the waters. When the cold approaches, He sends swallows and cranes to warm lands, where He gives them food for the winter. He finds a den for the bear to spend the winter in. He waters the trees and the grasses, He waters the forests and meadows, He washes all the greenery and flowers.

And after this, will the Lord look upon man as a stepchild among His creatures? Can He, who feeds, waters, and clothes the wild beasts in the forests, the grass in the field, and the bugs in the grass, leave His most glorious creation, man, hungry, thirsty, and naked?

Look at the birds of the air: they do not sow, nor sleep, nor gather into barns. Who nourishes them? Your Heavenly Father feeds them. It is not said, "Their Father," but your Father. God is only the Creator for them, but for you He is more than the Creator - He is your Father. For you are much better than them. With these words, Christ points to the high dignity of man, incomparable with the dignity of other creatures. Are you not much better than the birds of the air? And if you are better, will the all-wise Lord, having nourished His less valuable and less important creatures, forget to nourish the most precious and most important creatures in the world, His sons? Otherwise, all your concern for food and drink will not benefit you at all, unless God gives His vitality to what you eat and quench your thirst. For it is not bread that satisfies you, but the power of God through bread; and it is not the water that quenches your thirst, but the power of God through the water. You can do nothing by yourself: And who among you, by care, can add even one cubit to his height? That is, who among you can through a thousand cares make his body grow by one span? And who among you can continue his life on earth even for one inch of time? Behold, thou hast laid down my days, says King David (Psalm 38:6). Does not he die who eats and drinks much, as does he who eats and drinks little? And don't glutton people die before faster? And does he who eats and drinks much grow even one cubit higher than other people? And if you cannot, by taking care of food and drink, either add to yourself a single span of height, or prolong the life of your body by one span of earthly time, abandon unnecessary cares for the body and give yourself over to the care of the soul, with which, after the disintegration of the body, you will stand before God.

And what do you care about clothes? Look at the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; but I tell you that Solomon in all his glory did not dress like any of them. At first, the Lord pointed out the birds in order to shame those who take too much care of food. And now he points to the still lower creations of God, to the flowers of the field, in order to shame those who care too much about clothing. But why does the Lord point specifically to lilies, and not to any other flowers, which God has clothed in no less beauty? Firstly, because lilies stand out among all other wildflowers for their whiteness, which symbolizes purity. The seer John saw in heaven the Son of God as a white Lamb and a great multitude of people, the righteous, standing before the throne and before the Lamb in white robes (Rev. 7:9-15). And secondly, because the Lord wished to compare the beauty of this flower with King Solomon, of whom it is said that he was most willing to put on white garments. The Lord compares lilies with Solomon because Solomon was the richest and most glorious king of antiquity. And this all-wise and rich king, in spite of all his cares and labors to dress as beautifully as possible, could not dress as the Lord can clothe dumb grass in the field. Thus, all human cares cannot do what God can do with His power. But if the grass of the field, which is there today, and tomorrow will be thrown into the furnace, God dresses it in this way, how much more so do you, you of little faith! And although the lily is so beautiful, it is just an ordinary grass that blooms today and will burn in fire tomorrow. O you of little faith, will God, Who so carefully clothe the grass of the field, motionless, dumb and dumb, leave you to walk naked? Oh, you of little faith, remember: the more you take care of yourself, the less God cares for you!

And once again the Lord repeats to us the commandment: do not worry about what to eat, what to drink, and what to wear. He repeats it in order to wean us from vain and superfluous cares that darken our spiritual vision, blind our minds and leave us, remote and separated from God, in the darkness of this world, in the hands of the evil master, mammon.

Having food and clothing, let us be content with this, says the Apostle (1 Timothy 6:8). That is, having only the bare necessities – which is what God cares about – let us not demand more, for concern for the superfluous, as well as concern for tomorrow, will ultimately push us to serve the devil. And the Lord Himself teaches us to ask God in prayer only for our daily bread, by which we must also understand spiritual bread, by which people actually live. Let us not seek from God any luxury and no excess for our body. Because the pagans are looking for all this. That is, those who do not know about the true God and His infinite power and love, nor about the value of the immortal human soul, nor about the beauty and sweetness of the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, they demand more than they need. And God gives them according to their desire, and remains to them nothing either in this life or in the life to come. They receive all their reward here on earth, like the birds of the air and the flowers of the field. For all the glory of the birds of the air consists in their earthly life, and all the beauty of the flowers of the field is an instantaneous beauty in time. But God has prepared for His sons from the foundation of the world the Kingdom of Heaven and unspeakable glory in this Kingdom. Thus, the glory of man is not in food, drink and clothing. For if this were the glory of man, then man would be a thousand times better fed, watered, and clothed in this life than all other creatures on earth, in the air, and in the water. But it is precisely for this reason that King Solomon himself, in all his glory, was dressed worse than the lilies of the field, so that the people might see that their glory is not in the luxury of their garments, but in the highest and eternal; that they may turn away their eyes and their hearts from the transitory glory of this world, and seek for themselves that glory which has been prepared and promised to them by God.

Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you. That is: do not seek thread from Him Who can give you royal vestments; and do not seek beggarly crumbs from the table of Him Who desires to seat you at His royal table. He is the King, and you are His sons. Seek that which befits a king's children, that which you once had, but have lost through sin. Seek treasures, which moths and rust do not destroy, and thieves do not steal. And if you are worthy to acquire the greatest, surely the least will be added to you. Seek the Kingdom of God, where God Himself sits on His Throne and reigns, the Kingdom of grace and all righteousness, where the righteous will shine like the sun (Matthew 13:43), and where there is neither sickness, nor sorrow, nor sighing, nor death. Do not be like the prodigal son, who, having left his father, wanted to be satisfied with the food of swine, but seek ways to return from the far side to the house of your Father in heaven, where righteousness and peace and joy are in the Holy Spirit (Romans 14:17). And do not be like Esau, who sold his birthright for a dish of lentils. Will you also give up the eternal Kingdom and bliss for the lentil soup that this world offers you? May the Lord God in His mercy preserve you from such shame and humiliation. May He preserve the eye of your mind, so that it may not be darkened and seduced by the evil mammon of earthly corruption and deceit. May He instruct you, that you may be like the king's sons, who have lost their kingdom, but do not think or care about anything else but return to their kingdom.

On one church in Syria, built by the emperor Justinian, the words have been preserved even today, which the emperor himself commanded to be written: "Thy kingdom, O Christ God, the kingdom of all ages" (Psalm 144:13). May the Lord help us that our thirst for Christ may engrave these words in our hearts. Everything else is secondary and unimportant. All the other kingdoms on earth cannot escape the grave and the worm. And when there shall be no more earth nor earthly kingdoms, the righteous with the angels in heaven will joyfully sing: Thy kingdom, O Christ God, the kingdom of all ages, and Thy dominion in every generation and generation. For this be honor and glory to the sweetest Teacher under the sun, Christ God, with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit – the Trinity, One in Essence and Indivisible, now and ever, at all times and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

Fourth Sunday after Pentecost. The Gospel of Great Faith

Matt. 25 rec., 8:5-13.

If a person is not filled with deep humility, meekness, self-abasement and obedience to God, how can he be saved? How can an atheist and a sinner be saved, if even the righteous can hardly be saved? Water does not collect on high steep cliffs, but collects in low, flat and deepened places. And the grace of God does not rest on proud people, who exalt themselves and resist God, but on the humble and meek, who have deepened their souls with humility and meekness, self-depreciation before the greatness of God and obedience to the will of God.