I have already mentioned what the Gospel meant to me when I first read it, and what fruit it bore in my soul. Of course, I was not able to live worthy of the Gospel, but I can be inspired by it, rejoice in it, consider that this is the kindest, most wonderful, wondrous thing that I have ever read in my life.

Now I want to move on to how to read the Gospel together. And the first question: is it necessary to read together? Why should we read together something that relates to me so personally? God speaks to me personally... Yes, but He speaks personally to all others who believe in Him and who read the Gospel or hear it. The Gospel speaks not only about me or for me, but about everyone. Each of us can perceive the same Gospel text, the same words, with the same inspiration, but with more or less deep understanding. And therefore one must read the Gospel alone, one must ponder it, get used to it, as St. Theophan the Recluse said, feel into it, one must begin to live according to it; but at the same time we must remember that the Gospel is given to everyone and that each of us, by listening, pondering, reading, living the Gospel, can understand it with new and new depth. Therefore, it is very important that wherever there is such an opportunity, people gather in small groups and read the Gospel together, and share their experiences.

I have already said that one must first read this or that passage for oneself and feel it; But at the same time, it is necessary to share this experience. Sharing this experience is not to enrich your mind, but because when you share what is most precious, the holiest, the most life-giving, you are doing a work of love; and the entire Gospel speaks from beginning to end about love, about how God loves us and how we should love each other and Him. Therefore, we must gather in small groups, four or eight people who have already read this passage, pray together, be silent, as if to be silent into our own silence or into the silence that constitutes joint silence, be silent long enough for the silence to penetrate deeply into us, and then read this passage – quietly, attentively, without drama, soberly, knowing that we can never pronounce the words of Christ in this way, how He pronounced them, and therefore they should be pronounced with restraint and reverence. After that, after a short silence, wait for someone to have something to say. We must give everyone time to respond. Whoever leads this meeting must be ready, if no one responds immediately, to raise some question. Namely, not to give an answer to those questions that he does not know, which have arisen in the souls of other people, but to pose a question that has arisen in his soul. Now, I read this passage; I wonder how it is possible that Christ commands us to love our enemies, and at the same time says that we must be willing to leave our dearest people in order to follow Him?.. There are many such places that will cause bewilderment. And then wait that maybe somebody that's had experience, or that's thought through, or that's read something on this subject, can respond and say, "You know, I may not understand everything, but that's how I understand this passage, that's how it's been explained to me, that's how this or that spiritual writer explains it." And so we can read the Gospel together, helping each other to understand, but also, in the end, supporting each other's determination and readiness not only to understand with our minds, not only to respond with our hearts, but with all our will to be strengthened in our determination to live according to the Gospel in everything that has become clear to me personally and to us together.

If we begin to read the Gospel together in this way, then, as the Scriptures say, a brother strengthened by a brother is like Mount Zion, and will never be moved. The support of like-minded people, the support of friends, the support of people who are on the same path to the Kingdom of God as you, can be of great help, and you should not refuse it. This means that it is worth reading the Gospel individually, and lovingly sharing your understanding with everyone, and drawing strength from this communion to live.

CHAPTER ONE

Now let's get down to the text itself. The Gospel of Mark begins:

The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as it is written in the prophets: "Behold, I send My angel (that is, My messenger – M.A.) before Thy face, who shall prepare Thy way before Thee" (Mal 3:1). "The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight" (Isaiah 40:3). John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and preaching the baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And all the country of Judah and the people of Jerusalem went out to him, and they were all baptized by him in the Jordan River, confessing their sins. And John wore a robe of camel's hair, and a leather girdle on his loins, and ate locusts and wild honey. And he preached, saying, "He who is stronger than I am is coming after me, from whom I am not worthy, stooping down, to untie the strap of His shoe." I baptized you with water, and He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit (1:1-8) [4].

This is the passage of the Gospel that I want to talk about today. But first: what does the word "gospel" mean? Gospel is a Greek word that means "good news." The gospel has brought the good news that a new life is coming. They dreamed about it, moreover: they expected it, because the Old Testament prophets spoke about it many times. Malachi, Isaiah, and Jeremiah were all waiting for the One who would bring newness into the world; not the newness that was originally there, at the creation of the world, but another novelty: the renewal of fallen man, and after him, through him, the renewal of all creation that suffered through the fall of Adam, the renewal of our earth, so that not a trace of suffering will remain on it, and everything will be joy and triumph. In the seventh chapter of Isaiah's prophecy, it is said that a Child will be born of a Virgin who will save the world. But the novelty lies not only in the fact that this promise of God has finally been fulfilled, at least in embryo; at the same time, a new idea of God came into the world, not only as the Creator, as the Provider, as the Master of life. Our God is not only "God afar off." Indeed, having become man, having become incarnate, God has become extremely close to us. He is our native. He wears our flesh, He has a pedigree. He has an earthly destiny, He has a name, a face. In the Old Testament it was forbidden to depict God; after the incarnation, God received both the form of a man and the name of a man. In everything He became like us, except sin: sin as separation from God, as a distortion of human form, as ugliness. And one more thing: through the incarnation, we suddenly discover that God can be feared not only by God. Fear, of course, can be different. One can slavishly fear punishment; one can be afraid, like a mercenary who does not want to lose his earnings or reward; You can also be afraid like a son: so as not to upset your beloved. But this is not enough. In the incarnation of Christ, as it were, a new trait in God was revealed: this is the God Whom we can respect. This word sounds strange when applied to God, and I must explain it.

For the most part, people imagine that God created the world, created man, without asking him whether he wants to exist or not, and even endowed him with freedom, that is, the ability to destroy himself, and then, either at the end of our personal life, or at the end of the fate of the world, at the end of time, God seems to be waiting for us and will pronounce judgment. Is this fair? We did not ask for existence, we did not ask for the freedom that He gave us – why should we be unilaterally responsible for our fate and for the fate of the world? Few people pose this question with such sharpness; but I put it, and I find the answer in the Incarnation of the Word of God, the Son of God. God becomes man. He enters the world on the basis of humanity, He takes upon Himself not only our creation, that is, our flesh, human soul, mind, heart, will, and fate, but He takes upon Himself the entire fate of man, who lives in a fallen, disfigured world, in a terrible world, where hatred, fear, greed, and all kinds of vice are at work all the time (sometimes even triumphantly) in one way or another. He enters this world and takes upon Himself all the consequences not only of the primary creative act that brought the world and man out of nothingness, but He takes upon Himself all the consequences of what man has made of this world. He lives, pure from all defilement, in a world where all that is unclean, all that is filthy, all that is depraved, all that is ungodly, all that is unworthy of man will fall upon Him, because He is a challenge to the fallen world. God, Who takes upon Himself such a fate, Who is ready to pay so much for the fact that He gave us existence and freedom – yes, we can respect. He did not let us into life so that we could pay for it, He entered this life and together with us He Himself is ready to transform it, to change it. The whole Gospel speaks of this, and I will not dwell on it now. But if we imagine God in this way, then it is clear that it is not in vain that God speaks of Himself in the Book of Revelation through the mouth of the Apostle John the Theologian: "Behold, I make all things new" (see Revelation 21:5).

And this applies not only to man, not only to society, but also to all creation. Incarnation can be called a cosmic event, and in this sense. The flesh that God put on, the human body that was His body, is made up of the same thing as the whole universe. You may remember that at the beginning of the Book of Genesis we are told that God created Adam, man, taking the finger of the earth, that is, the most basic thing from which one can create. And Christ, having become man, partook of the most fundamental thing that constitutes creation. Every atom can recognize itself in the atoms of His body, every star, every constellation can see itself, know itself in a new way, see what the atom and everything that consists of atoms can become, if only it unites with God, if only it begins to shine not with the natural created light, but with Divine glory. It's so wonderful! Imagine that in Christ all creation, both man and all material creation, can recognize itself in the glory of God. Isn't this new? Is this not good news?

And all this, like the force of an explosion in an atom, is contained in the two names of Christ the Savior: Emmanuel, which in Hebrew means "God is with us", "God is in our midst", and Jesus: "God saves". I can quote to you the Epistle of the Apostle Paul to Titus (2:11-14): ... The saving grace of God has appeared for all men, teaching us that, having rejected impiety and worldly lusts, we should live chastely, righteously, and godly in this present age, awaiting the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ, Who gave Himself for us in order to deliver us from all iniquity and to purify Himself a special people, zealous for good works. This is what we are talking about, this is what God is like with us, and this is what our Lord Jesus Christ is. That is why the Apostle Mark, who himself experienced the change that made him from earthly to a spiritual being, began his book by saying that this is the beginning of the Gospel, the beginning of such good news that cannot be compared with any other.

The Forerunner, John the Baptist, was the first to tell us about this message. His coming has already been announced in the Old Testament, but let us look at him through the eyes of the New Testament, let us look at his person. A young man of thirty years old, a few months older than the Lord Jesus Christ, who renounced all earthly things in order to go into the wilderness from his earliest years, to cleanse himself of all inclination to impurity, to unrighteousness, to give himself to God irrevocably and completely; an ascetic who knows nothing and does not want to know anything except God, His will and the message that he must bring to earth. This personality seems to us to be so amazingly strong. What is this power? In this, it seems to me, that he has become so flexible in God's hand, so transparent to God, that people who met him no longer saw John the prophet speaking to them about Bol. It is called in the Gospel of Mark by the words of prophecy: the voice of one crying in the wilderness... People heard only God's voice in him, it was as if he himself no longer played any role, he was a mouthpiece, he was God speaking through man... That is his strength. The Apostle Paul later also had to speak in the name of God; it seemed to him that he had no strength for this, and he began to pray to God, saying: "Lord, give me strength.. — and God answered him: My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9).

That's what John the Baptist was. He gave himself wholly to God, and therefore God acted, not he; It was, if you compare, like a well-tuned musical instrument, on which a brilliant composer or performer can play in such a way that you no longer notice either the instrument, or the composer, the performer – you are only permeated by the experience that the sounding melody gives rise to in you.