The parables of the treasure hidden in the field and of the pearls have a great resemblance to each other; both speak of the acquisition of the truth and the way to the Kingdom of Heaven (that is, of Christ, since He is the truth and the way), with the only difference that the first parable speaks of the sudden, unexpected finding of a treasure, and the second of the finding of a pearl of great price after a long search for generally good pearls. An example of those who suddenly find a treasure that was hidden from them can be the pagans, who for the first time heard the preaching of the Apostles about Jesus Christ and came to know through this that the fulfillment of the will of God proclaimed by Him is the only means for entering the Kingdom of Heaven prepared for the righteous. Enlightened by the preaching of the Apostles, many of them abandoned everything that had previously bound them to earthly life, and at such a price acquired for themselves the greatest treasure in Christ. Jesus likened such listeners of the word of God to a man who, while cultivating someone else's land, accidentally found a treasure buried in it; in order to possess this treasure, it was necessary to buy the field of that; And so, he sells everything he had and buys it, and with it the treasure he found (in those days when people could not consider themselves completely safe, many rich people buried some of their treasures in the ground). An example of those who sought the truth and found it only in the teaching of Christ is St. Justin the Philosopher: in his work "Conversation with Tryphon the Jew" he says that, while still a pagan, he studied all the philosophical systems of that time and was especially fond of the teaching of Plato, but all his knowledge did not give him an answer to the questions that interested him about God, about the soul, its immortality, and so on. until an elder (according to tradition, St. Polycarp) told him about Jesus Christ and the prophets who foretold his coming; having studied the prophecies and the Gospel in consequence of this, he found only in them the only true and useful philosophy. The same seeker of good pearls was Tatian, a disciple of Justin the Philosopher, who found a pearl of great price in the Gospel, and many others.

The fourth parable Jesus spoke to His disciples is the parable of the net that was cast into the sea and caught fish of all kinds. It speaks of the time when the preaching of the Gospel will spread throughout the world, when the Church founded by Christ will contain (seize) all the peoples of the earth; then they will pull the net ashore, collect the good in vessels, and throw the bad away. Then the angels will come out, and separate the wicked from among the righteous, and cast them into the fiery furnace: there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Explanation of the meaning of the words: fiery furnace, fiery Gehenna, outer darkness, weeping and gnashing of teeth

Presenting to His listeners the future of sinners, Jesus Christ said that the sinners condemned by Him at the end of the world would be cast into the fiery furnace, where there would be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Should the words "fiery furnace" be taken literally, or should we consider that the punishment that awaits sinners is only likened to torment in a fiery furnace? It seems to us that these words could be understood literally only if Jesus Christ had always expressed Himself in this way about the future that awaits sinners; however, it is known that on other occasions He expressed Himself somewhat differently: thus, in the Sermon on the Mount He compared the torments of sinners to being in the valley (Gehenna) of fire (Matt. 5:29); after that, speaking of the fate that would befall the Jews, He said that they would be cast out into outer darkness: and there would be weeping and gnashing of teeth, and many would come from the east and the west, and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the Kingdom of Heaven (Matt. 8:11-12). The burning in the fiery furnace was known to Jesus' listeners from the books of the Old Testament: thus, Judah, the son of Jacob, condemned his daughter-in-law Tamar to be burned (Gen. 38:24); David threw the inhabitants of the city of Rabbah, whom he had conquered, into the kilns (2 Samuel 12:31); Nebuchadnezzar ordered to throw into the fiery furnace Ananias, Mishael, and Azariah, who did not bow down to the golden image (Dan. 3:21). In general, among the peoples of the East, burning alive was one of the usual methods of capital punishment, and such a punishment was the most terrible and painful. That is why Jesus Christ, speaking of the terrible punishment of sinners in the future eternal life and wishing to visualize to His listeners their fate, pointed to the execution in the fiery furnace as a kind of semblance of what awaits them if they do not repent and are not reborn to a new life. Later, answering the Sadducees' question about the resurrection, Jesus likened to spirits, angels, people who will be resurrected for the Last Judgment, and at the same time explained that the bodies of the resurrected will not be the same sensual bodies as we are clothed with during our earthly life (Luke 20:27-36), and from this we can conclude that the sufferings of the condemned will be spiritual rather than sensual and bodily.

After finishing the conversation with the disciples with parables, Jesus asked them, "Have you understood all this?" And when he was convinced from their answer that they now understood Him, he called them scribes, not those Jewish scribes who, together with the Pharisees, formed a party hostile to Him, but scribes who had been taught the Kingdom of Heaven. The Jewish scribes knew only the old, Old Testament prophecy about the coming of the Messiah, and even then they did not understand it; but the scribe, who has been taught by the preaching of Christ, who knows both the old prophecy and the new teaching about the Kingdom of Heaven, will use both, and just as a housekeeper brings out of his treasury not only the new, but also the old, according to need, so they, preaching, will use not only His teaching, but also the Old Testament prophecies about Him.

1 The mention of patience, of effort, overthrows the Protestant heresy that faith in itself produces in a person a spirit of zeal without any struggle or effort.

2 There are many examples of people with hardened hearts reluctantly listening to things that are not in their hearts and deliberately closing their eyes so as not to see things that might shake their prejudices.

The Jews were waiting for the Messiah as an invincible conquering king who would conquer the whole world and reign forever. The true Messiah—Christ, the Son of God—came and began to preach His teaching. But the Pharisees, scribes, high priests, and in general the leaders of the Jewish people did not want to hear this sermon and deliberately turned a blind eye to all the deeds done by Jesus. They would neither listen nor see that which proved the falsity of their doctrine and the divinity of the coming Messiah, whose kingdom is not of this world; they did not want to because their hearts had become hardened under the influence of obsessive thoughts about the Messiah-conqueror.

The Apostle Paul preached about the risen Christ before the Areopagus in Athens; but when he came to the very event of the Resurrection, some members of the Areopagus mocked him, and others said: "Of this we will hear thee at another time" (Acts 17:32). They did not listen to the preacher because their hearts were hardened by the same obsessive thought about the impossibility of the resurrection of the dead.

So it is in our time: our intelligentsia (of course, not all of them), who know neither Jesus Christ nor His Gospel, who have left the childish faith brought there in secondary school and replaced it with fashionable atheism, as a sign of a supposedly higher intellectual development, do not even want to hear about Christ the God-Man, the Son of God. Having read Büchner, Renan, Strauss, Haeckel, our intellectuals have become so hypnotized by their false teachings that it is very, very difficult to bring them out of this hypnotic sleep. An unbelieving student, exhausted by the consciousness of the aimlessness and meaninglessness of human life, wrote to me about his passionate desire to know the meaning of life; I pointed out to him the necessity of studying the gospel and the person of Jesus Christ in order to know the meaning of life, and he told me that the doubts deeply rooted in his soul positively prevented him from even unfolding the gospel. Let me give you another example. In Nice, I often had the opportunity to meet with one of my acquaintances, a doctor, an elderly man. Apparently, he was also worried about the question: why do we live? He was looking for an answer to this question and took up the reading of the Gospel. But the spirit of denial and doubt, which had taken possession of him already at school, decisively prevented him from studying the Gospel without prejudice, and afterwards he wrote to me that he envied people who believed, but he himself could not believe what happened almost two thousand years ago and about which he could say and write anything, since there was no (?) criterion and factual evidence.

3 It is given to you to know (or rather, to understand) the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but it is not given to them.

The word given implies the one by whom it is given. In this case, we can mean God, by Whom it is given to some to understand the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven, and to others it is not. But is it correct to ascribe to God such inequality in the distribution of His most important gifts, the understanding of the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven? Of course not. God created people in His image and likeness, and this likeness gives all people the opportunity to understand the mysteries that Christ revealed. These mysteries, in order to comprehend them, do not require special mental development; They are very simple and are easily perceived, if not by the mind, then by the heart. One only needs to believe in Him Who has revealed these mysteries (John 6:28-29). One must either believe or be convinced that Christ was indeed the Son of God and that therefore His every word is the truth. But this opportunity to believe or be convinced of the divinity of Christ is given by the people themselves. If one undertakes to study the Gospel without prejudice, awakening from the hypnotic sleep inspired by the Büchners, Haeckels, etc., then he gives himself the opportunity to comprehend the mysteries revealed by the Lord. If, however, nothing can awaken him, if he has allowed himself to be so hypnotized that the mysteries revealed by Christ become inaccessible to him, then, of course, he himself does not give himself the opportunity to comprehend them.

In general, one should blame oneself first of all for any failure; In looking for the cause of failure, one must first of all ask oneself the question: is it not my own fault that such and such a thing does not come to me, that it falls out of my hands? And with conscientious research, it almost always turns out that the culprit of all failures is the loser himself. Thus, the Lord's expression, "It is given to you to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven, but it is not given to them," it seems to me that it should be understood in this way: you (that is, the Apostles), who have renounced everything that bound you to the world, who have renounced property, family and friends, and have followed Me, you have thereby acquired the opportunity to understand the mysteries revealed by Me; but by your deeds it has been given to you to understand them. And they, who have hardened their hearts with coarse selfishness and befogged their minds with the false teaching of the scribes and Pharisees, — it is precisely by this selfishness and obscuration of the mind that it is not given to understand the mysteries revealed by Me. Consequently, the conditions in which we place ourselves give or do not allow us to understand these mysteries. And he who has placed himself in favorable conditions, who thus has all that is necessary for the knowledge of the truth, it will be given to him to know it, and this knowledge will increase; but whoever has placed himself in other conditions that are not conducive to the knowledge of the truth, deprives himself of any opportunity to know it, deprives himself even of the desire for God and the knowledge of Him, which is innate in all people, even that which everyone who bears the name of man has.