Sometimes, through these feelings, something more is revealed to us: earthly love. And then the third of the invitees said to the servant: "I am married, I have my own joy, my heart is full to the brim – I have no time to come to the feast of your master, not even my master – can't he understand it himself? I have my own joy – how can I still contain someone else's joy?" Attachment, love, which is on the verge of eternity, on this side or on the other side of eternity, depending on how we react to it, again becomes an obstacle: it keeps me on earth, I have nowhere to go from it. Eternity – later, once; now – I would fill the time with this joy, this amazement, this happiness, and it is enough that my happiness is mine, I do not need someone else's... And the third invited one also does not go to the feast of God, because he is afraid that the temporary joy will leave him, drowning in eternity, in the eternal.

     And what remains? What remains is a man who lives by holding on to the earth, which will swallow him up; The whole meaning of its existence is to do something with this land and on this land is temporary, which will also pass: people's memory passes, buildings collapse, the whole world is covered with the remains of obsolete, dead, destroyed civilizations. And man nevertheless builds a new one – which will also not stand, temporary, aimless – because there is no goal in it itself, and there is no further goal. And instead of opening up through love, a person often closes himself up with love: his own – and others... And this is very scary. Oh, these "others" and "friends" can be distributed very differently, there can be a lot of "friends"; but all the same, as long as there is only one "other" left, the Kingdom of God not only does not exist, it is denied.

     I want to give you two images. The first is a story about a real person whom I remember, whose relatives I knew. A scientist, a creative, gifted person died; He was buried. He had a son in an insane asylum, a young man who had not yet reached the age of twenty. His mother informed him of his father's death. He laughed and replied, "Not true! Having exhausted all her explanations, his mother brought him to me to explain to him that his father was really dead. Before I could say anything to him, I asked the young man, "Why do you think that your father is not dead, when the witnesses of his death tell you that he is dead, the people who saw his dead body, who took part in his funeral, who saw his coffin lowered into the ground and covered with earth? Why do you deny his death?" – "Because," he answered, "he never lived, and therefore could not die..." And he explained to me that his father existed only by attachment to the car, to the television, to his collection of precious stones, to his books. As long as these things exist," the boy said, "my father is as alive or as dead as he used to be.

     Only a young man who had lost the habit of thinking, as we would say, "rationally," that is, in an earthly way, could say so; But he saw things as they were. This man, his father, did not live: he reflected the surrounding reality, was ignited by some kind of interest, passed from experience to experience; but experience is not life; it is an instantaneous event that goes away like a candle goes out...

     How we all look like that! It is rooted in the earth; His only interests were earthly, but he was dehumanized, there was no man left in him, because he was completely absorbed in objects. And now each of us faces the same question: do I exist? Is there someone in me – or is there emptiness in me? Or I, in the words of St. Theophanes the Recluse about a person who is focused on himself – like wood shavings curled up around his own emptiness? Is there anything in me that can enter into eternity? Of course, neither the land bought by the first called, nor the oxen bought by the second, nor the work that the oxen did over this land will enter into eternity. What will be left?.. And if we talk about love, then, again, what will remain if it is all reduced to the standards of earthly life, if there is nothing behind them, if it is as small, insignificant as our earth in this infinitely opening cosmos in which we live: a speck of dust – and in this speck of dust there is a person with his feelings, thoughts. Yes, man is more than a speck of dust, but only if he does not make himself akin to this speck of dust, if he finds within himself a magnitude, a depth that only God can fill, such a depth that can contain the entire universe and still remain empty, because there is infinity in it and it can only be the place where God Himself dwells...

     Love should reveal us in this way; if it does not achieve this, it becomes as fine as a speck of dust. Of course, we do not know how to embrace everyone, we do not know how to embrace everything; But we must open up more and more, and not close, close, narrow. We cannot and do not know how to love everyone; But do we know how to love our loved ones? Is our love for those we love a blessing, a freedom, a fullness of life for them, or a prison in which they sit as prisoners in chains?.. The prophet Isaiah has a word: "Let the captives go free." And each of us will say: "I have no slaves, I do not hold anyone captive, I have no power over anyone" – and this is not true! How we hold each other captive, how we enslave each other! How narrow we make life for each other, and it is frightening to say how often this happens because we seem to "love" a person and know better than him what constitutes his happiness and goodness. And no matter how much he strives for his happiness, no matter how much he strives to open up, like a flower opens in the sun, we cast our shadow on him and say: "No, I know better than you what your paths are, what your happiness is..." How often do we hear – perhaps not in such words, but in essence: "God, if this man would stop loving me, how free I would be! I could live, the chains would fall off me, life would begin..."

     The second image is a story from a French book about how a man wanted to create an earthly paradise[4]. A certain Cyprian, having lived for many years among the savages on the islands of the Pacific Ocean, passionately loved the earth, nature, life, and the creative forces of this nature, and learned from the local inhabitants how to summon all the living forces of the sometimes parched earth to life by the sorcery of love. He returns to his homeland, buys a piece of stony, lifeless soil and, as it were, envelops this soil with his love, evokes in and out of it all the living, creative forces. And the soil, which has been dead for centuries, begins to revive, to grow grasses, trees, flowers, it becomes like an earthly paradise. And in this illumination, in this light of love, animals also begin to gather, because there love conquers their enmity, their mutual malice, their habits, their instincts; they live as in paradise. Only the beast remains outside this paradise – the fox. She does not want to join the others, she stays outside. At first, Cyprian thinks of her with compassion: the poor beast does not understand where his happiness is! – and in every possible way calls to this fox: Come! here is paradise.. But the fox does not come. Then he begins to get irritated with her; Love for her begins to fade, and gradually indignation and hatred are born in him, for this fox is a witness that his paradise is not a paradise for everyone, not everyone wants to live in this paradise. And he decides to kill the fox, because when he is gone, all the animals, all the plants will be united in the paradise that he artificially created with his love. And he kills the fox... He returned to his plot - all the grasses withered, all the flowers died out, all the animals fled...