Glory to Jesus Christ, dear brothers and sisters!

I congratulate you with the Holy Communion and the Holy Sunday!

Today’s Gospel (Mark X:32-45), where the Lord in the third time foretold His death and resurrection, we should accept with soul and heart, not with mind. We should understand the condition of Jesus Christ at that time, because He knew beforehand that He would fulfill that difficult mission – give His life to save many people and that people, who would understand that sacrifice of God.

God’s Son was walking fast and was thinking what He should do. And His disciplines were following Him and worrying. They were afraid of what was happening. So Jesus gathered them all together – twelve of them and told: “the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death. And they will mock him and spit on him, and flog him and kill him. And after three days he will rise.”

And I do not judge John and James, who came to Jesus and asked to sit at right hand and left from Him. I think that they did not want the glory, they wanted to be near Him during all that sufferings, they wanted to spend that last moments together. They wanted to be with Him in the victory. That is why they said such words.

But there God taught them and He also teaches us at the same time: “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?... to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.” So, if a man did not reach required level, he couldn’t stand on the higher place.

As we see the rulers in the world usually do not have needed spiritual level to lead people. That is why the wars and all that lawlessness happen. We see that and understand that God’s truth did not come on the Earth and God’s justice is still not strong in people’s minds.

But to make it strong we have to understand that only we with our faith, our trying can stand on that place, which God wants us to stand. We should work on ourselves. “Whoever would be great among you must be your servant and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all” – said God. So God is the highest among all, He wants to save people. He thinks about all, about all people. He thinks about all souls and how to save them. He does everything in order to bring them to the salvation.

But God gives his free choice to every man that people could be saved with their own efforts. God can’t save you against your own will. That is why He said such words: “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” It means that God came on the Earth to serve. And we have to feel it with our soul; feel that He have come to serve on the Earth. He should feel with our heart that difficult time, where He was walking with His disciplines into Jerusalem; feel that pain, which He overcame, to give Himself for the salvation of many people, to give Himself as a sacrifice.

And we should understand that and should sincerely accept in the heart that sacrifice, which God gave for us. And we should be with Him as His twelve Apostles wanted to be. Let’s work on the salvation of our souls, let’s make them strong. And then God will put us on the specially prepared place.

Glory to Jesus Christ!