The apostle encourages the Jewish Christians (and in them also all those who are like them) in respect of their patience in the past for the sake of their faith (their own patience, or the patience because of those whom they supported), encourages them to continue to show boldness (courage, freedom , confidence, openness, frankness, primarily in speaking, but in a broad sense).
Reading during Lent, near its middle, serves to encourage and support those who are on the path of fasting to Christ, and also as a call to those who are not yet.
The words about the short time before the Coming of Christ mean, as in the prophets, that the time of patience is temporary, and the reward is eternal and endless, and that the most important event – the First Coming has already happened, and now the second most important event is ahead – the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
The mention of the soul of God
(Hebrews X, 38) is interesting -
meaningful words. On the one hand, they mean the human soul of Jesus
Christ (by the way, a direct indication of both the fact that Christ had
a human soul and the fact that He is Lord and God), which knows that it
is at the same time the soul of God, because belongs to the Hypostasis
of the Son of God. On the other hand, if it is not meant to be about
Christ, then it is an allusion (parallel, reference to, mention of) to
the breath of life
, through which a human while coming into being
became a living soul
, as we read the other day from the book of
Genesis. And in this sense the words mean that if even a righteous
person departs from the Lord, he / she will lose the Source of life,
God. The third meaning is a parallel with the personal relationship
between a man and a woman, a boy and a girl – the righteous one here is
of the masculine gender, the soul is feminine, and because a wife who is
left (abandoned or even betrayed) by a man will not have a real liking
and favour for him, nor also real pleasure and joy in him, so also the
Lord concerning those who were faithful and then fell away. In general,
the words are a quote from the book of the prophet Habakkuk II, 4.
The vocation of the apostle and evangelist Matthew, who also had another name – Levi. He was the son of Alphaeus, and his brother also became one of the 12 apostles – James son of Alphaeus (or the Younger).
Most interpreters believe that Matthew, being a publican, that is, a tax collector for the occupation authorities of the Romans, those people that were an example of sinners against social relations, against society, who was not loved by his fellow citizens, longed for something else, and therefore gladly responded to the call of Jesus.
Similarly, those publicans who surrounded Jesus longed for another life, although, perhaps, they did not dare to make a radical change and abandon their activities.
Jesus called Matthew the tax collector as an apostle, but He called all tax collectors to repentance.
In another place, He will say to the Pharisees: The publicans and
harlots precede you (go ahead) into the Kingdom of God, because they
have repented.
Here it can be seen that publicans are an example of
sins against society, in social life, and harlots (actually prostitutes)
are of sins against personal life – and thus in the words of Jesus,
sinners of various kinds
are called. Although they were the ones whose
example was supposed to make the Pharisees understand their arrogance,
such a context does not mean that Jesus justified their sins.
By the way, Matthew is one of my favorite saints, whose memory is November 16 (29).
Readings on commemoration
of the dead. There is a good write-up about them at the following links:
https://www.facebook.com/Oleksandr.S.Zhabenko/
https://oleksandr-zhabenko.github.io/en/Trinity.html
There are good thoughts about antimony at the link:
https://www.facebook.com/Oleksandr.S.Zhabenko/
25022023.html
22022023.html
I draw attention to the fact that the text uses the word παρακαλειτε
(1 Thessalonians IV, 18, is not read, but completes the words of the
Apostle, which are read today). These are multi-meaningful words that
come from to call close
, and here mean comfort
, encourage
, from
them we have the name of the Holy Spirit – Comforter, Paraclete
.
Glory be to Thee, our God, glory be to Thee!
Source:
18032023.html