St. Paul speaks in today's Epistle about various gifts of the Holy Spirit. At the end of the same twelfth chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, from which today’s Epistle is taken, he says: “But covet earnestly the best gifts; and yet shew I unto you a more excellent way.” What is this “more excellent way” and what is the greatest of the gifts of the Holy Spirit? St. Paul tells us this in the next chapter of his Epistle to the Corinthians, that “the greatest of these is charity”.

In today’s Gospel we meet three characters: a father and his two sons. The most famous of them is undoubtedly the one we are used to calling the Prodigal Son. He doesn’t care about his father, only about the inheritance he hopes to receive from him. He can’t even wait for his father to die, and claims his share, cashes it in and lives a lavish, downright unbridled life.

Undoubtedly, the Holy Spirit does various outstanding things, but the greatest miracles are those that St. Paul speaks of in today’s Epistle: mortifying the deeds of the flesh, adopting us as children of God, and bearing witness to Christ with our new life. If these three acts of the Holy Spirit are absent, then everything else is completely worthless.

When reading the Gospels, one often wonders why some passages contain quite a lot of seemingly unimportant details, while in other places the evangelists tend to abbreviate too much. There are also several facts in today’s Gospel that may raise the question of whether they are needed. The correct answer is it is quite certain that if they were not needed, St. Mark would not have wasted ink or parchment on them.

Jesus says: “Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.” We cannot argue with Jesus or soften His words in any way. If our righteousness does not exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees, we have no hope of eternal life.

To properly understand Jesus’ words, it is necessary to find answers to two questions; firstly, what is the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, and secondly, what kind of righteousness is required from us?