“And whoever forces you to go one mile with him, go with him two miles” (Matthew 5.41) - an article by Father Alexy Potokin is devoted to the interpretation of this commandment. Here the article is presented in the author’s edition, in contrast to its first publication in the magazine “Alma and Omega.” “Christ’s first journey with us is the path to death for us. If I, who do not have eternal life within me, accept His sacrifice, agree to His death for me, I will not remain alone. His sacrifice is voluntary, I was not the first to claim It, He gratefully wanted my consent in advance to accept His suffering for me, a stubborn, egoistic dead man. With this consent, I will go through His earthly journey with Him. I dare to timidly agree to a second career with Him - Eternal life, in which there are other, unknown joys, another happiness, and I timidly trust Him, although I am afraid that they will tire and torment me. Only resurrected will I thirst for that life, as my neighbor, Christ, thirsts for it. And I will try not to forget to crave for its acquisition by all people. I can offer one more example of a pure desire for a second career (very rare). If in the first field people unite by accepting help (this is just as difficult as in the medical case of the seriously ill, dying, unable to take or respond to medications), then the beginning of the second field, i.e., entering into eternity, will open gratitude, and , and here there is an evil (false) path of forced good, on which, again, due to intelligence or ostentatious Christianity, a person must give thanks, that is, get off, buy off mercy. This path, impossible for a sinner, but accessible and saving, like a gift to a beggar, is a living memory of the heart about another heart, a memory revived by Christ - always, that is, now and ever and unto ages of ages.” Tradition.ru - the largest Orthodox Christian multimedia archive in RuNet: lectures, speeches, films, audiobooks and books for reading on electronic devices; freely available for everyone.