Main news for 8 August 2002

If one starts from how manifold and widely God's mercy is revealed to people, and how much God has revealed to us about Himself, for in Christ all the fullness of the Godhead has been manifested bodily, it may seem that with the birth of the Church the religious history of humanity ended. In essence, this is indeed so: truly, what more can God give us, having given the life of His Son for our sake? The gift of God in Christ is so immense that centuries pass as we try to understand and contain it. The possibility of acquiring true life in the Church is so real that, in essence, nothing else is required. But this is only one side of the matter: God's side.

If we read attentively what God says in the Bible about the New Covenant, especially the words of the prophet Jeremiah cited above, or the words of the prophet Ezekiel spoken a few years later (Ezek. 36:26-27), the truth of one modern saint's statement that Christianity is only beginning becomes quite obvious. The prophets speak of such a deep transformation of people that fulfilling the Creator's will becomes for us not an external but an inward necessity. The action of the Holy Spirit in the participants of the New Covenant is called, it turns out, to fill us so much that the realization of human freedom would be not sin but unity with God, so that the fulfillment of our purpose could become our free choice.

A great dream has from antiquity set aflame the minds and hearts of the best among people: to make sin no longer reign in us. Religious systems and philosophical doctrines were created for this, but most often people tried to create a perfect society for this purpose. Those of us who grew up under the Bolsheviks will recall here their promise that under communism labor would become the voluntary need of all members of society. In essence, they were very unoriginal; they simply imitated. But it turned out that to do such a thing without violating human freedom is impossible. Only God, who fulfills all His promises, says through the prophets that it will be so, because this freedom of ours to be holy has been paid for by the Blood of His Son. It is clear that the fulfillment of this promise in us has not yet come, but this already depends on us ourselves. Among other things, we have thereby received a grand perspective — if not all humanity, then each person.