Main news for 10 October 2019

The action of God's breath, the Holy Spirit, in the early Christian Church is mentioned constantly in the New Testament books, from the very day of Pentecost. It is spoken of as something self-evident and understandable, something that requires neither explanation nor comment. To us today this may seem, at the least, unusual. Modern Christians in this case speak of charismatic manifestations, charismatic churches, charismatic communities and movements. Sometimes this is called spiritual revival, charismatic renewal, or something else.

But whatever this breath of God may be called in the modern Church, one has to admit that in comparison with early Christian times, today it seems something unusual and in any case not characteristic of the Church as a whole. The first Christian generation perceived this differently. Its representatives did not doubt that the breath of God, the breath of the Kingdom, the movement of the Holy Spirit permeated the whole Church and the life of each of its members. The first generation of Christians simply could not imagine its life otherwise.

The everyday life of every Christian, and even more its important events connected with God's assignments, was determined directly by the actions of the Holy Spirit, as in the case described with Peter, and this surprised no one. Of course, the first Christians also knew how to hear God's voice better than we do today. What, then, has changed over the past centuries? It is not that the breath of God has become less perceptible in the Church. The breath of God, the breath of the Kingdom, breathes in the Church today just as it did on the day of Pentecost. The problem lies elsewhere: in our perception of Christianity. For Peter, as for the whole generation of the first Christians, Christianity was life - life with Christ in His Kingdom. And a Christian also passed this life through his heart.

The Kingdom was not only outside. The faithful not only sensed the movement of the Holy Spirit; they also let it inside, into their life, into their assemblies, into their heart. And they knew how to prepare their hearts and minds for the meeting with this new life. Everything they knew about the inner Torah, unceasing prayer, attentiveness to their intentions - in a word, all the best that was in the ascetic tradition and practice of the Judaism contemporary with them - they used in order to prepare themselves for the meeting with Christ, for this new life.

In modern language, we would say that in the spiritual life of the first Christians the ascetic component was no less important than the charismatic one. For us today, however, Christianity often becomes a religion, of course the only true one. Between God's breath, the breath of the Kingdom, and us stands our religiosity, whose symbols and rituals remind us of the Kingdom while at the same time separating us from it.

And the movement of the Holy Spirit reaches us as if from afar, seeping through the cracks of our religion. And we rarely think that the fullness of truth is not in religion, even Christian religion, but in Christ. And the fullness of life is not in ritual and symbol, however saturated with deep meanings, but in the Kingdom. If we think about this seriously and change our life, the breath of God and the life of the Kingdom will open to us in the same fullness in which they opened to the first Christians. God is the same, and the Savior is the same. And the fullness of the life of the Kingdom has not grown poor.