Main news for 28 June 2021

The angel's simple words, "God has granted you all those sailing with you," again bring us to the ancient conviction that the world, or in this case the ship, is upheld by a few righteous people. Paul, whom God has destined to visit Rome, becomes the guarantee of salvation for several hundred people: his guards, merchants, and sailors.

Obviously, the voyage would have gone much more favorably if all the passengers of the ship had understood the special role of the prisoner they were taking to Rome. This voyage becomes, as it were, a model of the whole world and of individual communities: there are those on whom this world rests, like the one Righteous One for whose sake it was created and by whom it was saved, and there are those to whom the role of these righteous ones is not obvious. But, and here the great mystery of God's providence is hidden, they can perish or be saved only together, because they are sailing on one ship, living in one country, in one world, on one planet. So today's reading sets before us a twofold task: to hold on to those on whom the world depends, beginning with that One, the Only One, and ourselves, as far as possible, to be a ray of light in our own realm: at work, in the family, in the country, and so on.

Whom should a believer trust more: people, circumstances as they take shape, what are usually called objective facts, or God? The question seems rhetorical. But is that always how things are in reality? Alas, this question too can be considered rhetorical.

Why is this so? Not least because for many Christians Christianity has become, and for some has always been, merely a religion, one like many others. If it is better than others, it is better only in the sense in which one religion can turn out to be closer or more suitable for a particular person than all the rest. In that case a person's relationship with God, even while remaining in the foreground for him, still does not become the reality that determines his life. Indeed, a person lives in an untransformed world, obeying its laws, and if he is a realist and not a hopeless romantic, he cannot fail to understand that even God will not recreate the world anew for his sake in order to make it more suitable for believers.

It is another matter with a person living in the Kingdom, a Christian in the original and genuine meaning of the word. For such a person the Kingdom becomes, if not the only reality, then the chief and defining one. Even taking into account that, not having yet reached the fullness of transformation, he still partly belongs to the untransformed order of things, such a person cannot fail to understand that his life is nevertheless determined entirely by the Kingdom, so much so that even if he were deprived of that part of life which belongs to the untransformed world, he would still not lose the main thing: the Kingdom and its life, which far surpasses the pitiful semblance of life that bears this name in the fallen world. Then reality also opens to him differently, not because it suddenly becomes radically different, but because he begins to see it in its entirety, not only that small part called reality by those who know only the untransformed world lying in evil.

Even the righteous of the pre-Christian era lived by a foretaste of the Kingdom: only it could give them the strength to walk the path of righteousness. And after the encounter on the Damascus road, Paul, of course, no longer had any doubts about the reality of the Kingdom, which had become the determining part of his own life. That is why he also sees the untransformed world with different eyes: with the eyes of an inhabitant of the Kingdom, where the promises given by God cannot fail to be fulfilled.

The gripping account of Paul and his companions' voyage to Rome has long been compared, quite rightly, to the Odyssey. Yet despite the outward similarity of these two tales of maritime adventure, their meanings are different. The ancient Jews, unlike the ancient Greeks, were a land-based people; the sea was an alien realm to them, identified with the dwelling place of the powers of darkness. It is no accident that Jonah, unwilling to do God's will, tries to hide from Him by embarking on a sea voyage.

But the Lord reigns over both land and sea. Now Paul puts out to sea in order to carry the news that Christ has dealt the forces of evil a decisive blow, which means that darkness is no longer all-powerful either on land or on water. Therefore, unlike Jonah, Paul does not try to flee God's commission, but puts out to sea in order to fulfill it.