Main news for 9 March 2022

Speaking of his gospel, Paul mentions a certain "writing" that speaks of Christ's death and His resurrection. Judging by this mention, at the time when he wrote his letter to the Corinthian church, certain specifically Christian texts already existed in the Christian community. Perhaps this is not a reference to the Gospels known to us, but to some records that formed their basis. And to what was central in them: the testimonies about the Messiah's death and His resurrection. And yet no texts could replace living testimony.

Especially the testimony of a person who had not been with Jesus during His earthly life, as the other apostles had, and in general had not been planning to become His disciple or follower. A person who, on the contrary, had been an enemy of Christians and had persecuted them as much as he could. The testimony of precisely such a person best demonstrates what the Kingdom brought into the world by the Savior is, and how it affects a person.

Paul, who at that time was not yet Paul or an apostle, but Saul, a disciple of Gamaliel, was never approached by anyone trying to convince him of the truth of Christianity. He had never heard anything at all about what today we would call Christian teaching. For him Christianity was not a teaching, but a meeting. A meeting with a power far greater than his own, in which he recognized the power of God. And behind that power, to the great astonishment of the future apostle, stood the One whose followers he had intended to persecute as enemies of God.

That is how Paul became acquainted with the King of the Kingdom whose breath and power he felt there on the Damascus road. And he became an apostle not in order to preach a new teaching, but in order to tell everyone ready to hear about his meeting with the Risen One and about the Kingdom that He had revealed to him. About the meeting that became the center and meaning of his life and his testimony.

Paul's words about the Resurrection in today's reading are the best illustration of what in church practice is called tradition or handing down. First of all, at the center of genuine tradition there is always a foundational fact without which Christianity as the experience of the life of the Kingdom could not exist: the fact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ (vv. 3-7). And tradition confirms this fact through the testimony of eyewitnesses, thanks to whom it becomes not simply a story about a historical event, but the gospel in the original sense of the word, good news for everyone seeking the Kingdom (vv. 1-2). The testimony of eyewitnesses is fundamentally important here, because if the Resurrection is only some mystical event that does not touch anyone concrete, if no one has ever experienced it as the reality of his own life, then we, living millennia after the events described by the evangelists, have even less reason to hope that the Resurrection can have anything to do with us. But if it once really changed the lives of those who accepted the Messiah risen from the dead, then we too can hope that the Resurrection will enter our life, changing it and joining us to the Kingdom. No less important are the testimonies of those whose meetings with the Risen One, like the apostle's own meeting with Him, occurred after Pentecost, when the history of the Savior's earthly ministry had already ended (vv. 8-9).

Indeed, without such meetings, we could quite reasonably suppose that the possibility of meeting and directly communicating with the Risen One was limited only to those forty days after the Resurrection about which the evangelists speak. In that case we would have to accept the thought that the Kingdom was a reality related to our world only during those forty days, and hope that it would be opened to us again at the end of time with the Savior's return. But Paul's own experience, like that of many other witnesses who lived later, says that the Kingdom did not disappear after the Ascension, that it is still open to everyone who seeks and will remain open until the end of time, when it appears in all its fullness. And if that is so, then it is possible to live in the Kingdom already today, just as it is possible already today to meet the Risen One, if only one truly wants this meeting. Paul's own example confirms the possibility of new life (v. 10), becoming a convincing illustration of the words he spoke and making them part of that living tradition which is founded not on books describing the Kingdom, but on people living in it.

Today the Apostle Paul gives us an example of how to regard our own actions. Paul assesses his service to the Kingdom with complete objectivity. Yes, he understands that after everything he did against the Church, the Lord had every right to reject him. Yet He accepted him and gave him the opportunity to serve Him. For Paul, ministry is an immense privilege, a grace, a gift. But Paul does not feign modesty and say, “Yes, I am absolutely nobody and nothing...” By the grace of God he is what he is, and he does not try to diminish his own achievements—but he remembers that the credit truly belongs to God. False modesty would be ingratitude, and for Paul it is important to say how much has been accomplished, because that means acknowledging God’s works and glorifying Him.