Main news for 11 May 2023

The whole history of the early Christian Church is the history of apostleship. Mission. Witness. The apostles are always on the road. Of course, this reflects the essence of apostolic ministry as such. In the Jewish religious brotherhoods of Gospel times, an envoy, which is precisely how the Greek word "apostle" is translated, had to be first of all a witness, a witness of certain events that took place in this or that community. Jewish brotherhoods, just like the early Christian Church, were communal movements with a council of elders, but with neither a single center nor a rigid structure. In such conditions the institution of envoys-apostles played the role both of a link between the communities that made up the brotherhood and of a kind of instrument for exchanging spiritual experience, since the apostles, among other things, could also tell about important events in the spiritual life of this or that community.

For the Church, of course, the main event was Christ's resurrection. It made possible the very existence of the Church, and it is no wonder that the community of apostles, the immediate witnesses of this event and of everything connected with it, became the core of the Church. Without apostolic witness, the life of the early Christian Church was unthinkable: this witness to the reality of the Resurrection gave meaning to Christianity and gave hope to those newly coming in. Paul's witness had special significance: he met the risen Christ after Pentecost; he was converted by relying not on the testimonies of others, but on his own experience.

This meant that meetings with Christ did not remain in the past, that they belong not only to the forty days separating the Resurrection from the Ascension, that they are part of Christian history, the history of the Church, the history of the Kingdom entering the world. But there was also something else in apostolic witness that could not exist in traditional apostleship. This is the Kingdom itself, which a Christian, if he is a Christian not only in words, always carries with him. It is the main Christian witness.

Otherwise witnessing to Christ and to the Kingdom will not work; words alone are not enough here. But if a Christian witnesses to the Kingdom that he carries with him, then through him the Kingdom spreads in the world, taking hold of it more and more. This is the Church's chief task: to abide in the world, bringing it the Kingdom. And the word about Christ and about the Kingdom is only an addition to the main thing. An important addition, but not absolutely necessary: where the power of the Kingdom is manifested and its breath blows, words are not so very necessary.