Main news for 26 December 2023

This phrase has to be examined word by word. "All the prophets": what matters here is "all," not "each one." Not every prophet spoke about the Messiah, not every prophet spoke about forgiveness of sins... But together they all reveal to people God's plan of salvation through Christ's redeeming sacrifice for the forgiveness of our sins.

"Bear witness": we are used to thinking that prophets anticipate the future, while testimony is a story about something that has already happened. But prophecy differs from a forecast precisely because in it a person tells about a fact that has been revealed to him, regardless of what time that fact belongs to, past, present, or future. Thus a prophet is a witness to a fact.

"Will receive... through His name." Let us picture this: we have received by mail an invitation, an admission pass to a coming distribution of certain definite gifts. After reading the invitation, we can say, "I do not need these gifts," or "I do not believe they will be giving them out there," or "I do not have time," or "How tastelessly it is designed," or "Will I really receive something because of this little piece of paper?" - AND NOT GO! In order to go, we need to take seriously this invitation and the thing to which we are being invited. God invites us to enter His life through the forgiveness of our sins; the living invitation, the living letter to us, is God's Son, His name, given to us as a pass to God. We simply need to trust and receive this name as a treasure, as a pledge of eternal life, and then come to God and present this pass.

This is the story of how, once and for all, God separated His Church from every kind of nationalism. For God there are no "unclean peoples," no "rogue states." He is equally merciful to all, the righteous and the unrighteous, and anyone in any nation who acts according to truth is pleasing to Him.

That is in theory. In practice, we Christians have too often become bearers of all sorts of "anti-isms": anti-Semitism, anti-Islamism, anti-Americanism, and so on. The apostle Peter's hesitation can still be explained by the fact that he had been raised in the concepts of the separateness and election of his people. But how can our behavior be justified?

Fortunately, God acts actively to overcome these sinful prejudices: as soon as Cornelius's relatives and friends hear from Peter the first words of the Good News, He pours out His Spirit on them, thereby showing that His Church is for everyone.

Speaking about Christ and the Kingdom, Peter describes the spiritual movement connected with the spread of the Kingdom in the world, a movement in which a person takes the most direct part. The risen Christ first appears to those who received Him during His earthly ministry, and they in turn bear witness to the rest about the resurrection.

At first glance such witness may not appear to be the most effective: the process turns out to be long and not always fruitful, both because of the witnesses themselves and because fallen humanity so readily distrusts everything connected with spiritual reality. Would it not have been simpler for the Savior to appear to the world Himself, in the way He describes His appearing at the end of time? Then everyone would surely have been convinced and believed.

And yet Jesus does not do this. One of the reasons can be considered His respect for our freedom: He does not want to pressure us with the obviousness of His power, which surpasses every human understanding and would become obvious to us if He appeared to us in the full fullness of His divinity. He does not need followers who have chosen Him not freely, out of love, but under compulsion, under the influence of superior and overwhelming power.

There is another reason as well: our salvation. If the full fullness of the Kingdom had been revealed to the world already in the days of the resurrection, and this was entirely possible, there would hardly have been many saved. Of course, God cannot guarantee anyone's salvation; He can only give each person everything necessary and sufficient to be saved, which He does through the Messiah He has sent.

But human participation in the process of the Kingdom's unfolding in our world, which is already being transfigured though not yet transfigured to the end, makes salvation closer and more accessible to those who seek. On the one hand, the full and final triumph of the Kingdom is postponed, giving those who have not yet decided additional time to choose and make a decision. On the other hand, the participation of concrete, living people who already now live the life of the Kingdom and can bear witness to this life helps seekers understand that the Kingdom is not only a manifestation of God's power but also the breath of God's love. And it makes it more possible that those who choose God and the Kingdom will choose Him not only because He is the fullness of power, but above all because He is the fullness of love.