NOTES for Co1 15:20-26

Believing Jews knew about the universal resurrection long before Christ came. They knew that the day of Judgment would come, and that everyone who had ever lived on earth would have to return to life, stand before God, and give an account of the life they had lived. They also knew about the messianic Kingdom, where those raised from the dead would become neighbors of those who were still alive when the Messiah came. In Paul's day, the messianic Kingdom was regarded as the Kingdom of God, in which the earthly and the heavenly were joined so that the righteous, raised from the dead and miraculously restored to life by God, would live alongside those who entered it without having died.

In those days, however, the Messiah was not regarded as the bearer of the Kingdom. He was merely its King, while the Kingdom itself was established by God according to His will. The Messiah was considered an ordinary human being by nature, given a special vocation: messianic ministry. One did not necessarily have to be born the Messiah; one could become the Messiah just as others became prophets. God called a person to ministry, and the prophet became what he was meant to be.

Paul, however, speaks of a different Messiah, the One who revealed Himself to him on the road to Damascus. This Messiah was not merely the King of a Kingdom established by God: He Himself bore that Kingdom within Himself and had borne it from His own birth, which was itself extraordinary. A Messiah who contains within Himself the entire fullness of the Kingdom is a new image; nothing like it existed in the traditional Judaism of the Gospel era.

The image of such a Messiah and such a Kingdom compelled people to look differently at familiar things. The Kingdom entered the world not simply as an external force, like the breath of God, originally foreign both to the fallen world and to fallen human nature. It entered the world through a Man who differs from each of us only in that His humanity is entirely free from the dominion of sin.

And the bonds of love established with this Man open the fullness of the Kingdom to each of us: they open it in a human way, just as these bonds of love unite us with Him in a human way. Human relationships themselves become the spiritual foundation of the Kingdom, and God enters into them, making them divine-human. Thus the life of the Kingdom becomes our life, its history becomes a fact of our spiritual biography, and its triumph becomes our salvation.

What does Paul mean, when speaking about Adam, in whom all die, and about the Christ, in whom on the contrary, all have life? Do not people live a natural life, “Adam's life”? And don’t Christians die, although partially, because they are not yet transformed to the end? If we look at the natural life of a man and at its life in the Kingdom as at two lives completely diverse, isolated one from another, the question will remain unresolved. Already the division of life into natural and spiritual does not allow to adequately understand the apostle. One can understand Paul only by having looking at life with the look of the authors of the biblical books, who did not divide the life of man into parts. In fact, when God breathes in the nostrils of man His breath, and man lives, he receives life in all its possible plenitude for his nature, both spiritual or physical.

But before the fall it is in particular the spiritual component that prevails in his life: it is not accidentally that the biblical author connects the lively strength ("the soul") of the unfallen man with this breath of God, which makes him just like his Creator. And the natural component of the human life in itself contradicts not at all that: because before the fall, prevails in man the spirit, and not the nature. The situation is different after the fall: the lively strength of the fallen man is now connected not with the breath of God, as it was the case before the fall, but with the blood, with what is natural, physiological.

Now already the nature begins to prevail over the spirit in the life of man, and man begins more and more to look like animal: because the life force of animals is connected also exceptionally to nature, with the same blood, which is in many similar to that of man. And the mortality of man is connected in particular to this ascendancy in his life of the natural principle over the spiritual. But man, even the fallen, is not deprived of the spiritual life: because he does not lose definitively the image of God after the fall. But if before this image was clearly visible, forming the core of the personality of the perfect man, then now, after the fall, he shows through only in man, constantly darkening the prevailing natural principle.

And in Christ, through Whom man joins the life of the Kingdom, begins the process of the transformation of the human nature damaged by the fall. Transformations, the result of which is not only the overcoming of the consequences of this fall, but also the change of the quality of the nature forming the personality of man. Such change, after which one can’t already naturally speak about any mortality: because in a new transformed person the spirit does not simply triumph on the nature, but also the nature is completely under the power of the spirit: because only such a nature, changed by the breath of God can become an organic part of the Kingdom.

Death at all times seemed to man the most terrible enemy. And the most terrible were of course its invincibility and inexorability. Everyone knew that everything will end in any case with the leaving into the world of deaths, in this world of darkness, where there is no real life, but is only an existence, which, maybe is the worse than the nonexistence itself.

We can notice by the way that no people of the antiquity look at death as a departure into nothingness: this idea appears later, it is necessary to consider it as the fruit of the philosophic reflections, and not the spiritual or mystic experiments. And in the experiment it was not exactly the disappearance of the human personality, but the exhaustion of the vital forces of man and the gradual disintegration of his personality: in the kingdom of the dead, in the world of darkness, the memory is gradually lost, the capacity to think is lost, almost extinguishes the consciousness, and man addresses his own shade, dwelling in a state either of sound sleep with horrible dreams, which is impossible to remove, either the delirium, from which it is impossible to come out. Like this saw the world of darkness practically all the peoples of the earth. For the plenitude of the picture, it is possible again to add that the lord of the world of darkness was usually a merciless and relentlessly spirit, whose favorite leisure was to torment those that turned out to be in his possession.

Of course, over time to certain peoples (for example, to the Egyptians and Greeks) appeared the representation of the after death less darkly and of the posthumous reward, but, at the first place, it was something all the same from the cultural point of view local, and, secondly, even such after death did not suppose the plenitude of life: because the soul is not a whole man, the Egyptians and the Greeks connected the soul with the personal consciousness, but about the physical in relation to the posthumous existence, it was usually not about: because and for the Egyptians, and particularly for the Greeks the body was rather seen as the prison for the soul, than as its house, although temporary. But here is, the yahvisme directed from the very beginning its followers not on the after death, although and joyful, but on the complete overcoming of death. It is difficult to say exactly when appeared in the yahvisme the representation of the resurrection, but already Isaiah of Jerusalem speaks (although not directly, but rather with hints) that in the messianic Kingdom there will be not only diseases, but also death.

And in the pre-captivity period, was already forming in the Judaism the representation about the general resurrection on the last day, the Day of Judgment, when everyone will return again in the world of the living to appear in God's judgment. In the first Christians Churches the situation was a little bit looked otherwise: because for the Christian the coming of Christ is this very Judgment that says the Judaism. And the Savior Himself points directly at Him as the One, to Whom God gives the whole judgment, by adding: whosoever believes in me does not come to the judgment, but whosoever does not believe is already condemned. In fact: it is about the faithfulness of Christ and of this Kingdom, which He brought to the world.

Kingdom, in which there is no place for death: because death is the consequence of sin and the evil, in which, according to the word of the Gospel, lies the world. But in our time, in the time of the Kingdom to come, when the world is transformed, but is not yet transformed till the end, and in the world, and in our life there is again a place for death. It [death] will disappear only when the Kingdom, transforming the world, will reveal itself in it totally. Then in this new world there will really already not be a place for death. As we see, that is why the apostle calls it the "last enemy", the last one in this sense that it is this enemy that will resist more than the others, till the very end, until the day of the last Judgment and the definitive triumph of the Kingdom, when it will undertake its last and complete defeat.

It is not hard to understand why Mary went to Elizabeth. What had been revealed to Her placed an extremely weighty responsibility on Her, and so created the need to share it with someone close, especially since Mary had been told about Elizabeth that she too had been chosen by God. One can also understand that Elizabeth's son, already in the womb, possessed prophetic sensitivity and therefore responded to Mary's Son in the womb, although this does not fit ordinary consciousness.

But now before us is the inspired prayer that burst from Mary's breast. It sounds like a psalm, and it is no accident that for many centuries it has been a solemn hymn. Mary thanks the Lord because He granted her a share in the triumph of His glory, and we see that what is only still to happen She prophetically experiences as already happening. But if we think about it, this is natural: having received the Holy Spirit, Mary also received His gifts, and one of them is the gift of prophecy.

In today's passage we read about one of the first Gospel encounters between a human being and the Holy Spirit. The first such encounter was undoubtedly the meeting of the young woman named Mary, which resulted in her becoming the Mother of all people (see Luke 1:26-35). It was precisely thanks to the meeting of Mary's spirit, her "yes," with the Holy Spirit that the coming of our Lord into this world, His incarnation, became possible.

And what then? It would seem, what should a pregnant woman do? Whatever she was supposed to do according to the ideas of that time or of our time, Mary rose and "went with haste into the hill country, to a city of Judah" (Luke 1:39). She hurried to her relative, about whom the angel had told her. And the logic is astonishing: the Lord told Mary about Elizabeth's pregnancy, and she immediately decides to go help (see Luke 1:36). After all, the angel mentioned it for some reason.

Mary arrives, and Elizabeth is filled with the Holy Spirit. And together with his mother, the infant John is filled with the Spirit. Thus we see that Mary shares and brings the Spirit to those who need Him. Already by the Mother of God this rule is fulfilled: one must share God's gift and not hide it away.

Just as the child leaped in Elizabeth's womb, everything within us rejoices at the thought of Mary, the Mother of our Lord. The feast of her Dormition is one of the brightest feasts, without a shadow of sorrow. It is an example of how a person dies yet does not leave the world, becoming its shield of prayer and remaining in a bond of prayer with the living. For Mary is always with us when we pray to her.

There is a legend that before the death of the Mother of God, before her Dormition, the angel Gabriel appeared to her just as he had in the days of the Annunciation and brought white, fragrant flowers, flowers that recalled the radiance of heaven and eternal life. It may be only a legend, but in it the human spirit speaks with all its love for Mary's holiness, purity, her whole image, and for Mary herself.

Elizabeth says: Mary, the One Who Believed, is already blessed, that is, happy, because what was promised to Her will certainly be fulfilled. Usually things are different with us. Well, suppose my boss promised to raise my salary; I would hardly feel happy until I received it! And if, while I am waiting for that joy, someone starts congratulating me, I will knock on wood and spit three times over my left shoulder...

And Mary? "My soul magnifies the Lord!" She is truly happy. This is what Christ brings into this world. He has not yet been born; only a few days have passed since His conception, but all who learn of Him are filled with joy and praise.

Why, then, do we not enter into this joy, or why do we lose it so easily? Unlike Elizabeth and Mary, we already know everything that He has done, and He Himself is constantly with us. Perhaps we simply cannot be called "those who believed"?

It is not easy to find the words of the Mother of God in all four Gospels; these episodes can be counted on one's fingers. And even when she does speak, the evangelists usually give only a brief remark. Nevertheless, we constantly feel her quiet, silent presence. She accompanies her Son all the way to the Cross and remains with Him to the end. If we think about it, she is the person who, from the Annunciation onward and forever, is beside God. This is Mary's faithfulness, through which she returns all wandering humanity to God. This is the very faithfulness to the end that repays the "debt" of Adam and Eve.

But the humility of the Mother of God is also very important. Even when she wants to speak of her own joy, she speaks most of all about God, not only as a sign of gratitude, but simply because she does not see herself in this joy. She is wholly turned toward God. She is not so much proud that "from now on all generations will call her blessed," but rejoices that the Lord's promise is true. She rejoices that God is not angry with people to the end, that His love for us is stronger than His wrath.

And Mary herself is a living witness to this mercy and reveals what all of us are called to: faithfulness to God to the end, humility, and being turned toward God at every moment of life.

Continuing the discussion of the general resurrection, Paul evidently does not separate it from the history of the Kingdom gradually unfolding in our transfiguring, but not yet fully transfigured, world. And for the apostle, only resurrection, and by no means the immortality of the soul, is the true victory over death.

In fact, for him the whole history of the Kingdom turns out to be a sequence of stages following one another on the way to this victory. The main victory has already been won: Christ has risen from the dead, and His resurrection becomes the pledge of the Kingdom's final triumph at the end of time (v. 20). He is the first, but others will follow Him. The pivotal confrontation of the present age, in the apostle's thought, is the confrontation between Christ and the Kingdom with its fullness of life, and the death that entered the world after the fall - a death that cannot be defeated by hoping only in the immortality of the soul (vv. 21-22). But resurrection is a process requiring time, time that can also be measured by the clocks of our transfiguring, though not yet fully transfigured, world. This is not surprising: the Kingdom is not alien to our world; it enters it in order to transform it completely, and the history of the Kingdom cannot unfold apart from the history still continuing by inertia in our world, although its meaning and driving force were exhausted with the Savior's coming.

According to the evangelist's testimony, the process of the general resurrection began at the moment of the Savior's death on the cross (Matt. 27:50-53), and it will be completed, according to Paul, on the day of His return (v. 23). On that day the Church will reveal to the world its fullness as the fullness of the body of Christ, of which the apostle spoke. Those who sought the Kingdom and found it in the present age will be able to enjoy fully that fullness of life which today, even after touching the Kingdom, we experience only in part.

For those who sought nothing, that day will become the day of the last Judgment, at which their destiny in eternity will be decided (vv. 24-25). Without such a judgment, the completion of the present historical stage is impossible, just as without it the full and final triumph of Christ and the Kingdom over the death that entered the world with the fall is impossible (vv. 26-28). Only such a prospect gives meaning to Christianity and Christian life; otherwise it is not worth beginning at all, for if the world will forever remain as it is now, then it is better, following the well-known saying, "to eat, drink, and be merry while we are alive" (vv. 29-33). Christianity is not a religion but life in the Kingdom, and therefore following Christ makes sense only for the one to whom this Kingdom is more important than anything he has or can find in our still untransformed world.

Christ’s resurrection is the beginning of a new, risen humanity; it is in this sense that the Apostle Paul calls Him the firstfruits of those who have died. The union of Christians with Christ is like the mysterious bond of all people with Adam: we all sinned in Adam, and therefore death reigns over all people (cf. Rom 5:12–14). Adam was the first human being to die and thus opened the age of death; Jesus was the first human being to rise and thus opened the messianic age of resurrection.

A question immediately arises here: “Why, then, do Christians continue to die, and why has no one except Christ Himself yet risen as He did, in a new body, never to die again?” The Apostle’s answer is remarkable because the entire interval between Christ’s resurrection and the resurrection of those who are in Christ is contained in the one short word “then” (1 Cor 15:23).

For God, “one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day” (2 Pet 3:8). We do not know how long the history of the world will last from Christ’s resurrection until His second coming; nearly two thousand years have already passed. Yet this entire age is no more than a brief interval in God’s design for the world and humanity. Scripture calls it the “last days” (cf. Heb 1:1–2; 2 Pet 3:3).

At the end of the passage is a thought that, nineteen centuries later, one of Dostoevsky’s characters would express in different words: “If there is no God and no immortality, then everything is permitted.” The words “let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die” (1 Cor 15:32) are a quotation from Isaiah’s prophecy (Isa 22:13). They are spoken by people feasting and making merry in besieged and perishing Jerusalem. There is no hope in that merriment, but we have hope: Christ.

The Apostle Paul warns us against a very serious danger: confusing different things. He says that when the Corinthians gather, “it is not the Lord's supper that you eat.” How, then, should it be eaten? What is wrong in the Corinthian community, and what does it have to do with us? It is perfectly clear that today, however much one might wish to, it is impossible to come to church for a meal: the Eucharist in its present form cannot serve as breakfast or lunch. Does that mean that everything is all right with us? I am afraid not. The problem is that a person comes to church not to meet God. What takes the place of that meeting is no longer so important. Today it is usually human fellowship. We feel our loneliness acutely, and in church we have the opportunity to spend time with people while expecting understanding, since people in church are indeed usually more kindly disposed than those in the street or on the subway. And so we come to socialize, to talk, to pass the time... The Church becomes a social club for us. And that is not eating the Lord's supper.

For many centuries, through the law and the prophets, God prepared His people for the central event of history. And the chief fruit of this formation proved to be a simple Virgin from Galilee who was able to answer the Angel with the most important words in the world. She, the Virgin who bore the Son of the Most High in her womb, teaches us too to become participants in His Kingdom. Her prayer can also teach us much—for example, how to combine complete humility and obedience to God with joyful exultation in Him.

Today's reading is devoted to an event described by two evangelists: Matthew (Mt 1:18-23) and Luke (vv. 26-38). It is reasonable to think that Luke used in his Gospel the testimony of the Virgin Mary herself, unlike Matthew, who relied on Joseph's account. In addition, in Luke's presentation the story of the Annunciation is joined to the story of the Virgin Mary's visit to Elizabeth (vv. 39-56). Using such a composition, the evangelist, as it were, compares and relates two events: the birth of John the Baptist and the Nativity of Christ.

At first glance, such a comparison can appear rather conditional: after all, the birth even of such a prophet as John is still incomparable in significance with the birth of the Messiah-Christ. And yet this comparison has its own meaning. For every miracle is nothing other than God's intervention in nature and history, changing, though not completely stopping, the course of natural and social processes. From this point of view, the Nativity of Christ too could be considered an ordinary miracle, if only the word "ordinary" were appropriate in this case. For even the birth of the Messiah-Christ and the entry of the Kingdom into the world are not something absolutely external to this world; otherwise Christ would have had no need to be born, and the Incarnation of God would lose all meaning.

The Kingdom is amazing precisely because it includes our world and does not destroy it. Perhaps for this reason the Incarnation of God was absolutely necessary: by containing Himself within the bounds of human nature, which is by definition limited, God enters the world not from outside, but from within; now His greatness does not prevent Him from becoming wholly, to the end, part of the world He Himself created. Apparently, in a fallen world it was not possible to act otherwise; it was possible to set it right only from within, and God resolves on this step for the sake of His love for people.

But even before this He did not abandon humanity, and above all His people. Every miracle, every theophany, was a step toward the world and toward the human person. Therefore Luke quite rightly relates John's birth to Jesus' birth: all "ordinary" miracles find their meaning only in the main miracle - the birth of the Messiah and the manifestation of the Kingdom.

Continuing his account, the evangelist again and again returns to the main theme of his book: the new, joyful Good News announced to all people. After Zechariah, Mary from the town of Nazareth hears this news.

On the one hand, she continues the line of biblical righteous people and prophets (compare her prayer with the song of Samuel's mother Hannah in 1 Samuel, ch. 2), recognizing in obedience to God both His infinite superiority and His astonishing nearness. On the other hand, she is "blessed among women," that is, the most blessed one, who received the fullness of love and was granted the greatest mercy from God.

In the evangelist's solemn biblical language, the words most often found here are "blessing" and "grace," that is, the good Word and mercy that God gives to people. It appears that in this case these words best describe the gospel message first received two thousand years ago by the Mother of the Lord Jesus.