NOTES for Act 27:1-26

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.

Today's reading shows us how transporting a prisoner can turn into a missionary journey. It all begins with Paul, foreseeing difficulties ahead, advising his companions to spend the winter where doing so apparently would not have been very comfortable, because the place was unsuitable (vv. 8–10). They do not listen, however, preferring the decisions of people more experienced in seafaring to his advice (vv. 11–13). Soon the apostle's worst expectations begin to come true, and the ship is on the brink of destruction (vv. 14–19). At the very moment when death seems inevitable, Paul gives his companions hope by telling them of a revelation he has received from God (vv. 20–26). He does not fail to remind them of his advice not to put out to sea (v. 21). He hardly wanted simply to reproach his companions for disregarding his advice; more likely, Paul merely wanted to emphasize that he had offered it not on the basis of ordinary human considerations, but of a revelation he had received. Now the apostle gives those on board hope by referring to a vision which indicated that they would all survive, losing only the ship and its cargo (vv. 22–24). Of course, in this crisis Paul's companions were ready to believe anything that offered even some hope of deliverance. But the apostle reproaches no one for unbelief; he simply uses the situation to bear witness to the God of Abraham. He understands that, caught between life and death, many, if not all, are ready to believe in God. Later, however, when the situation changes, the same people quickly change and are often ready to attribute their deliverance to mere chance rather than divine intervention. The apostle apparently tries to fix in his fellow sufferers' memories what perhaps each of them felt at that moment: the realization that without the involvement of higher powers, they could not be saved. But for the miracle not to be forgotten, it needed to be associated not with some abstract higher powers, but with the God of the Jews, so that later, when the travelers recalled their miraculous deliverance, they would remember Him and no one else. The events that followed soon fully confirmed the truth of the apostle's words.

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 journey to Rome proved difficult for Paul and his companions. Sailing along the Mediterranean coast was never easy, especially in winter. In a crisis, the intuition of someone who senses the breath of the Kingdom with their whole being often diverges from human experience and common sense. Experience and common sense suggest one thing, intuition another, sometimes its direct opposite. This is what happened on that voyage: Paul's advice often contradicted the advice of experienced sailors. And the apostle usually proved right.

Does this mean that someone living a full spiritual life, the life of the Kingdom, knows even what they have never studied or done? Of course not. Paul does not pretend to be a sailor. He does not undertake work about which he understands little or nothing. But neither does he disregard his intuition. He knows that if God reveals something to him, he must share that revelation with others and bear witness to it.

In the end, Paul's advice does indeed help everyone survive and escape death where it seemed almost impossible to do so. But it is not only that intuition linked to revelation enables Paul to understand how to act in situations where conclusions based on logic and common sense do not work. There is also the inner certainty that one's actions are right, without which a person is powerless. Here, intuition grounded in revelation truly stands beyond comparison with logic, experience, and common sense. Logic cannot always give an unambiguous answer, and experience and common sense often prove powerless in a crisis.

More precisely, it is the person relying on them who becomes inwardly powerless. Intuition grounded in revelation, however, proves a thoroughly reliable support. Of course, it is not directly linked to logic or experience: Paul would hardly have been able to explain, for example, his advice against sailing with an apparently favorable wind. But he knew with complete certainty that they should not sail. This certainty proved entirely justified, though he could not explain to experienced sailors why they should not put to sea with a following wind.

Yet when the storm broke and all their experience proved useless, the apostle's confidence in his actions, based on that same intuition, effectively put him in command. It was he who gave the crew and passengers the instructions that ultimately helped everyone survive. There is nothing surprising in this: Paul knows that God is leading him to Rome. Therefore, He will not let him perish on the way. Paul's companions, too, can thus be relatively calm: they are not in danger of vanishing without a trace at sea.