NOTES for Mar 11:23-26
“Have faith in God...” You reflect on these words, and suddenly something quite commonplace springs to mind: easy to say, have faith... Yet this is precisely what is not true. It was not easy for the Lord to say this; it cost Him the way of the Cross. The same happens with people. Not everyone is capable of living out their own philosophy. And so, on the contrary, philosophy is adjusted to fit life. The Lord's words that He speaks to us today, like many other words of the Gospel, must be read with “as I do” added to the end of the sentence. “Have faith in God” as I have it. This is the power of Jesus' Revelation. And very often, in response to such reflections, one hears: how could we ever measure up to the Lord? We might at least imitate the saints, for they were at least people like us, human beings like us, who also sinned before attaining holiness... Yet one must not set oneself such artificial bars. Nor should one forget that a mythological aura surrounds every saint. You will say that such an aura also surrounded the Lord. Yes, it did. But—and here lies the difference that is so important for us to state now—the Gospels differ in something fundamental from the lives of the saints. In the same way that the sun differs from a lamp or from a sunbeam reflected on a wall. One feels this, although one cannot put it into words. That holiness exists is beyond doubt. But here is what Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh writes: “And there are masses of such stories. I could go on endlessly telling stories from the lives of the saints, because I was, as it were, brought up on them. And these stories interest me not as though they were history. For example, when people say: ‘Can you imagine? This saint could see at a distance of eleven versts through the walls of his cell!’—that does not move me. If he could see through the walls of his cell at all, twenty versts or a hundred versts makes no difference. There is a story from the life of the French writer Voltaire. A pious woman wanted to convert him to the faith and said: ‘How can you not believe in Saint Denis of Paris? He was beheaded at one end of Paris, and taking his head, he walked across all of Paris and stopped at the other end.’ And Voltaire answered her: ‘You know, in such cases only the first step is difficult.’” (“Questioning and Doubt”). We will be told: of course, anything can be reduced to absurdity, turned into a joke. Yes, but that is precisely why every joke contains a grain of truth.