NOTES for Act 27:25

To whom should a believer believe more: to men, to prevailing circumstances, to what is usually called the objective facts, or to God? The question seems rhetoric. But is it really always like that? Unfortunately, this question can also be considered rather as rhetoric. Why so? Probably, not at last place because the Christianity became for several Christians (and for some, maybe always) simply a religion, the same as many others, and if it is better than others, it is only in this sense that a religion can turn out for a concrete person in comparison with all others, closer or more appropriate. In such case, the relationship of man with God, even if for him God stays in the foreground, will not become a reality defining his life.

In fact, because the one who lives in the non transformed world, by submitting itself to its laws, and if he is a realist, and not a hopeless romantic, he cannot understand that even for him, God will not recreate again the world in order to make it more suitable for the believers. It is the other thing, a person living in the Kingdom, a Christian in the initial and original sense of the word.

For such a person the Kingdom is, if it is not the only one, then it is the main and decisive reality: because, even by considering that, not having reached yet the plenitude of the transformation, he still belongs partially to the non transformed order of things, it is impossible for such a person not to understand that his life is completely defined all the same by the Kingdom, so much that even if he loses this part of life that belongs to the non transformed world, he all the same will not lose the essential: the Kingdom and his life by far surpassing this pathetic resemblance of a life, which bear this name in the fallen world. Then the reality is revealed to him otherwise, not because it becomes suddenly fundamentally different, but because he begins to see it in all as a whole, and not this small part, that is called reality by those who only know the non transformed world, lying in evil.

And even the righteous of the pre-Christian period lived with a presentiment of the Kingdom: only it could give them the strength to go on the path of the righteousness. And to Paul after the meeting on the road to Damascus, of course it did not remain no doubt on the reality of the Kingdom which became an important part of his personal life. That is why even the non transformed world, he sees with different eyes. With the eyes of an inhabitant of the Kingdom, where the promises made by God can’t fail.

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.