NOTES for Rom 1:16-25

The Apostle Paul always amazes by the density of his text and by very firm formulations. Today's text, too, very often provokes protest, because the situation being described seems unfair, if not cruel. Faith sometimes appears to us as heroism, as something foreign and introduced from outside. All our first reactions to what is happening, all the human feelings in us, even what is kind and compassionate in us, very often contradict the hard and uncomfortable words of Christ. That is why faith often appears to us as a matter of reason, as a kind of violence against one's human nature and, consequently, as hard work. That is why, being nice and compassionate, we look sympathetically, easily, and with understanding on people who do not believe in God. Or who believe in something so abstract that it exists somewhere but does not interfere in life.

Our pity is in some way mixed with the conviction that, if faith is hard mental labor, then those who do not believe simply are not up to it intellectually. But according to Paul, every person is placed before the fact of God's being, His presence in the world. Everyone has been given testimony about God, and through the apple, the sea, the desert, the grapevine, the forest, the frog, and the grain, everything has been told to us about Him. The story of the Creator does not stop for a minute. Day and night the whole created world, the balance, the finest laws and interconnections of the universe, bear witness to the One who created all this. So every time a person goes outside, where rain is falling, the wind is blowing, and frost already catches the breath, he can understand that this is the very "lightness of the yoke" promised by Christ. The sign and proof of God's being are not our attempts to trim what is happening to fit the limits of human possibilities, but the fact that every step we take is accompanied by wordless, yet tangible and real, miracles. Many of them can be tasted.