NOTES for Heb 11:13-31

What is the faith of the Patriarchs, and what is our faith in comparison with it? But perhaps we simply do not quite understand what faith is. It appears to us that faith, especially the faith of the patriarchs, is something unshakable, a certain rest for their great souls that enables them to do their great deeds. But let us look more closely at what the Apostle tells us today: "...they said of themselves that they were strangers and exiles on the earth; for those who speak this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland." In these words, on the contrary, there is a certain unrest, a search. And according to the logic of our language, this is something opposite to faith. Searching is associated more with doubt than with faith. We even have expressions such as "established in faith" and "firm faith." And although in the first word the root is "firm," not "faith," this consonance shapes us apart from our conscious awareness.

But in reality, the faith of our fathers consisted precisely in not letting their thought find rest in anything earthly, and in general in not letting it rest in anything at all. For "if they had had in mind that homeland from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return." If we have something formed in our thoughts, not necessarily something strictly defined, concrete, and material, even if it is only an idea, it draws our actions toward itself, and we find time to realize it. But faith is something else. Faith is always striving; it is dynamism, impulse, and at times even wandering, but not meaningless wandering; it is wandering with hope in Him. And this very hope must be our stronghold. As soon as we stop hoping, we cut ourselves off from the vine and dry up. We shut off the oxygen of grace for ourselves.

And therefore doubts must exist. But these must be doubts not about God, but about our idea of Him. This small clarification is always forgotten when people speak of doubts in faith. Only one thing must be unshakable: the One who created me loves me, because: "You love all things that exist, and loathe nothing that You have made, for You would not have made anything if You had hated it" (Wis 11:25). What is there to doubt here? The fact that I exist, and therefore someone wanted me to exist, is obvious. It is also clear that He created responsibly, not as a childish amusement: since such a complex world stands, and everything in it is so beautiful, its Creator cannot be irresponsible. Therefore, He loves. That is all. That is all of faith.

And doubts about dogmas, about people, even those vested with rank, about the structure of the Church... all this is the very wandering of which the Apostle speaks to us today when he speaks about the descendants of the patriarch Abraham and his wife Sarah. And let us not cling too tightly to the earthly, for "they desired a better country, that is, a heavenly one; therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them."

Paul says that every faith is connected with the Kingdom, with its life, with the prospect of participating in this life. Otherwise it is meaningless. A little earlier he calls faith "the realization of what is hoped for and the assurance of what is unseen." An assurance that is not abstract, not theoretical, but experiential, when the invisible is revealed to a person in the process of communion with God as something completely real.

But in that case it becomes obvious that the matter concerns different layers of reality, which is itself many-leveled. If one has in mind the level with which fallen man usually deals, then here everything the author lists as deeds of faith is quite meaningless. At this level of reality it is more expedient to act in a way directly opposite to the one chosen for themselves by people of faith. And to act as they acted is possible only at the level of the Kingdom, which, it would seem, in the times not only of Abraham, but also of Moses or David, still lay ahead.

At the same time, when saying of the Kingdom that it was still ahead, that its time had not yet come, it is important to take into account that the matter once again concerns reality open to fallen man, not the reality of the Kingdom. For God, the world always remains His Kingdom. It was such from the beginning, already on the first day of creation, when the light of God's presence permeated the whole universe so that there was no place for darkness in it at all. It was later, when a will opposing God appeared in the world, a will to which God preserved freedom and the right to oppose Him, that creation became divided, losing its wholeness. And only in the part of creation separated from God and from the fullness of God's world does the little world of fallen man exist, from which God's throne is not visible and where the Kingdom therefore turns out to be not present, but an indefinite future in time and space.

But to people of faith, when they entrusted themselves to God, that great world of God was opened, the world that had always remained the Kingdom. And they lived in this Kingdom, not absolutely, of course, but with limitations conditioned by fallen human nature not yet transformed. Still, they lived in it and shared in its life insofar as it penetrated the little world separated from God by the evil will of fallen people and fallen spirits. The reality of the Kingdom was for them the reality that determined their life and their choice. A choice that could not be otherwise, for then they would have lost forever the life of the Kingdom which God, who called them after Himself, had slightly opened to them.

Today we read about the choice of a person. About Moses, who "considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he looked to the reward." And about how the foundation for choice is faith. Faith that "God had provided something better for us."

But this is not faith that recompense is given for fulfilling the law. It is active trust in Christ. Faith in His constant presence. Faith in His love. Faith as faithfulness, as faithfulness to the path He offers us, faithfulness to His plan, according to which we were not meant to leave paradise. It is confidence that life with Christ is greater labor and greater work than everything we do in this world, and that it is the most worthy thing of all that is offered to us. Not rejecting the works of this world, but caring only for the benefit of the soul and the preaching of the Gospel.

In today's reading the apostle Paul offers a very interesting interpretation of Abraham's behavior. For us, who grew up in Christian culture, it may be completely obvious that if we believe in God, then we also believe in the resurrection of the dead. Yet even in Paul's time this was by no means obvious. It was still less obvious in Abraham's time. Strictly speaking, Abraham had no special grounds for believing in resurrection. For a person of that time and culture, immortality was found precisely in children; Abraham could not imagine any other continuation of life. But Paul says that Abraham trusted God, who had promised that Isaac would be the father of a great nation, so completely that he did not doubt for a second that the promise would be fulfilled, even if Isaac were offered as a sacrifice. How can this be? Does the how really matter? Abraham does not think about how it will happen. He simply accepts as fact that God's words cannot contradict one another, and therefore they will somehow fit together... And this trust is credited as righteousness.

How impoverished our concept of faith has become. We call someone a believer if they declare that they belong to a particular religion or simply believe that God exists. In many passages of Scripture, faith is spoken of in an entirely different way. Faith is our openness to God, a channel of communion with Him through which we receive His revelation. What is beyond comprehension becomes known to us with certainty. Paul calls this “the assurance of things not seen.” More than that, through this connection God's active power can pour into this world, and then things happen in it that we could only dream of. The Apostle says, “Faith is the substance of things hoped for.” Thus, faith is a living connection with God through which we come to know Him, while He acts in us and in the world.