NOTES for Act 28:1-16

Once again, we see Paul fulfilling Jesus’ words about the signs that accompany those who believe in Him: “These signs will accompany those who believe: ...they will pick up snakes and... it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover” (Mark 16:17-18). But these signs are not simply some “special powers” given by God to Paul. The superstitious terror of the inhabitants of Malta has a very real basis. They rightly sensed that immunity from the bites of poisonous snakes or the gift of healing is a manifestation of divine power. Christ lives in Paul (Gal. 2:20), acts through him, heals, comforts, and gives him strength to fulfill his apostolic calling. Here it is fitting for us to remember Paul’s words that we too are called to such a life, so that the Lord may reveal Himself in us through gifts, the greatest of which is love. If we understand this, then such things as love, joy, mercy, and readiness to help our neighbor will no longer be mere “sentiments,” each person’s private affair, but will become a kind of service to God—the realization of His presence here on earth.

Fallen human beings tend to suspect their neighbor of something bad, and most often of more than one thing. So it was with Paul: when a snake bit him, the first thought that came to those around him was that before them stood a criminal, even a murderer, whom God was punishing for his crime and not allowing to survive.

In reality, everything turned out just the opposite. Judging by the sacred writer's testimony, this lesson did good to everyone who saw what happened to the apostle. Of course, the event described became a vivid illustration of the Savior's words that Christians will not die even if they drink deadly poison. Needless to say, this is not about testing our strength by collecting every possible poison and trying them all on ourselves. It is precisely about situations like the one in which Paul found himself.

It was a situation that, by every human expectation, should have ended in the apostle's death, but did not. And the point is not that Christians have some special immunity to poisons or diseases, or that they know some secret techniques for dealing with illness or poisoning. The point is rather what could be called the quality of a person's spiritual life, the quality of that process, both spiritual and natural, that is called life.

What matters is what predominates in that process: spirit or nature. And who determines its course: God or the person himself. Of course, in any case a person is responsible for his own life. The only question is how much he allows God to be near when he makes decisions connected with his own life. How often he lets God into the making of those decisions. For a Christian, the only normal situation is one in which God is always near, in which decisions are made with His direct participation and His voice is decisive. Then there is no room for chance in a person's life.

If Paul had died then from the snakebite, humanly speaking, it would have been an absurd and tragic accident. But for God it would have meant that His plan had been destroyed. Of course, the simplest thing would have been to arrange matters so that Paul never met the snake that bit him. Paul, of course, had to end up on that island, but the snake did not have to be where Paul was; unlike Paul, it was almost indifferent to the direction it moved within the ecological niche of which it was a part.

God evidently needed to give Paul's companions a visible lesson, and He gave it. The apostle's life was preserved in its fullness, for the natural component of his life flow was completely determined by the spiritual component of that same flow. And those around him saw a miracle, not the miracle of deliverance from death after a deadly bite, but the miracle of the Kingdom manifesting itself in the life of a particular person.

While awaiting the emperor's trial, Paul does not waste time. First of all he meets with representatives of the Jewish community of Rome, one of the largest and most influential in the western Diaspora. And, as always and everywhere, he turns first to his own people. Paul is sure: he is guilty of nothing either before the Roman community or before the Jewish people as a whole. Again and again he emphasizes this, speaking of his appeal to the emperor's court only as a forced measure.

He does not break with Judaism; he is only trying to resolve a concrete conflict that, in that concrete situation, could not be resolved in any other way. But the apostle begins his witness, as he did in Jerusalem, with a conversation about the Torah and the prophetic books. As in Jerusalem, he appeals to Tradition. Precisely to Tradition with a capital letter. Not to religious tradition, but to the Tradition of Revelation. He regards his conflict with the leaders of the Synagogue in Jerusalem and with the Sanhedrin as a specifically religious conflict, and therefore a local one that does not touch the main thing.

For the apostle, the main thing is the history of Revelation and the history of salvation connected with it, which for him is the spiritual core and spiritual backbone not only of Judaism, but also, more broadly, of Yahwism. And in testifying to Christ, Paul appeals precisely to Tradition with a capital letter. He does not, of course, reject religion as such, but neither does he put it first. He knows from the experience of his own meeting with the Risen One on the Damascus road that everything that happened to him starting from that minute does not fit into any religious framework, but it can fit into those other frames that were opened to him, perhaps not immediately.

In truth, the spiritual picture opened to the apostle can be called a framework only in a very qualified sense. With his spiritual vision, Paul seems to see the whole sweep of God's action in the world: from the creation of this world, through the tragedy of the fall, and then through the giving of the Torah and prophetic revelation, to Christ, and therefore to the Kingdom entering the world.

This is the Tradition by which Paul lives. He relies on it when he bears witness to Christ, and especially when he bears witness to Jews. He takes nothing from others and loses nothing himself. And he gives up nothing except what can obscure the spiritual fullness opened to him. But what gets in the way is exactly what the apostle gives up, quickly and decisively. Otherwise all his witness will lose its meaning. And so will his life.

After Paul's arrival in Rome, a new stage of his mission begins, yet his stay in the capital starts just as his preaching had begun in other cities. We see that, despite his many bitter clashes with the Jews, Paul once again begins his stay in the city by meeting with them. Paul has no intention of accusing his people before the emperor, and however his relations with his hostile brethren may develop, he does not intend to disown them.

...The narrative breaks off; Luke did not finish the Book of Acts. The reason is unknown to us. Yet there is something symbolic in this incompleteness. A book that tells of the journey of the Church, which the gates of hell cannot overcome, cannot be finished before the end of the age. And so all those who for two thousand years have been one with the Church might have appeared on the pages of this book, whose final period looks more like an ellipsis.