About Two Miracles of Resurrection
20th Sunday after Pentecost
Galatians 1:11-19; Luke 7:11-16
In the Gospel excerpt that was read today, we learn about the resurrection by Jesus Christ of the son of the widow of Nain, evidently still a young man, as Jesus, addressing him, said:
“Young man, I say to you, arise!”
This miracle of Christ was undeniable — many people were present, “a large crowd.” (Luke 7:1-12)
Sometimes the themes in the readings from The Epistles and The Gospel do not concur, but for this Sunday the topics highlighted are very closely related. In The Epistle to the Galatians, the Apostle mentions his spiritual death when he was blinded by Pharisaic ideology, and “I persecuted the church of God beyond measure and tried to destroy it.” (Galatians 1:13)
As Saul, a learned young Jew, he was brought up in the Pharisaic understanding of God's Law and therefore considered that Christ's Church, as well as its members, followers of Christ, were against God's will. Saul was a "zealous for the traditions of my fathers" (Gal. 1:14), and so he was destroying Christ's Church.
The spiritual rebirth or transformation of the Pharisee Saul into the Apostle Paul is described in chapters 8 and 9 of the Acts of the Holy Apostles. The chronicler testifies that the Lord first brought bodily blindness upon the spiritually blind Saul so that he would understand that he could not see the path to salvation in God. And when Christ addressed his conscience and asked:
“Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?" (Acts 9:4),
And when Saul realized that the risen and ascended Jesus Christ was speaking to him, he understood that he was on the wrong path, that he was acting against the will of God.
And then a spiritual shift occurred - he turned to Jesus as Lord, asking Him to show him where to go and what to do to fulfill the will of God. From the time Saul received his sight, both bodily and spiritually, when he was baptized and set out on the path of serving Christ, as Apostle Paul, he remained faithful to God until his martyrdom. St. Luke, the author of The Acts, bears witness about the Apostle Paul:
“preaching the kingdom of God and teaching the things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ with all confidence, no one forbidding him.” (Acts 28:31)
Later, Apostle Paul addressed other spiritually dead people, and called out:
“Awake, you who sleep, Arise from the dead, And Christ will give you light.” (Ephesians 5:14)
And this remains one of the fundamental missionary tasks of the Church of Christ - to awaken the spiritual dead and raise them to life in Christ Jesus, just as we must constantly take care to find the lost sheep who wander along the paths of destruction, without Christ.
We must always be aware that Christ was able by His divine grace to raise the son of the widow of Nain from bodily death, and He was able to raise Saul the Pharisee from spiritual perdition.
Resurrection, a return to life, can only be performed by God. The Lord Himself said:
“For as the Father raises the dead and gives life to them, even so the Son gives life to whom He will.”
(John 5:21)
Therefore, whether it is the Heavenly Father or His Son, there is only one source from God, which can give us life. We know that even in modern times, people who seemed spiritually lost in debauchery, in rebellion against God’s ordinances, and who rejected all that is holy, return to their Creator through the action and influence of God. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, many so-called “hippies” emerged, who used drugs and pursued unlimited freedom in relationships between the sexes, rejecting all moral laws of the Church of Christ. Yet, by the mid-1970s, many of these seemingly lost people began to preach about Christ. They were still wandering along various side paths, but they had already adopted slogans such as:
“Christ - our hope”; “Jesus Christ - the Lamb of God”; “Jesus Christ - King of kings,” and so on.
Some journalists were even surprised:
“Who is it that so influenced those lost souls: the police, prison, parents, or some controlling leaders?”
Observers cannot understand this dramatic change, but we, who are believers, are aware that only God, the Lord Jesus Christ, can perform such spiritual resurrections, as well as bodily ones.
And who could have influenced Mykola Rudenko, a Ukrainian poet who for many years was a communist, was brought up and lived under the influence of the godless ideology, yet suddenly spoke out as a confessor of God's truth, clearly disassociating himself from the senselessness of godlessness, and called for:
“Let the King of Heaven rule over us.” (Epiphany, p. 125)
A priest of the enslaved Orthodox Church in the Soviet Union, Dimitri Dudko, in his book Our Hope, gives a number of living examples of middle-aged and younger people who seek God and find Him in a country where believers are brutally persecuted and constantly despised.
We are not inclined to make rosy optimistic expectations - the road to a mass awakening and resurrection of people in the Lord may still be difficult and with great obstacles, but God is able to overcome all the obstacles put up by the devil's servants. Therefore, let us arm ourselves with patience and never forget that God can perform great miracles of resurrection, revival where spiritual or bodily death seems to have already prevailed...
In this same land where we live, where freedom and liberty of conscience prevail, there also exists freedom for unrestrained propaganda of various immoral and godless theories by all means of modern communication. Therefore, let us be vigilant and exert maximum effort to protect our children and youth from hostile attacks, often concealed by insidious means. Let us remember the testimony of Christ:
“And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence...”.
(Matthew 11:12)
Let us place our hope in God, but let us not fold our hands in inaction.
Let us also not forget the truth about upbringing as expressed by our national prophet, T. Shevchenko:
“A heart once filled with goodness will never grow cold.”
Let us fill the souls of our children and youth with the goodness of the Christian faith and the highest values of our culture, so that the hearts of our descendants never grow cold in love for our Ukrainian people and in love for our Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen.
Very Rev. Fr. Taras Slavchenko
Taras Slavchenko was born on March 8, 1918 in Nikopol, Dnipropetrovsk region in Ukraine. After graduating from school and the Pedagogical College, he entered the language and literature faculty of the Scientific Pedagogical Institute. Having successfully completed it in 1938, he served as a teacher in a secondary school.
