An Instruction for the Sunday of Antipascha (Thomas Sunday): On Christianity

“Blessed are those who have not seen yet have believed” (Jn. 20:29).

These words were spoken by the Lord to His faithful disciple, who had refused to believe in the resurrection of the Lord when his brethren, the Apostles, had told him of the Lord’s resurrection; these words were spoken to the disciple who had declared that he would not believe in the Lord’s resurrection until he himself was personally assured of so miraculous and so important an event for all mankind. “We have seen the Lord”, the other holy Apostles, to whom the Lord had appeared on the very day of His resurrection in the evening, said joyfully to the holy Apostle Thomas, He had penetrated into the upper chamber without opening the doors of the chamber. The chamber was tightly shut and barred for protection from the hatred of the Jews, who had just accomplished deicide and taken every measure against the foretold resurrection. “Unless I see the mark of the nails in His hands”, answered Thomas, overcome by the joyfulest news, “and put my finger into the marks of the nails and put my hand into His side, I will not believe” (Jn. 20:25). Thus it was not unbelief hostile to God that was expressed—thus was expressed ineffable joy; thus the soul expressed itself before the magnitude of an event surpassing human understanding, before the magnitude of an event that had changed the condition of mankind. With Christ and in Christ mankind rose.

The all-good Lord did not delay in providing to His beloved disciple the assurance he desired. After a week had passed since His first appearance to the Apostles, the Lord appeared to them again, when they were all together again, and Thomas was with them. The doors were locked, as before, for fear of the Jews. The Apostles suddenly saw the Lord standing in their midst. “Peace be with you”, He said to them. Then, turning to Thomas, He says to him: “Put your finger here and see My hands; and bring your hand and put it in My side: and do not be unbelieving, but believing” (Jn. 20:26–27). By these words the Lord showed that He, omnipresent according to His Godhead, was present in the midst of His disciples even then, when Thomas, supposing Him absent, was expressing to them his state of bewilderment at their account of the resurrection. Thomas wished to be assured of the resurrection: he receives an incomparably higher assurance, at which he no longer pays attention to assurance of the resurrection. “My Lord and my God!” exclaims Thomas (Jn. 20:28). “Having been assured of Your Godhead, I no longer seek assurance of the resurrection. To You, almighty God, all actions are possible, surpassing human comprehension.”

In response to the Apostle’s confession, the Lord blessed those who had not seen yet had believed. The Lord remembered us, He remembered all who had not seen Him with bodily eyes! He remembered us, separated from Him both by space and by time! He remembered us at the time when He, having assumed humanity, offered it as a sacrifice for mankind, and already glorified with the glory of the resurrection, stood in the midst of His holy Apostles! We too, present here in His holy temple, remembering the event from which we are separated by eighteen centuries, are not forgotten by the Lord. Blessed are we who have not seen Him, yet believe in Him! Blessed are those among us who believe in Him! The essence of the matter lies in faith. It brings man near to God and makes man one with God; it will present man before the face of God and place him in the last day of this world’s life, at the beginning of the eternal day, at the right hand of God’s throne for the eternal vision of God, for eternal delight in God, for eternal reign with God.

“Blessed are those who have not seen yet have believed”. By these words the Lord united with the Apostles, as one, all believers throughout the earth and in all times. When He offered prayer concerning the Apostles to His Father before His departure to His saving Passion for us, He united all true Christians with the Apostles. “I am not asking on behalf of these alone”, He said, I am not praying only for the Apostles, “but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word” (Jn. 17:20). So here too: He makes all children of the Church partakers of the blessedness of the Apostles. “Blessed are your eyes, for they see,” He said to the Apostles, “and your ears, for they hear. Truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people” of the Old Testament “longed to see what you see, but did not see it: and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it” (Mt. 13:16–17). The blessed eyewitnesses and servants of the Word have handed down to us what they saw and heard (Lk. 1:3), when “the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen”, says one of these eyewitnesses of the Word, “his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth” (Jn. 1:14). The most clear account of the Apostles makes us as it were spectators of events of which the Apostles were eyewitnesses. Through the mediation of Church sacraments we have entered into essential communion with the Lord and abide in this communion through these sacraments. God, invisible to the senses of the flesh, living faith makes visible to the eye of the soul—the mind (Heb. 11:27). A way of life according to the Lord’s commandments brings us a mysterious appearance of the Lord. He appears spiritually within the heart, when the Lord’s disciples—the concepts formed and made familiar to the mind from the Gospel—gather in the heart, close its doors, so that there may not penetrate there the Jews—thoughts hostile to the Lord, rejecting His most holy teaching.

Being partakers of the condition of the holy Apostles, we dare to assert that our condition is more blessed than the condition of the Old Testament righteous. They believed in the coming Redeemer; we believe in the One who has come and accomplished redemption. To them grace was promised; we have received grace in abundance, have it in our hands, make use of it according to our will. The Giver of gifts is infinitely rich and generous. If we feel want, it is we alone who are responsible. The absence of a sense of grace is produced by our weakness in faith; to speak more frankly: by its rejection.

Why do we not have faith? Because we have taken no pains, have been unwilling to take any effort toward studying Christianity, toward acquiring faith through hearing (Rom. 10:17), which provides a clear theoretical knowledge of Christianity, toward acquiring faith through works (Jas. 2:18), which provides an active knowledge of Christianity. From these two forms of knowledge the one who has acquired them is raised, is raised by God Himself as having testified by the means available to him and possible for him to the sincerity of his desire to know God, is raised to the mysterious, essential, spiritual knowledge, always united with living faith. “Whoever has my commandments”, said the Lord, “and keeps them is the one who loves me; and the one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him” (Jn. 14:21).

Christianity can be likened to an excellent, vast harbor, in which with equal convenience vessels of all sizes and all types of construction can moor. The humble fisher’s boat finds shelter in this harbor, as does the huge merchant ship laden with diverse cargo, the ironclad giant armed with countless means of destruction and death, and the ornate yacht of king and nobleman, designed for solemn and festive voyages. Christianity receives into its bosom a man at every age, in every state and condition, with every ability, at every degree of education: it receives and saves him. “If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart one believes to righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made to salvation” (Rom. 10:9–10). Whoever accepts Christianity with all sincerity of heart in the bosom of the Orthodox Church, in which alone true Christianity is preserved, will be saved. All men have been redeemed by one price—Christ, and in the work of redemption the redemptive price alone has significance. It is given without distinction and without partiality for each one who wishes to be redeemed, who believes in the significance of the price and confesses this significance. The confession of the significance of the redemptive price is at the same time a denial of every personal significance and worth. The redemptive price is given upon condition of self-denial. The simplest man, having no development according to the principles of the world, is saved through Christianity equally with the most learned and the wise. Christianity, as a gift of the all-perfect God, abundantly satisfies all: faith from sincerity of heart takes the place of understanding for the infant and the simple, while the wise man, who approaches Christianity in the ordained manner (1 Cor. 3:18), will find in it inexhaustible depths, inaccessible heights of wisdom. In Christianity are hidden true theology and genuine psychology and metaphysics. Only a Christian can acquire the correct knowledge accessible to man—knowledge of man, of holy spirits and rejected spirits, of the world invisible to bodily eyes. From the enlightenment furnished by Christianity is formed that view of human learning which God has of it. “The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God… The Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile”, the thoughts from which their learning is composed, “they are futile” (1 Cor. 3:19–20). These thoughts, or forms of knowledge, relate only to the temporal and vain, lead their possessor to vainglory, to pride, to self-deception, to the destruction of life in cares for the perishable and transitory alone, to sinful life, to the rejection and forgetting of God and eternity. When a man, not illumined by the light of Christ, dares to reason about spiritual matters, then his mind wanders as though in a dark, boundless desert and instead of true knowledge, which he has no possibility of acquiring, he invents opinions and dreams, clothes them in dark and complicated words, deceives himself and others with them, recognizing wisdom where with complete justice one should recognize madness and derangement.

It is strange, it is astounding, the blindness and hardness of those contemporaries of Christ who saw Him, heard His most holy teaching, were witnesses of His wondrous signs and did not believe in Him. Standing as though seven centuries away, as from the height of a distant mountain, amazed at human insensitivity, the prophet cried out to this multitudinous crowd of living corpses: “You will indeed hear but never understand; and you will indeed see but never perceive” (Mt. 13:14). Equally strange is the present unbelief of many in Christianity shining with the rays of the clearest truth. Scripture explains the cause of this unbelief, saying: “For this people’s heart has grown dull” (Mt. 13:15). It has become carnal, dull from carnal life; it has become blind and deaf, it has become dead to all that is spiritual, eternal, and Divine.

The study of Christianity proves its truth with complete certainty and decisiveness. The conviction produced by proper study of Christianity—a conviction about the existence of all the invisible things taught by Christianity—is far stronger than the conviction about the existence of visible things produced by the senses. This conviction is so true that thousands upon thousands of men abandoned the visible to acquire the invisible, did not hesitate to seal their conviction with blood, were not terrified by the fierce tortures with which madness and frenzy attempted to wrest from them a renunciation of their convictions.

The most superficial glance at the establishment and spread of Christianity is itself astounding. It proclaims to the hearing of the universe that the establishment of Christianity is by no means a human establishment, but a Divine one. The Lord, having assumed humanity, was pleased to appear not in the splendour of earthly greatness, but in the state of earthly humiliation. According to the flesh He descended from a royal line; but this line long ago departed from the height of its royal throne, left the royal palaces and dwelt in hovels, entered the ranks and state of common folk, earning their livelihood by the labour of their hands. Without borrowing anything from the power and glory of mankind, the God-man also borrowed nothing from the wisdom of mankind. He was untaught (Jn. 7:15). Going out to preach at thirty years of age, He chose twelve disciples for Himself from the same class of common folk to which He Himself belonged. These disciples were the simplest of men, untaught, illiterate, infants, as the Gospel calls them in relation to development according to the principles of fallen nature (Acts 4:13)—such were the persons destined to be the founders of Christianity.

What does this Teacher bequeath and foretell to these disciples? He bequeaths to them to recognize in Him the God become man, to convince the whole world of this, to turn the whole world to the service and worship of Himself, destroying all religions of the world. He bequeaths to them and all who believe in Him a renunciation of the pleasures of the world and a renunciation of themselves for faith in Him and for union with Him. Of Himself He says that He will be executed with the shameful death of criminals, and then will draw all to Himself. Of them He says that they will be hated by all, persecuted, slain, that they will catch all men with their teaching, overcoming and subduing both the powerful and the wise of the earth, that they are being sent like sheep to wolves (Mt. 10:16), that from this struggle the sheep will emerge as decisive victors.

According to the reasoning of the world, the establishment of Christianity is senseless; the founder’s purpose is an unattainable dream born of unbalanced imagination and love of glory; the means and instruments of execution are insignificant, strange, ridiculous; in an undertaking in all respects incongruous with everything, impossibility is evident, destruction is evident in conjunction with the beginning. Only three years were used by the Teacher for the formation of disciples; no effort was made to acquaint them even with literacy necessary for reading Holy Scripture; nothing was provided for their sustenance: on the contrary, they were commanded not to possess anything, and instead of present means for sustenance they were given the promise that Divine Providence would furnish them with all that was necessary for temporal life.

Such a spectacle incomprehensible to human reason is contemplated in the very establishment of Christianity; then a new, equally wondrous spectacle is presented by the events that immediately followed the establishment. The events began in Jerusalem and encompassed the universe in the shortest time. The God-man was crucified upon the tree of the cross. The death penalty on the cross in those times was equivalent to the present death penalty by hanging. Hanging is used to put to death those criminal offenders whom they wish to disgrace by the very manner of death. Hanging on the cross, naked, showered with mockeries, the God-man began the foretold conquest of mankind: “And if I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself” (Jn. 12:32). While He hung on the cross, crucified like Him, the thief confessed Him as Lord, and the centurion guarding Him confessed Him as the Son of God. Ten days after the Lord’s ascension into heaven, the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles was accomplished: they were filled with manifold wisdom; they who had not spoken their own language correctly, who were illiterate, spoke in all the languages of the world, began to perform the most wondrous miracles, began to explain Scripture which they had never read. Thousands of Jews accepted Christianity. Dismayed by the successes of the Apostles, the Sanhedrin, consisting of chief priests and other most honored and learned men of the Jewish people, summoned the unlettered Apostles before itself, questioned them, heard their answers and teaching, to which it had no response. Finding no words to set against the words expressing truth, the Sanhedrin resorted to threats, beatings, imprisonment, stoning, thereby exposing its weakness and the power of its opponents. Following the Sanhedrin, Herod rose up against the Apostles and, to the greatest satisfaction of the Sanhedrin (Acts 12:3), cut off the head of one of the Apostles. The persecution in Jerusalem forced many of Christ’s disciples to flee from it. They were scattered throughout the universe and everywhere sowed Christianity, watering the seeds with their blood. Within twenty years Christianity had encompassed the universe. Fifty years after Christ’s resurrection, Christians were so numerous that in one eastern army of the Roman Emperor Trajan, there were found eleven thousand Christians. He condemned them all without exception to death100, to the amazement of sensible men, who recognized it as the greatest madness to destroy one’s own troops. Romilus, the commander of the Christian unit, was first beaten severely, then his head was cut off. Ten thousand were crucified upon crosses in the desert near Ararat; the rest were slain in various ways. Trajan’s deed had imitators in later times.

The Roman emperors, lords of the universe, armed themselves with implacable hatred and tyranny against Christianity. Neither the Celts, nor the Marcomanni, nor Attila, nor Gaiseric destroyed so many people in the Roman Empire as did their emperors—persecutors of Christianity101. The bloody struggle between wolves and lambs continued for three centuries. Some acted by sword, fire, wild beasts, suffocating dungeons, hunger and thirst, by every means of torture and murder; others fought by the force of the spirit, by the force of faith, by the force of God, enduring the most terrible tortures, dying magnanimously for the faith. Victory crowned the three-century struggle, and in the beginning of the fourth century the Christian faith became dominant in the world. The strong and the wise of the earth bowed before the teaching of unlettered fishermen; all peoples bowed before it. The cross, hitherto a sign of shameful execution, became a sign of the highest honour: kings and bishops wear it on their heads and breasts; it crowns the temples of the true God; it serves as a sign for every Orthodox Christian, the sign of his faith, his hope, his love. Who does not recognize in the establishment of Christianity the will of God, the power of God, the action of God, surpassing the reason and power of man? The impossible, the supernatural was accomplished; the work and deed of God was accomplished.

Such is Christianity as it appears at a general glance at it. More detailed study of Christianity leads to a more definite conviction of its Divinity. The strongest conviction arises from living according to the evangelical commandments, as the prophet said: “From your precepts I gain understanding” (Ps. 118:104). The conviction from the fulfillment of the commandments is a conviction acting in the soul of man itself: it is stronger than any conviction from without. The evangelical commandments calm, enliven, strengthen the soul. One who has felt their action in himself acquires living faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and it expresses itself before the Lord as a pledge of the heart through certain and decisive confession: “You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed and have come to know that you are the Holy One of God” (Jn. 6:68–69).

“Bring your finger here”, says the Saviour to the wavering disciple, the disciple struck with bewilderment before the magnitude of God’s deeds, “bring your hand here,… and do not be unbelieving, but believing” (Jn. 20:27). “Touch me and see” (Lk. 24:39); begin to act according to the direction of My commandments, touch Me by living according to My will and you will see Me, the invisible One; you will see Me by the spiritual feeling of your soul; each one who thus touches Me will be assured in Me and in the delight of finding Me will exclaim with My beloved Apostle: “My Lord and my God” (Jn. 20:28). Amen.

The Suffering of the Martyr Romilus. Menaion (Reader), September 6.

The population of the Roman Empire in the time of Augustus numbered about one hundred million; by the time of Constantine the Great, three hundred years later, it had declined to sixty million. The boundaries of the Empire remained unchanged.