Christ Is Risen! 🌞
The part where the apostles were imprisoned by the Jews for their preaching is omitted, but an angel of God appeared to them first in the prison and secretly led them out, telling them to continue preaching about Christ, which they did.
The reading describes events that further perplexed the Jews, and also reiterates Peter’s words to the Jews in the case.
For more information, please follow the links:
26042023.html
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God of our fathers
– the Father. In the New Testament, the apostles
often speak of the Resurrection of Christ saying that God (the Father)
raised the Son. But there are also many places where it is said that
Christ Himself was raised, as the Church says, by the power of His
Godhead
. This is also an obvious indication that Christ is also God,
like the Father (generally one of the most important).
The part about the miraculous feeding of more than 5,000 people with 5 loaves and 2 fish is omitted. The reading begins with the fact that people saw this miracle.
In general, the reading shows a certain mystery of Jesus to the people at that time. He arrives secretly from them in another area (miraculously walking on water), and then does not explain Himself, but continues His Divine preaching.
And for Christ, it was a way to move on to the preaching about the bread of life, the Sacrament of the Eucharist, the Communion.
The Lord evaded the desire of people to make Him king, because this was not the way He served for the salvation of people. There is also a lesson here for people.
The salvation of a person does not lie in living an interesting life full of unusual deeds and events, adventures, and achieving success in them, but in doing the will of God.
God is always interesting, always worthy of attention, always actual. Therefore, even if a person has not had any visible adventures in life, but has lived it with God (which means that he or she has overcome temptations, done good, etc.), the value of his or her life lies in getting closer to God and ultimately in reaching God – that is, in living in God.
It is God who gathers our lives together, makes them whole
. And
moving away from God, a person will face the fact that his or her
holistic life will be exchanged
, spent
, given away
for certain
events, for a certain set and sequence, which may not even be consistent
and holistic.
As the Lord says: Whoever does not gather with Me scatters
(Luke
XI, 23).
As the Lord says in the synoptic Gospels: Is not the soul greater
than food, and the body than clothing?
(Matthew VI, 25).
See also more about this in a good essay here:
https://oleksandr-zhabenko.github.io/en/Beauty.html
The way the Lord performs miracles, as well as the way the Sacraments are performed, is mysterious, but the Lord does not need our knowledge of mysteries, but openness to God’s actions. The Lord knows better than all of us where and how to act, and He does it, but we need to be open to God, to His actions.
The Lord also teaches us to value the eternal more than the temporal.
Glory be to Thee, our God, glory be to Thee!