Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Congratulations with the feast of the Resurrection of the Lord, as well as the feast of the Holy Archangel Michael and the other angels.

Today at the Liturgy we heard the closing words of the Holy Apostle Paul to the Galatian Christians. He calls on them to take notice of the fact that he personally wrote to them in his own, not very neat, handwriting. At other times he himself did not write, but dictated to a scribe, and only the concluding lines were signed personally by him. Because of the seriousness of the problem that began to disturb the Galatian Churches and to show without any doubt that this is his teaching, unadulterated by changes made by some scribe or anyone else, he personally writes everything.

Following this, Paul notes that the false teachers that appeared amongst them, urging and coercing them to follow the Jewish law, did this not out of a sense of piety, but rather out of fear of persecutions and a desire for worldly glory. For the Jew, the most important thing was the law, and therefore if the Christians were to continue to follow it, one could expect that the Jews would calm down somewhat and the persecutions stemming from them would subside. The persecutions from Roman officials could also be expected to stop, since there was a Roman law which guaranteed religious freedom to the Jews. If you follow the Jewish law, it means you are a Jew, therefore live calmly and safely. Of course, any person who attracts new members to a religious community will be respected, and so the Judaizing heretics could count on reverence and respect from other Jews for their efforts among the Christians.

The Holy Apostle Paul says that for him all this is nonsense. For him, the one important thing is the Lord’s Cross. Through baptism man dies for the old world and a new life begins, where there is no meaning to visible differences between Jews (the circumcised) and the pagans (the uncircumcised). Those who live according to this new rule, i. e. with faith in Christ, receive true peace and mercy and become true Jews (St. Paul calls such people the Israel of God).

He adds that henceforth no one should trouble him about this question. He has already explained everything to the Galatians, and therefore now is the time to humble oneself and accept his words as true. Perhaps the best argument that buttresses his position is the extraordinary effort which he undertook for the sake of spreading the Christian faith. The Epistle ends with a short prayer for the Grace of Christ to be with their spirits. Here again Paul emphasizes that true Christian faith is preoccupied with the spirit or the soul of a person and with eternal life, not with carnal earthly cares.

Having come to the end of the readings from the Epistle of the Holy Apostle Paul to the Galatians, we should remember the main idea of this letter, that we are saved through faith in the crucified Christ! Today we can compare our own lives to this idea. Does Christ stand before all else in our lives, or is there something else that animates our heart? The ancient Galatians began to pay a great deal of attention, religious attention, to something earthly which could not save people, i. e. the Jewish law. Let’s not fall into such a trap ourselves. Today we can also take notice of the zeal of the Apostle Paul. When he learned that his spiritual children were on the verge of turning towards heretical teachings, he immediately came to their help, taking up pen and with his own hand writing to them, even though this was not his usual way of doing things. Are we ready to drop our regular affairs and habits so as to correct our own deviations and lapses into sin, with such zeal? Through the prayers of the Apostle Paul may the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ help us in this.

priest Alexis