Very Rev. Ihor Kutash kutash@unicorne.org 

Many years ago one of the world's renowned scholars of the classics, Dr. E.V. Rieu (1887-1972), completed a great translation of Homer into modern English for the Penguin Classics series. At the time he was 60 years old and had been a nonbeliever. The publisher soon approached him again and asked him to translate the Gospels. When Dr. Rieu's son heard this he said, "It will be interesting to see what Father will make of the four Gospels. It will be even more interesting to see what the four Gospels make of Father." The son didn't have to wonder for long. Within a year E.V. Rieu, the lifelong skeptic, responded to the good news of Jesus Christ by becoming a professing sincere and consistent Christian.

He then noted down an intriguing thought which is completely at variance with those who seem to feel that the Faith of Christ is becoming a museum piece – because the number of those who practice it appear to be dwindling. It is not a question of the number of participants in the visible institution of the Church, Dr. E. V. Rieu proclaimed:

“Let the Gospels speak. Of what I have learnt from these documents in the course of my long task, I will say nothing now. Only this, that they bear the seal of the Son of Man and God, they are the Magna Carta of the human spirit. Were we to devote to their comprehension a little of the selfless enthusiasm that is now expended on the riddle of our physical surroundings, we would cease to say that Christianity is coming to an end -- we might even feel that it had only just begun.”

The same enthusiasm regarding the future of the Faith of Christ was shared by the as yet uncanonized Hieromartyr Fr. Alexander Men (reposed September 9, 1990). He too said that the Faith of Christ has only barely begun and that its history may be seen as the history of a baby which has only just begun to communicate with the world around it.

It is not at all a question of the number of its adherents – but rather a matter of the unfolding of its teachings through the transformation of the human spirit from ignorance and wandering about in the darkness into the consciousness of God’s omnipresence, of His omnipotent Love, and of the only barely awakened awareness of the potential of human beings to live as children of God as they discover the infinite expanses of understanding and creativity that lie before them.

How is it in our own lives? Does it not seem to us that this joyous mystery of the working of God’s Spirit in us has only just begun? So it is, dear brothers and sisters. We in the Church of Christ are not simply fellow-travelers on our way to our graves. We are on our way to Life – the Life that shone forth from an empty grave almost two thousand years ago. That blessed shining has begun to decisively break through the darkness of the night, heralding a glorious never-ending Day!

See Ukrainian version.