People's Belief in the Resurrection
Thomas’ Sunday
Acts 5:12-20; John 20:19-31
During the existence of the Christian faith, the greatest objections and criticisms of the atheists of various shades were directed at the birth of Christ and, to an even greater extent, at the resurrection of Christ. And the Church celebrates Christmas and the Resurrection of Christ most solemnly.
At the appropriate time, we talk about the birth of Christ, now we shall consider the resurrection.
One of the arguments of the atheists, the god-deniers, is that legends, various stories about the resurrection of a god, the son of a certain god, existed in various ancient religions, especially in the ancient Egyptian religion.
Such legends, various stories about the resurrection of God, the gods, did exist. But it is indisputable that in various religions of different peoples who lived for thousands of years on separate continents and islands (for example, the Aztecs, the Maya in South America), without contact with other peoples, there were also stories about the great flood.
What does all this indicate?
All those pagan religions, despite the various misrepresentations, distortions of the concept of God, despite the false forms, rites, worship, blood sacrifices--even of people--also preserved some grains of truth, such as the flood, the coming of the Saviour (liberator), and His bodily death and resurrection.
But some of the grains of truth were intermixed, confused with the untruth of the pagans.
Therefore, when the Christian faith expresses the truths brought or accomplished by the Son of God, which in some respects coincide with pre-Christian religions, it does not indicate the borrowing of their traditions, but that a certain part of the truth was preserved in those distorted religions.
Christianity was also not the first to teach the immortality of human souls; the Brahmins, ancient Hindus, Chinese, and ancient Egyptians also held this belief, often independently of each other.
Only in those non-Christian religions did the true belief in the immortality of human souls degenerate and become distorted into the belief in the transmigration of human souls into animals (Hindus, Buddhists), of some people into others (Lamaism in Tibetan Buddhism), etc.
The Egyptians, for example, maintained their belief in the resurrection of people, in the connection of souls with their bodies, but they thought that the resurrection of bodies, the return of human souls to bodies, would be possible only if the bodies were preserved. That ia why the ancient Egyptians (the Copts are their descendants) developed mummification in such a way--mummies are preserved for thousands of years.
The embracing of belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ is not easy for everyone. In general, the resurrection from the dead is such a serious matter that it requires deep, indisputable evidence for all those who seek the truth to believe.
The closest disciples of Christ, the apostles, were the first to receive such irrefutable evidence, for they saw it with their own eyes when the Lord appeared to them. Thomas did not believe the testimony of his 10 friends, but the certitude of the apostle Thomas gives us, all people who seek to know the truth, the most certain proof that Jesus Christ rose bodily from the dead.
The desire of the Apostle Thomas to verify not only with his eyes but also with his fingers is the most convincing proof of the resurrection of Christ for all people who do not believe in the testimony of words alone, but require facts and certain proof.
Therefore, the distrust of the Apostle Thomas before the appearance of the risen Christ and his great and deep faith after the appearance of Jesus Christ strengthens our conviction that the Lord is truly risen.
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.
