In his Epistle to the Hebrews, the Holy Apostle Paul offers the following definition of faith: "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen…" (11:1). Such "evidence of things not seen" obviously is obtained through vision and experience other than that focused on ordinary things, in the course of ordinary life. The longing to acquire such experience is a mystical attribute of the human soul; it exists in some measure within each person - lesser in some, greater in others. One may describe this characteristic longing as spiritual hunger, and the result of its search, religious experience. Such experience is the moving force behind the course of religious history. It is an experience born anew in each generation and in each individual soul, manifesting itself in different ways, but mystically remaining unchanged. Were it not for this experience of rebirth, religion would merely be the transmittal from generation to generation of an external, impersonal experience. Such religion, like the desert traveler deprived of water, would be doomed to perish. Yet, we already find in the words of the Old Testament prophets on the one hand and in the insights of ancient philosophies on the other, a germ of that thought expressed in the Epistle to the Hebrews, that "faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." The Prophets and the thinkers of old followed different paths, but arrived at the same conclusion that Divine, perfect existence, a homeland eternal, not subject to the dictates of the temporal, stands like a cupola, towering above the world of earthly experience.
In his teachings, our Lord Jesus Christ presents with great precision the image of our Heavenly home. He begins His Gospel with the words "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent ye, and believe the Gospel…" (Mark 1:15). Thus, repentance is a necessary pre-condition to our entering into the realm of "things unseen," the things after which the soul longs. The New Testament Greek verb translated as "to repent" in fact expresses far more than simple regret for past deeds of which our conscience accuses us, for the shameful actions we resolve henceforth not to commit. Literally, it means "to experience a change of mind." In ordinary speech, it may be characterized as a challenge, a challenge to undertake a fundamental review of the values we serve, even a challenge to renounce our ordinary habits of thought and deed. Were we wrong in thinking that success in life, others’ recognition was the most important thing on earth, are there in fact other things of greater importance?
Perhaps repentance is that very aspiration for freedom, that aspiration to become free not merely of the power of overt evil, but of what is vain and transitory by its very nature, of what is so obviously insignificant before the face of unavoidable death? Acquisition of such "evidence of things unseen" is a difficult path. We need to acquire the ability to open our eyes, so that we might see what we could not heretofore - the Kingdom of Heaven, described by the Savior as coming ever closer, and as already at hand.
Elsewhere in the New Testament, it is called "the treasure in Heaven," or "life eternal." If, upon becoming sensitive to religious life, we accept the Gospel of Christ as the answer to our search, then the Kingdom of Heaven, whose entry is man’s single, ultimate goal, reveals itself to us as our Heavenly and eternal home. For Christ not only bears witness to eternal life, but also reveals to us its substance. It is peace, happiness, the perfect light of Divine love which permeates a new, eternal existence. This image of the Heavenly Kingdom, our Heavenly Home, is the crux of the Christian Gospel and of all Christian hope.
Without the image of the Heavenly Kingdom as its central and essentially its single focus, the preaching of the Gospel would be bereft of meaning, and would turn to salt and lose its power. This truth of Christian revelation moves the enemies of the Christian Faith to intensified assaults on the Faith. Their attacks rest on the premise that the image of the Heavenly Kingdom causes man to turn away from human problems and toward illusions, unfounded and unprovable. But any honest effort to investigate the essence of "unseen" religious experience witnesses to its reality – of course not by means of the intellect, but by what is beyond the intellect. Its reality can be denied only out of ignorance or out of malice, something the Fathers of the Church described as "hardened insensitivity", not merely a lack of faith, but a willful rejection of religious knowledge/cognition. It is conceivable that one born blind might not only deny the presence of light and the beauty of nature, but, thinking that others were trying to trick him, might rise to anger at any mention of them. The preaching of the Gospel is a challenge to our blindness, to the blindness that insists that its deficient understanding single, universally binding one.
Archpriest Victor Potapov
October, 2000