Here we are confronted with a very important, but not well described in literature phenomenon of God's action. It is often such that words cannot tell about it, words turn out to be powerless. The Apostle Paul testifies that he heard verbs which, as it is said in the Russian translation, "cannot be told to a man", in the original – "it is impossible to retell" (2 Corinthians 12:4). When we read in Acts how Jesus appeared to the Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus, it is said in one place that the disciples "stood in a daze, hearing the voice, but seeing no one" (9:7), and in another that they saw the apparition, but did not hear the voice (22:9): "They saw the light and were afraid, but they did not hear the voice of Him who spoke." Of course, the question arises: in what case was the mistake made?

However, there is no mistake in either case, but the phenomenon experienced by Paul and those around him is such that it is impossible to convey it in words. Liturgical tradition and Tradition resolve this question definitely: we are talking about one event, told in different ways. With this seeming contradiction, the Gospel tells us that the main thing of man's experience with God cannot be expressed in words.

Finally, here Jesus pronounces the words: "To whom you forgive sins, they will be forgiven; on whom you leave, they will remain" (John 20:23). These words repeat the idea expressed twice in the Gospel of Matthew, in chapters 13 and 18. Of all that is in the Gospel, these words are perhaps the most confusing to the orthodox Jew, to whom it is clear that only God can forgive sins, or the one against whom the sin has been committed, but not someone else. Of course, when we forgive a person, we do not absolve him of responsibility for what he has done. We remove from his heart the heaviness that arises after he feels guilty, a sinner who needs repentance. And he is given the strength to overcome the consequences of this sin. Experience shows that sin can crush a person. It is from such crushing that Jesus frees the paralytic.

Repentance frees a person from being crushed by sin, but not from responsibility for what he has done. We often perceive absolution as an act of absolution from responsibility. That is why sometimes those critics of Christianity who say that a Christian can sin as much as he wants, and then repent and everything will be forgiven him. Of course, the essence of repentance lies elsewhere. It frees a person from the weight that can crush him. In the sacrament of repentance, a person is given, as it were, the opportunity to plow the very earth that he once burned, to plow in order to return it to its former beauty. Unfortunately, this does not always work out, especially if sins against the dead are recognized. In this case, debts to the dead must be repaid to the living. For those who did not have time to help their grandmother, there are other people's grandmothers. This is the salvific nature of the sacrament of repentance—in its orientation not toward the past, but toward the future.

The third meeting of Jesus with the disciples takes place a week later. Suddenly appearing before them, Jesus turns to Thomas, the apostle who had been absent the previous time and who refused to believe that the Master had risen until he himself had seen the wounds on His body. This is another indication of the distrust for which Jesus rebukes the disciples in Mark's Gospel; here it is depicted as Thomas' distrust. Jesus turns to Thomas and shows him His wounds on His hands, legs and ribs, that is, He shows Himself Crucified to His disciple. And Thomas recognizes the Risen One in the Crucified One, he recognizes the reality of His sufferings, the endless pain that He endured on the Cross.

In this sense, the experience of Thomas is comparable to the experience of the myrrh-bearing women. The women saw the Resurrected One because they were going to the Dead One. They did not renounce Him, who was ridiculed and executed, and therefore they were the first to meet the Risen One. Thomas, touching Jesus' wounds, realizes that Jesus has risen. It is impossible to talk about the Risen One while forgetting the Cross, although we sometimes try to do so. The empty tomb is inseparable from the Cross on which He was crucified; One without the other loses its meaning.

For the fourth time, Jesus appears to the disciples on the Sea of Tiberias, and again they do not immediately recognize Him. But when they find out, although they do not dare to believe it, Jesus takes the bread (in the Greek text the same verb lambano is used, "I take," as in the story of the Last Supper and in the story of the multiplication of the loaves) and says to them: "Come and eat," that is, he performs the sacrament of the Eucharist (John 21:12-13). In the description of this fourth apparition, the Eucharist is spoken of as the center of the spiritual life of Christians.

Appearing to His disciples for the last, fifth time, Jesus asks Peter: "Do you love Me?" – and three times he asks what would seem to be the same question. But it is clear from the Greek text that Jesus first asks, using the verb agapao, "Do you love Me with that sublime love that only God can love?" Then He uses the verb phileo, "Do you love Me as a Friend?" So, reading in Greek, you can understand that Jesus does not expect His disciples to worship, but to love Him as a Friend, an active love embodied in real deeds. Hearing the answer He was waiting for: "You know that I love You," He says: "Follow Me." So, it turns out that in order to be a Christian, you need to follow Christ along the path that He has already walked.

Looking at the other disciple "whom Jesus loved," Peter asks, "Lord! and what is he?" — and to this Jesus answers: "What do you care about this? thou shalt follow me" (John 21:21-22). A very important lesson can also be drawn from this text: the task of a Christian is not to think about the path of others, but to be honest in his own path to Christ. The path of another is the result of his personal relationship with Christ, his personal faith in God. The task of a Christian is to get rid of hatred, envy and all kinds of bad feelings towards another person and to try to help if he feels bad, but not to try to change the path along which he is walking. And in this regard, we constantly find ourselves in the situation of people who have not heard Jesus' answer to Peter.

Итак, во время пяти явлений Иисуса, о которых рассказывают нам 20-я и 21-я главы Евангелия от Иоанна, Иисус касается самых важных тем, связанных с жизнью христиан, — тех, кто поверил в Него.

Он говорит о погружении в уникальные отношения между человеком и Богом как Отцом;

о том, что Его отношения с Богом становятся, не теряя своей уникальности, характерными и необходимыми также и для Его учеников;

Он говорит о мире, вне которого нет христианства, о полноте открытости друг другу;

показывая Свои раны, Он возвращает нас к Кресту, к той человеческой боли, которой куплена наша свобода и жизнь во Христе, — это дается непросто, через Его язвы;