The words of the risen Christ, whom Paul met on the Damascus road, make a twofold impression. On the one hand, everything is simple and clear: it is useless to kick against the goads, God is in any case stronger than a human being, and it is not for a human being, even one as gifted in every respect as Paul, to resist the Kingdom entering the world. And yet: are there so few people resisting it? Does Christ appear to all of them as He appeared to Paul? The answer is obvious. Only one question remains: why is it so? Can the Risen One not appear to every doubter and even every opponent, so that, having run into Him as into the goad, the person would be convinced and turn from an opponent into a faithful follower, as happened with Paul?

If we consider this question, to use a modern expression, from a technical point of view, there is no problem here. The problem lies elsewhere: in a person’s spiritual choice and in the freedom of his will. The Kingdom cannot be imposed by force; it can only be accepted voluntarily. And not because an unbelieving person cannot see it, for if God wills, anyone will see the Kingdom, but because the structure of the Kingdom is formed by relationships of love that bind its inhabitants with God and with Christ, all of them with one another, and finally Christ Himself with His heavenly Father. Here one cannot get anywhere without goodwill: one cannot be made loving by force, and it is impossible to love against one’s will.

But what then about Paul, who ran into Christ and His love as into the goad? Where is freedom here? At first glance it seems that in this case there is no question of any freedom, if not for one “but”: Paul, while still Saul, had already made his choice. A choice in favor of God, the Torah, and the path of righteousness, as he understood them, of course. Now God only had to correct his ideas about Himself, about the Messiah, about the Torah, and about the path of righteousness. And He does this, quickly and decisively, in keeping with the character and personal qualities of the one whose path He wants to set straight. Having become Paul, Saul changed radically, qualitatively: he was joined to the life of that Kingdom about which previously he could only dream. But his spiritual vector remained the same; in this respect he did not betray himself. He only walked his path to the end, and at the end found what he had been seeking: the Messiah and the Kingdom.

Christ called Himself bread, and that alone was hard for His listeners to understand. But for those who remembered the unusual images characteristic of prophetic speeches, it would not have been hard to take the words about bread as one of those parables. Jesus says that His teaching, and He Himself, are as necessary as daily food - why not agree with this?

Such an understanding cannot be called wrong, and yet it is clearly insufficient. For twenty centuries already, for many people who accept Christ only as a sage and moral teacher, His words about Flesh and Blood have remained closed and incomprehensible - just as they were for many of His listeners then. It is enough to imagine a Jew who had firmly learned that the law of Moses not only forbids the eating of blood, but also regards everything connected with bleeding as defiling and requiring rites of purification. And suddenly he hears about the necessity of drinking blood, and human blood at that, and moreover the Blood of this strange preacher. Even for prophetic allegory such a call sounds excessively scandalous!

For us, reading the Gospel many centuries later, it is easier to see that Christ is speaking here about the Eucharist; but we should not stop there. The meaning of the Eucharist is deep and incomprehensible in its fullness. At times it is useful to remember how shaken the ancient Jews were when they first heard Jesus' call to eat His Flesh and drink His Blood. Perhaps this will help us feel anew what the Last Supper was for the first generation of Christ's disciples. Unlike the other evangelists, John does not mention the disciples' partaking of the Body and Blood at the Last Supper. But the words of the Savior that he has preserved for us are just as important for understanding the essence of what was taking place then.

How is God's work done? Over the two-thousand-year history of the Church, more has been said and written about this than actual works of God have been done. And with all this, no one has managed to understand it exactly to this day, much less has anyone managed to create a single general theory that would describe the algorithm of divine-human interaction in history.

Why is that? One could simply answer: because the ways of the Lord are inscrutable. And that would certainly be true: God's plans are known to no one except God Himself. But the question is how God interacts with people, and here the situation is somewhat different: insofar as God includes a person in His plan, He reveals this design to him, at least in part.

The point is perhaps something else: the very quality of the relationship between God and man. If everything had been scheduled in advance with God, the situation for His servants would, perhaps, have been simpler in some respects: then it really would be possible to try to develop some classification of possible interactions, not immediately, and over a long time, but the task would be solvable in principle. But the point is that with God, it appears, only the goals are marked out in advance, while the plan for achieving them changes continually according to the developing spiritual situation, or, more simply, according to who has once again said to God another "yes" or another "no."

In any case, classifying this mosaic of possibilities and the options for their realization is, of course, completely unrealistic. What remains is only to listen and hear God, who, having set the task, will certainly indicate the one to whom it can be entrusted. This does not mean, however, that over time a new worker will not replace the former one. And the options may be completely unexpected, at times in no way corresponding to any human ideas.

Who, indeed, could have seriously considered Paul as a preacher of Christ at the time when he appeared in Damascus? Humanly speaking, the most reasonable choice would have been to keep away from him. But Ananias makes a different choice, acting as God commands him to act. And Saul the persecutor becomes Paul, the great witness of Christ and the Kingdom.