NOTES for Act 8:1-25

How astonishing and frightening it is to find oneself in Jerusalem during the persecution, to feel the people’s agitation, fear, and trembling, and at the same time their ever-growing faith and joy in following Christ. Before us is something very much like the events of the Gospel: persecution, confusion, and mourning for the one who was killed. Only this time it is Christ’s disciples who are involved, and Stephen has been killed. As before, “devout men” are found to bury the martyr. The mourning for Stephen subsides, but an echo can already be heard: people grieve because Saul is putting their relatives in prison. Yet at the same time we see Philip proclaiming the good news of Christ, the Messiah who has come. We see miracles and healings, people attentive to the word, and “great joy” (Acts 8:8). So it is in our own time as well: difficulties can become fertile ground for sensing God’s presence, for deep prayer, and for joy. This is precisely why the Lord asks us to accept without resistance everything He gives, since “all things work together for good for those who love the Lord” (Rom 8:28). Every kind of difficulty is meant to strengthen us on the path of following Him.

Simon Magus is a very contemporary figure. Even in our time it is not hard to meet magicians and psychics who present themselves as someone great, and whose power many confuse with the power of God. For many of our contemporaries it has become usual to place Christianity in one row with other systems of worldview and to "enrich" it by combining it with occult and other "paranormal" practices.

Simon Magus believed and was baptized. But in his example we see the first case of how the inertia of a former spirituality continues to manifest itself and even intensify after conversion. It is understandable that those powers to which a person has long turned do not want to let him go from themselves, but such a person also needs to divide clearly his newly acquired faith from his former fascinations. Simon thought that the power of the Holy Spirit was like the powers with which he had dealt until then, only much more powerful. It seems that Simon's falsehood consisted in this, and not only in the desire to obtain God's gift for money, in the striving to bring relations of buying and selling into spiritual life.

Later many legends arose about Simon Magus, according to which he returned to magical practice, but the Book of Acts breaks off the story of Simon with words about the possibility of his repentance. Simon had such a possibility, and his present-day imitators still have it too, if only they come to their senses. But whether Simon brought repentance is also not said. He asks the apostles to pray for him, apparently considering them stronger than himself, but he does not pray himself. Something, apparently, hindered him...

Sometimes from our parents, sometimes from other people, we happen to hear something close in meaning to: "You are living wrongly, and if things keep going this way, it will go badly for you." And we answer: "Why are you jinxing me?" We are so unwilling to see the cause of troubles, or even disasters, in ourselves that we are ready to find that cause in the fact that someone has rebuked us.

So it is here with Simon the Magician. Exposed by the apostles for his pagan approach to Christian life and called by them to personal repentance, that is, to inner change and turning to God, he asks them to pray for him, supposing that in this way their "curse" will be removed. As though it were not Simon's inner paganism, but the words of the apostles, that were leading him toward a future spiritual catastrophe.