"If ye have faith, and doubt not... if ye
shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be
thou cast into the sea — it shall be done" (Matt. 21:21). The
history of the Church of Christ is filled with the miracles of the saints of all ages.
However, miracles are not performed by faith in general, but by Christian
faith. Faith is a reality not by the power of imagination and not by
self-hypnosis, but by the fact that it binds one with the source of all life
and power - with God. In the expression of the Hieromartyr Irenaeus, Bishop of
Lyons, faith is a vessel by which water is scooped up; but one must be next to
this water and must put the vessel into it: this water is the grace of God.
"Faith is the key to the treasure-house of God," writes St. John of
Kronstadt (My Life in Christ, Vol. I, p. 242 in the Russian
edition).
Faith is strengthened and its truth is confirmed
by the benefits of its spiritual fruits which are known by experience.
Therefore the Apostle instructs us, saying, "Examine yourselves,
whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves,
how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?" (2 Cor.
13:5).
Yet, it is difficult to give a definition of what
faith is. When the Apostle says, "Now faith is the substance of things
hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" (Heb. 11:1), without
touching here on the nature of faith, he indicates only what its gaze is
directed towards: towards that which is awaited, towards the invisible; and
thus he indicates precisely that faith is the penetration of the soul into the
future ("the substance of things hoped for") or into the invisible
("the evidence of things not seen"). This testifies to the mystical
character of Christian faith.
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