St Justin Popovich | All things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive (Matt. 21:22)

The more a man devotes himself to the ways of natural knowledge, the more he is seized on by fear and the less he can free himself from it. But if he follows faith, he is immediately freed and “as a son of God, has the power to make free use of all things.”

“The man who loves this faith acts like God in the use of all created things,” for to faith is given the power “to be like God in making a new creation.” Thus it is written: “Thou desiredst, and all things are presented before thee” (cf. Job 23:13 LXX). Faith can often “bring forth all things out of nothing,” while knowledge can do nothing “without the help of matter.”

Knowledge has no power over nature, but faith has such power. Armed with faith, men have entered into the fire and quenched the flames, being untouched by them. Others have walked on the waters as on dry land. All these things are “beyond nature”; they go against the modes of natural knowledge and reveal the vanity of such modes. Faith “moves about above nature.”

The ways of natural knowledge ruled the world for more than five thousand years, and man was unable to “lift his gaze from the earth and understand the might of his Creator” until “our faith arose and delivered us from the shadows of the works of this world” and from a fragmented mind.

He who has faith “will lack nothing,” and, when he has nothing, “he possesses all things by faith,” as it is written: “All things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive” (Matt. 21:22); and also: “The Lord is near; be anxious for nothing” (Phil. 4:5–6).

St Justin Popovich