The answer
The apostle Paul delivered to us a tradition that contains a spiritual and ethical program. He says, “As therefore you have received (paralambano) Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, as you have been taught”(Col. 2:6–7). “Just as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God” (1 Thess. 4:1). “But we command you … that you withdraw from every brother who walks disorderly and not according to the tradition which he received from us” (2 Thess. 3:6). “The things which you learned and received and heard and saw in me, these do” (Phil. 4:9).
In the Christian tradition, faith is inseparable from spiritual and ethical life. As an archetype of the Church, St. Mary “kept the word of God” (Luke 2:19) in her heart and performed it in her life. When, in the second century, the pagan Autolycus asked Theophilus of Antioch, “Show me your God,” Theophilus wisely replied, “show me your inner man and I will show you my God.”262 In other words, show me the soundness of the inner man of your heart, then you will be able to see God and I will show Him to you. Thus, he tied faith to daily life.
Fr. Tadros Yacoub Malaty
Notes
262 St. Theophilus of Antioch, To Autolycus 1.2 (ANF 2:89).