EUTICO (“Εὐαυτός”). - A young man raised from the dead by s. Paolo at Troade (Act. 20.9-12). With the imprudence proper to his age (he is called first ναυτάς, V. 9, then παῖς, V. 12), he was sitting in the opening of a third-story window where Paolo was speaking to the community gathered for the Sunday “breaking of bread”; overcome by sleep during Paolo’s prolonged nocturnal discourse, he fell to the ground. The Apostle, repeating the gesture of Elia (I Reg. 17, 21) and of Eliseo (II Reg. 4, 34), bending over the dead youth, restores him to life.
The Apostle’s words, “Do not be troubled: his soul is still in him” (v. 10), which may also be a form of modesty, acknowledging that life had returned, have wrongly been taken as an indication that the miracle exists only in the interpretation of the crowd or of the narrator. Luca, an eyewitness (the “we” passage), with the precision of a physician, emphasizes the seriousness of the fall and the death, which was readily ascertainable. For this reason the community is filled with joy when, at the moment of Paolo’s departure, it leads E. away alive.