Saturday of Week 4 of Easter – First Reading

Commentary on Acts 13:44-52

We are still with Paul and Barnabas in Asia Minor, where they are proclaiming the message about Jesus as Lord in Pisidian Antioch.  They now have the whole city coming to hear them speak the word of God.  But they now have also incurred the jealousy of some Jews who hurled abuse at the the two men.  Perhaps they believed that the word of God was only for them and not for Gentiles—pearls were not to be thrown to swine.

Paul and Barnabas (Paul is now regularly mentioned first) took this as a sign to transfer their energies to preaching among the Gentiles, who responded enthusiastically.  While Paul’s fellow-Jews in Antioch had shown themselves unfit to hear the gospel:

It was necessary that the word of God should be spoken first to you. Since you reject it and judge yourselves to be unworthy of eternal life, we are now turning to the gentiles.

He had to speak to them first—and he will do this in other places as well—because the gospel came to and was intended for the Jews first.  And Paul, of course, was himself a Jew and had great compassion for his people.  This is expressed very well in his letter to the Romans (see Rom 9:1-5; 10:1-3).

We are told that the two Apostles spoke out these words “boldly”.  The courage and confidence of the Apostles has been already stressed by Luke on a number of occasions.  Luke repeatedly attributes these qualities to Paul, and Paul himself lays emphasis on them in a number of his letters. Fortitude is one of the four cardinal virtues which should be the characteristic of every Christian.

On the other hand, they turn to the Gentiles because the Lord had told them to be:

…a light for the gentiles,
so that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth.

This is a rendering of the Septuagint (Greek) reading from Isaiah:

I will give you as a light to the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.
(Is 49:6)

The words may be taken either as referring to Paul himself, Apostle and teacher of the Gentiles, or to the risen Christ. Christ is the light of the Gentiles—he himself had said “I AM the Light of the World”—but since only the Apostles’ witness can spread this light, Paul considers this prophecy as a command that he must carry out.  In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus had told his disciples:

You are the light of the world. (Matt 5:14)

This phrase conveys the sense that they are being called to transmit the Light that is Christ.

The Gentiles responded enthusiastically. After receiving the Word from Paul and Barnabas:

…they were glad and praised the word of the Lord, and as many as had been destined for eternal life became believers.

‘Eternal life’ refers to the life of the world to come.  These are the ones whose names are “written in heaven” (Luke 10:20) and in “the book of life”.  Actually, “destined for eternal life” was a common rabbinic expression.  For Christians, the first and necessary condition for this predestination to glory is faith in Christ.

As a result of the Gentiles’ enthusiasm for the message, “the word of the Lord spread throughout the region.”  In other words, well beyond the bounds of the city.

However, some of the Jews continued their harassments.  They incited prominent women who were believers (though not necessarily Jews) and leading men to stir up attacks on the two missionaries.  And they eventually managed to drive the two Apostles from the city.

Following the teaching of the Gospel, they shook the dust of the city from their feet (see Matt 10:14; Luke 9:5).  In doing this, they showed the severance of responsibility and the repudiation of those who had rejected their message and had brought suffering to the servants of the Lord.

They now continued on to the town of Iconium, lying to the east of Antioch on the southern borders of the province of Galatia.  Its modern name is Konya.  In Paul’s time it was an important crossroads and an agricultural centre for the central plain of Galatia.

Far from being discouraged by their experience in Antioch, we are told that:

…the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit.

It teaches us a lesson we continually need to learn.  The preaching of the gospel, in spite of its message of love and forgiveness and justice and its rejection of all forms of violence, can incur vicious and violent opposition.  We should neither be surprised nor discouraged at this.

On the contrary, like the Apostles, we should rejoice that, with Jesus, we suffer for proclaiming the message of life and love: 

Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
(Matt 5:10)

We think of the story of the three men thrown into the fiery furnace by an angry King Nebuchnadnezzar, joyfully singing the praises of God or, in much more recent times (and with more historical validity), of the civil rights marchers under Martin Luther King, Jr singing ‘We shall overcome’ as they were carried off to jail.

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Saturday of Week 4 of Easter – Gospel

Commentary on John 14:7-14

Once again we have to be thankful for a disciple’s question.  Jesus has just said that those who really know him also know his Father.  In fact, he says, they have already seen him.  But after all this talk about the Father, Philip, the naive one, is puzzled:

Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.

Perhaps, like some of the other Jews, he was expecting some dramatic sign, some striking manifestation of the Father.

Jesus replies patiently:

Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father…believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, but if you do not, then believe because of the works themselves.

Philip still lacked that faith that could see the Father clearly working in and through Jesus.

Of course, what Jesus says has to be understood properly. In a sense, when we see Jesus we do see the Father; but in another sense, we do not see the Father, at least not fully. When Jesus speaks, the Father speaks; when Jesus forgives, the Father forgives; when Jesus heals, the Father heals; when Jesus gives life, it is the Father who gives life.

Jesus is the Word of God; he is the utterance of God; he is God expressing himself and communicating himself to us.  In his person, Jesus is totally united with the Father.  But in Jesus’ humanity, which is where we meet him, the Father only comes through in the dimmest fashion.  As Paul wrote to the Christians of Corinth:

For now we see only a reflection, as in a mirror, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. (1 Cor 13:12)

The love that Jesus shows is the love of the Father, but reflected through his human nature; it is only the faintest image of the full reality of that love.  It is so important for us to understand this. That is why Jesus calls himself the Way—he is the Way, not the End.  The Father is the End and Goal of all living.

And so Jesus goes on to make a statement that at first seems strange:

Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.

How can we possibly do greater, far greater things than Jesus?  Yet, in a way, it is very true.

Because of his human nature, Jesus’ accomplishments were limited during his short time here on earth. He lived in one very small place and likely spoke only one language, although he might have picked up a smattering of Greek; he reached relatively few people and was intimate with only a small number.

There are many Christians today who, with the means of travel and communications available to them, can bring the message of Jesus to far greater numbers and often more efficiently.  The pope in a major address or at a Christmas Mass can reach a potential audience of billions through television, radio and via the Web. Jesus could do none of these things.

Jesus, now in his risen Body, the Church, can indeed “do greater works than these”, and this was made possible by his going back to the Father and passing on his work into our hands.  Given the instruments at our disposal, we have a great responsibility to do those “greater works”.

But to do that work we need, of course, to rely on the help and guidance of Jesus through his Spirit.  As he says in conclusion today:

If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.

He has left us, but is still with us.

And to pray in his name is not just to use his name like a talisman or charm.  In invoking Jesus’ name, we also fully identify ourselves with his Way and his will.  It is not an invitation to make any kind of arbitrary request to suit our own personal whims.  Primarily, it is to ask his help in spreading his gospel.  That is a prayer which he will surely answer.

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Monday of Week 4 of Easter – First Reading

Commentary on Acts 11:1-18

We have now entered a momentous part of Acts which describes the inauguration of the mission to the Gentiles.  It may not seem a big deal to us, but it involved a radical change in thinking for the first Christians who were all Jews, still felt like Jews and maintained many of the religious customs of the Jews.  It changed the whole complexion of the Christian ‘movement’ inaugurated by Jesus.

It opens with the conversion and baptism of Cornelius, a gentile centurion in the Roman army.  But it also involves a conversion on the part of Peter, who becomes aware that God’s calling in Jesus is extended to people of all races and religions.  All of this is contained in chapter 10, which we will not be reading (the story of Cornelius is read on the 6th Sunday of Easter in Year B).

What we see in today’s reading is the reaction of the Christian leaders in Jerusalem to the news of a Gentile’s baptism.  It involves a major breakthrough in the development of the Church’s awareness of its identity.

The Apostles and their fellow Christians in Jerusalem had heard that the pagans were accepting the word of God.  We will see here and elsewhere in Acts that in matters of importance, the Apostles did not act alone.  Guidance came from the Spirit. The Apostles interpreted and exhorted, but the consent of the whole church was then sought (“the whole community”, Acts 6:5; “apostles and the brothers and sisters”, Acts 11:1; “the church”, Acts 11:22; “the church and the apostles and elders”, Acts 15:4 and 15:22).

The Christians in Jerusalem seem to have received this news with mixed feelings because, when Peter went up to Jerusalem the “circumcised believers”, that is, the Jewish Christians, criticised him for visiting the homes of the “uncircumcised” and even eating with them. This recalls how Jesus too was criticised for consorting with the ‘unclean’ and eating with them, which led to his speaking the three beautiful parables in chapter 15 of Luke’s Gospel about the Lost Sheep, the Lost Coin and the Lost Son.

The “uncircumcised” were those Gentiles who did not observe the laws of clean and unclean food and hence were in violation of Jewish regulations concerning food preparation. At this stage, it is clear that the Jewish Christians still saw themselves, even in a religious sense, as Jews.  We know that they continued to go to the Temple to pray, and in this reading they have not yet changed their attitude to non-Jews—still seeing them as a source of contamination.

Peter then shares with them the dream he had.  In this dream there appeared every kind of living thing that could walk, crawl or fly.  He was told to kill and eat them, and he recoiled in horror.  As a devout Jew he had never touched food that was regarded as ‘unclean’.  He was made to realise in no uncertain terms that:

What God has made clean, you must not call profane.

And just in case Peter did not get this message, the vision was repeated three times!

Just then, he also got an invitation to join three men in going to a house in Caesarea.  This house, as we were told in the previous chapter, belonged to Cornelius, a centurion in the Roman army.  It seems that he was an out and out Gentile, with no connections whatever to Judaism.  Peter went, together with six “brothers”, under the guidance and the approval of the Spirit.

When they got there, Cornelius said he had been told by an angel to summon Peter to his house.  Peter had a special message for him to hear.  Peter had barely begun to explain the message of Jesus when the Holy Spirit came down on all of the household, just as the Apostles themselves had experienced it at Pentecost.  The “household” (Latin, familia) included not only those related by blood (parents, children, other relatives), but also slaves and all who were under Cornelius’ authority.

It was perfectly clear to Peter that there was no way he could deny baptism and membership in the community to this Gentile, who up to this he had regarded as unclean and a person not to be mixed with. He told the Christians in Jerusalem:

If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?

Peter could not deny the Gentiles the invitation to be baptised and to enjoy full fellowship in Christ with all believers.  The Jewish believers were compelled to recognise that God was going to save Gentiles on equal terms with Jews.  By divine action rather than by human choice, the door was being opened to Gentiles.

Peter explains why he allowed a pagan to be baptised.  However, he does not answer the objection that he had lodged with the uncircumcised.  According to Luke, Peter was considered to have been the first to receive pagans into the Church, in spite of the episode of the Ethiopian eunuch (with the deacon Philip), about which we read on Thursday of last week, and the date of the evangelisation of Antioch, to which Luke does not refer till later (in fact, immediately after this incident). Against this background, the council of Jerusalem (which we will hear about in the middle of next week) appears as a kind of sequel to, or repetition of, the discussion in today’s passage.  It is clear that Peter’s leadership is being emphasised.

The people in Jerusalem accepted what Peter told them and gave thanks to God that even the Gentiles could experience “the repentance [Greek, metanoia—i.e. radical conversion] that leads to life”.  They were not just repenting the past, but undertaking a complete turn-around in their lives involving a total commitment to the Way of Christ.

This story is just one example to be repeated again and again in the life of the Church of how change does not come from the centre, which in fact is often resistant to change, but from the outer limits.

The same is true of our Church today.  There is always tension between the central institution of the Church and the more charismatic and prophetic elements which are often more in touch with the grass roots and with the changes taking place in society. These effect a call for change in the thinking and behaviour of the Church. In recent times, the Second Vatican Council and more recently, the Synod on Synodality, are excellent examples of this process. It is important to recognize that this tension is a good thing, and it is necessary both for progress and continuity.

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