Every day during the Easter season, the 1st reading at each Mass is taken from the Acts of the Apostles – the sequel, so to
speak, to the Gospel according to Luke – the story of what happened next, after
Jesus’ resurrection and ascension. It’s
the wonderful story of how a mere 120 disciples were transformed by the Risen
Christ’s parting gift of the Holy Spirit into a missionary movement that spread
from Jerusalem to Rome and in the process was transformed from a small Jewish
sect into a world-wide Church with a universal mission.
To us, who already know the story, that all seems to
have been so obvious and inevitable. For the first Christians, however, it must
have seemed like one new learning experience after another. Today’s 1st reading [Acts 10: 25-26, 34-35, 44-48] recounts one
pivotal point in that process. The story actually began earlier with Peter, the
leader of the Christian community, making what we today might call a “pastoral
visit” to the disciples in a town called Joppa (near today’s Tel Aviv). While
there, Peter had a dream, in which he saw various animals, not all of them
kosher, and heard a heavenly voice tell him to kill and eat them. When Peter
responded that he had never done such a thing, he was told, What God has made clean, you are not to call
profane. That’s a good example of something the meaning of which, to us in
retrospect, seems so obvious, but which at the time, in its actual context,
must have seemed so perplexing.
When such situations occur - whether on world
historically significant occasions such as Peter found himself a part of or in
the more ordinary challenges of daily life – what is required is what our
spiritual tradition calls discernment.
As Pope Francis has reminded us in his recent Apostolic Exhortation on
holiness, it is how we can “know if something comes from the Holy Spirit or if
it stems from the spirit of the world or the spirit of the devil.” We need
discernment, the Pope writes: “at all times, to help us recognize God’s
timetable, lest we fail to heed the promptings of his grace and disregard his
invitation to grow” [GE, 166, 169].
Meanwhile, when Peter was beginning his discernment
process, pondering his perplexing dream, emissaries from a Roman centurion,
named Cornelius, came calling and asked Peter to accompany them back to
Caesarea, which Peter promptly did. And that is where today’s reading picks up
the story.
Cornelius was a Roman, a foreigner, a pagan. He was in fact a rather pious pagan, and was
somewhat sympathetic to Judaism; but he was still a pagan, an uncircumcised
Gentile! No observant Jew would normally have entered his house, but these were
not normal circumstances. Already “prepped” by his perplexing dream, Peter
crossed that boundary. Once inside, he spoke with Cornelius, and - no doubt as
much to his own amazement as everyone else’s - he said: “I see that God shows no partiality. Rather, in every nation whoever
fears him and acts uprightly is acceptable to him.” He then did what no one had yet thought of
doing. He proclaimed the Good News of Jesus to a house full of Gentiles.
Suddenly what had happened to the original 120 disciples on Pentecost now
happened to Cornelius and his household – a “Pentecost for pagans,” as it has
been called. And so, Peter asked, “Can anyone withhold water for baptizing
these people, who have received the Holy Spirit even as we have?”
Thus began the momentous change that enabled
Christianity to spread and take root throughout the world, becoming eventually
the largest religion in the world and the largest growing religion in the world
today. I say “began,” because, of course, the full implications of something so
unexpected took time to sink in. There were other Gentiles sympathetic to
Judaism at the time. Some even went all
the way and converted. Had Cornelius converted, become a Jew, and then
acknowledged Jesus as the Messiah, he would not have been all that different
from the other early Christians, who were, of course, also Jews who
acknowledged Jesus as the promised Messiah. Cornelius, however, had “jumped the
line,” so to speak, directly into Christianity. Soon the Church would have to
debate whether Gentiles needed to become Jews first in order to become
Christians, and Peter would cite this transformational event as the key to
understanding God’s will for this Church – that it be the vehicle for conversion
and repentance for all, without exception and without restriction.
Given the apostles’ own Jewish background, the long
history of separation between Jews and Gentiles, and the seriousness with which
all that had been taken up until then, this was quite a radical step. And it
was not taken lightly, as the debates elsewhere in Acts illustrate. But
eventually it was accepted as a recognition of how God’s original covenant with
Israel was now being universally fulfilled in Christ.
Of course, this didn’t all just happen. It was God
who took the initiative – inspiring Cornelius to invite Peter, prepping Peter
with his dream, and then dramatically demonstrating God’s plan to include the
Gentiles by giving them the Holy Spirit. As leader of the Church, Peter,
through the gift and practice of discernment, recognized God’s action and
accepted its implications, baptizing the first Gentile Christians and
incorporating them into the community.
This story speaks volumes about the very nature of
the Church – not just the 1st century apostolic Church, but the
Church of the 21st century, which is, if anything, even more global
and more universal than ever before. The Church is not a club, a fraternal
association, a social networking group, or even a prayer group, though it may
have elements of all those things. As Pope Pius XI put it, almost a century
ago: “The Church has no
other reason for its existence than to extend over the earth the kingdom of
Christ and so to render people sharers of his saving redemption.”
As a practical matter, of course, we experience the
Church largely as part of a locally defined parish community. The parish
nourishes and supports us in our faith. It brings us together to hear the Good
News that makes our lives so different from what they would otherwise have
been. It brings us together to respond to that Good News with worship and
prayer, support for one another, and service to others in the day-in, day-out
dying and rising that defines a disciple’s life. But it doesn’t stop there. The
parish is never just about itself. In union with Peter’s successor, the Pope,
and the apostles’ successors, the Bishops of the entire world, the Church
unites us across time back to the faith and witness of the apostles their first
converts - pagans like Cornelius - and across space to take in the entire
world, today’s world.
Precisely as Christ’s Church, we too are constantly
being challenged at every level to expand our horizon. Just as the apostolic
Church had its horizon expanded, we too are constantly being challenged to
understand our own local experience of Church as one with that of the young,
emerging Church in Africa, the aging Church in Europe, and the even more
ancient Churches in India and the Middle East, ancient Churches currently
endangered once again by war, terrorism, and persecution.
Likewise, we too are constantly being challenged to
understand how our own middle-aged American Church is being rejuvenated and
revitalized by many new members from all over the world. Here in America, we have long been a Church
of immigrants in a land and nation of immigrants. In the 19th century, Isaac Hecker’s process of discernment led him to see the two as
“working together under the same divine guidance, forming the various races of
men and nationalities into a homogeneous people” [CA, 99]. Then as now,
not everyone was ready to recognize that. Hence the particular relevance for
us, in this time and place, of Christ’s command to welcome the stranger. As
Pope Francis’ Apostolic Exhortation has also reminded us: we absolutely may not
act as if “the situation of migrants” were some sort of “lesser issue,”
compared with other moral and political priorities [GE, 101].
As we work together to welcome one another – and
others – into our nation and our American Church, we are being challenged to
recognize our own local experience in the wider terms of God’s great plan for
the salvation of the world – God who sent
his only Son into the world so that we might have life through him [1 John 4:9].
Homily for the 6th Sunday of Easter, Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN, May 6, 2018.
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