Word to the Wise
Saturday, May 6, 2023 - 4th Week of Easter - Sat
[Acts 13:44-52 and John 14:7-14]"It was necessary that the word of God be spoken to you first, but since you reject it and condemn yourselves as unworthy of eternal life, we now turn to the Gentiles." [Acts]
The Acts of the Apostles is considered by scripture scholars to be the "second volume" of the Gospel According to Luke. During the Easter season, the first scripture for daily Mass is taken from Acts while the gospel scripture is taken from the Gospel According to John. Acts gives a big historical picture of the spread of Christianity from Jerusalem to the broad reaches of the Roman empire around the Mediterranean Sea. The Gospel According to John is more focused on the person of Jesus and his identity.
I'm taking a little break from the Last Supper discourse in John to note a pivotal moment in Acts. It is the moment when St. Paul, accompanied by St. Barnabas, decides to focus his considerable energies and talents on preaching to non-Jewish people. By the time the Gospel According to John was composed, Christianity had already spread to Rome and Greece and the eastern regions of what is now Turkey. Paul founded communities in Greece that have given their names to his letters. The Book of Acts recounts the foundation of these communities as well as the dramatic turn from Jewish evangelization to "Gentile" evangelization. There was tension because the first believers in Jesus were Jews and saw no reason to break with that tradition simply because they accepted Jesus as the promised Messiah. The inevitable showdown on the issue would occur at the "Council of Jerusalem," recounted in Acts 15.
We Catholics take Rome for granted as the "capital" of our faith. But, if St. Paul and other Christian missionaries had not taken the message beyond Jerusalem to the wider world of the Roman Empire, we would be merely a controversial sect of Judaism. Our roots are in Judaism and any anti-semitism is contrary to the gospel, but, as St. Paul points out in Romans 11:24-25, faith in Jesus was "grafted onto" those Jewish roots to become a different plant from what would grow from those roots "naturally." A deeper sense of God's providence working in history can contribute richly to our faith. The moment recorded in Acts for us to read and contemplate in our own times challenges us to come to that deeper sense. AMEN