SIXTH SUNDAY OF EASTER
21-22 May 2022
Acts
15:1-2, 22-29
Rv
21:10-14, 22-23
Jn 14:23-29
Praised by Jesus Christ!
From the Acts of the
Apostles today we read about the decision taken by the very first Council of
the Church held at Jerusalem not to impose the Jewish custom or rule of circumcision
on the new Gentile Christians. When asked to resolve the controversy which had
arisen over whether the observance of all the Old Testament precepts was
required of non-Jewish converts, the elders of the community of Jerusalem wrote
back to the Church at Antioch. Their response began with the words: “It is the decision of the Holy Spirit and of us…” The
Apostles could not have been clearer in expressing themselves in their letter. They
were deciding the case brought to them by appealing to the authority of God. “It
is the decision of the Holy Spirit and of us…” God was speaking through
them; they claimed the authority of the Holy Spirit for the decision which was
properly their own as those who presided over the Church at its beginnings,
after Christ’s Ascension into Heaven and the coming of the Holy Spirit.
Governance is no small or easy matter. You may have picked up
on the news that just yesterday the Most Reverend Salvatore Cordileone,
Archbishop of San Francisco, announced that he was banning Speaker Nancy Pelosi
from receiving Holy Communion until such time as she publicly renounces her pro-abortion
stance, repents of her great sin of pushing her agenda in Congress and seeks
reconciliation with the Church through Penance and sacramental Absolution. We’ll
have to see if Pelosi comes back to the Church or not. But no matter what she
does, thanks to the clarity of the Archbishop’s statement and his respectful
but firm stance, everyone else in the Church should be confident in what is to
be expected of a Catholic in terms of respect for innocent human life. No one
has the right (so-called) to take the life of a child born or not yet born.
Abortion is only the most obvious of a whole series of controversies which need resolution by means of clear teaching from the successors of the Apostles according to the mind of God. It appears, however, that both inside and outside the Church today wisdom and courage seem to be in short supply among our leaders. We are sadly in need of much more from the Church hierarchy in faithfulness to Christ. Decisiveness of action on the part of our leaders is an all too rare commodity, as the happy example of Archbishop Cordileone points out.
Part
of their hesitancy may be explained by the lack of responsiveness among the lay
faithful to their leaders’ teaching and directions. Some would try and justify this
opposition to authority in the Church by shaking their heads and saying, “No
way! Whether the problem is one of Church discipline, of morality, or of the faith
itself, I don’t want any priest or bishop quoting the Catechism or some Church
document and telling me what to do!” Typically, people often do not seem to like
taking orders. Or they may seem to think that majority votes can settle most
everything, even if the vote comes out contrary to God’s law. “Dialogue” is the
catch word you hear in lots of Church circles, and just about everything appears
to be up for discussion. In Germany or in Switzerland today the Church
establishment and quite a few lay people would just bristle or fume at the
words from the Book of Acts: “It is the decision of
the Holy Spirit and of us…” Honestly, it is not uncommon even here in
the United States to encounter Catholics who would assert that appealing to God
for the authority of our commands is a bit too much to claim. Granted there are
some people who are just as rebellious as we read about in the Book of Genesis.
In Adam and Eve fashion they do not stop at challenging people set over them in
the Church. Fundamentally they reject God’s authority flat out (Gen. 3:2-5 The
woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden;
but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle
of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.’” But the serpent said
to the woman, “You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your
eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”). Perhaps
more common however is a kind of foot dragging or hunching our shoulders, being
less than eager to place ourselves without reserve under God’s law. In this
lawless world, everything tends to get relativized or flattened. There is a
kind of stubbornness or resentfulness which holds back or refuses to take anyone’s
authority without a challenge. Then too, people do not seem to be ready to take
the path less traveled through life and refuse to live heroically by following
in the footsteps of our loving Lord and Savior.
Sometimes,
I suppose, it is simply wanting to have a say or to have the last word on
certain topics. Ultimately though, the question is not whether the Pope or a
Bishop is drawing me into the decision-making process, whether he is listening
to me or taking my input into consideration, but whether we can have confidence
in those who are speaking. “It is the decision of the Holy Spirit and of
us…” We may have reason to doubt whether a given priest or bishop is truly acting
on God’s behalf, whether what he says or does truly reflects faithfulness to
God within His Church. Nonetheless I cannot offhandedly reject all Church
authority.
The
rebelliousness we encounter is a rejection of the Holy Spirit in favor of the
spirit of the age. To say it more simply, too often we just follow the crowd while
turning our backs on God as He speaks to us through His Church. We are caught
up in the prevailing world view which overvalues self-indulgence at worst, and
perhaps not much better promotes or insists upon things like so-called social
progress or future orientation. Such are not categories for believers, whereas
faithfulness to tradition is. We are called, for love of God, to be faithful to
Christ, to conform our will to His, as it is mediated by those within the
Church possessing and properly exercising legitimate authority.
The
big question, of course, is how does that work? Jesus in St. John’s Gospel
today could not be clearer. “Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my
Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.
Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; yet the word you hear is not
mine but that of the Father who sent me.”
Keeping God’s word, by very simply obeying Him, by conforming
my will to that of the Almighty! How do we do that? There’s an ancient legend
about St. John the Evangelist, the only one of the original twelve Apostles to
live to an advanced age and not die a martyr. The older he got, the more St.
John limited his teaching of the faith to repeating the two great Commandments:
you shall love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and you shall
love your neighbor as yourself. The Evangelist clearly understood that by
holding faithfully to these two, the Christian would be fulfilling everything
contained in the Law and the Prophets. “It is the decision of the Holy
Spirit and of us…”
Praised by Jesus Christ!
PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI
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