June 5, 2011 Cycle A
Acts 1:1-11 Ephesians 1:17-23 Matthew 28:16-20
Many states have adopted graduated driving licenses for teenagers. They initially restrict, for example, the hours when the teens can drive, how many people can be in the vehicle with them, and lower blood alcohol levels for them to be charged with a DUI. And sometimes they even add the minimum ages of the passengers. These restrictions are identified as major factors in teen car accidents. The restrictions are lifted in phases usually before a new driver turns 18 years of age. The States that have enacted these phased in driver’s licenses have experienced significant decreases in teen accidents.
In one way, the Ascension of Jesus began an intermediate phase in the life of the Apostles. Christ had taught them for three years before His death and then again after Easter. After the Ascension of Jesus the Holy Spirit had to teach them even more. After Pentecost they had much more to learn as recorded for us in the Acts of the Apostles.
Unlike the new teenage drivers who usually cannot wait to move through the intermediate phases necessary to acquire a restricted license. The Apostles of Jesus had to be coaxed and prodded to accept new phases of their mission to preach the Good News by word and example. We might say they succeeded only because they had the power of the Spirit, not necessarily by their grit determination or the power of positive thinking.
The reality was that the disciples had to meet new Jewish people to whom they preached the Gospel message of Jesus Christ. When Jesus teaches them in the Gospel today that they should go out and “make disciples of all nations.” What they probably heard was to “preach Jesus’ Good News to the Jewish people everywhere.” That’s the world they knew best and where they felt most comfortable.
Jesus’ words were like an old mantra that I learned from my mentor back in the days I was in Campus Ministry: “May the peace of Christ disturb you profoundly.” Ultimately we are called by the Gospel to be challenged to go beyond our comfort zone and so the Apostles were. They had to leave Galilee and preach in other parts of the world; Samaria, where Jews had intermarried with pagans seven hundred years earlier, and they had developed their hybrid form of Judaism. This was rejected by the Jews both in Galilee and Judea.
The Acts of the Apostles teaches us that after receiving the Spirit at Pentecost they went out to preach to international Jewish visitors who had come to Jerusalem to celebrate the Jewish Pentecost. This Jewish Pentecost was a feast commemorating God’s gift of the law to Moses at Mt. Sinai. They preached also to nearby countries such as modern Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt. Travelers soon brought Christianity to Rome and other parts of the empire.
The Apostles eventually accepted Gentiles as their equals in terms of following Christ. Now that was maybe much easier said than done as the Letters of St. Paul and Chapter 15 of the Acts of the Apostles teaches. Even 25 years after the Ascension of Jesus this was still a controversial issue.
Persecution by Jewish authorities in Jerusalem drove the Christian community into cities that had large Gentile populations. For example, Antioch and Syria, and Alexandria in Egypt.
Many Gentile Christians joined Paul’s Jewish Christians and of course that raised many questions about dietary laws, the custom of circumcision, marrying a Gentile Christian, and on and on.
Through it all we can say the Spirit of God sustained and guided the early Church through these many controversies in the First Century. We believe that the Spirit of God has continued to offer guidance down to our own day.
What is the bottom line? Well we have been charged to spread the Good News. That means for our parents, it is to continue to foster religious formation throughout the year for your families. That means to encourage those who have not celebrated the Sacrament of Confirmation to complete the Sacraments of Initiation as some of our folks will be receiving that Sacrament next Sunday afternoon. It means basically claiming our personal history of seeing the events in our lives not as God watching from a distance, but rather as God actively working in our personal history. This is something of an art and worth well developing to see salvation history unfolding in our own personal lives.
We also know that these days our following of Christ involves our participation in our civic society by allowing our Baptism to influence our choices to promote the common good of our society.
As we gather today, let us find ourselves moving through the phases, to be bold and courageous about sharing our Catholic Christian heritage and to link it as well with the celebration of our own personal history. Doing so will be one of the more valuable spiritual exercises that we can be about.
Amen. Amen. Msgr. Tom, Pastor Christ the King