Thursday, 22 May 2025 - 5th week of Easter
Acts 15:7-21; John 15:9-11
Homily
Jesus' last recommendation to his Apostles, during the last meal He shared with them, is a call to brotherly love. In the same way, the accounts in the Acts of the Apostles that we read during this Easter Season show us how this fraternal love is lived out in concrete terms, within a community, through relationships that are not necessarily always easy. This love is even lived out at times through the resolution of conflicts.
The reading from the Book of Acts that we have just heard is a fine example of this. This text describes part of the deliberations of the first ecumenical council, that of Jerusalem.
The theme of this Jerusalem Assembly was, to translate it into contemporary language, that of inculturation. The Christian faith is necessarily inculturated. It is not simply an assent of the mind to revealed truths. It is the translation of the Gospel message into everyday life. And since the Gospel message is not addressed to isolated individuals but to a community of believers, faith necessarily has a cultural dimension. So inculturation, far from being a modern preoccupation, is an essential dimension of faith. Jesus had lived and exercised His ministry in the Jewish cultural universe. As soon as His message was transmitted to the Gentiles, the problem of inculturation became acute, right from the start; and the Acts of the Apostles describes the first solution to this problem.
On the Day of Pentecost, the Apostles spoke to the Jews of Jerusalem and to those who had come from all parts of the Diaspora, who heard them each in their own language. It was only after the death of Stephen and the start of the first persecution that Philip, the deacon, took the Gospel to Samaria. When Paul began his preaching, he inconvenienced everyone, so much so that from Damascus he was taken by night to Jerusalem, and from Jerusalem he was sent to Tarsus where he had come from. Then Peter's vision at Joppa before his meeting with Cornelius revealed to him that the Law of Israel was outdated and could not be applied to the Gentiles, on whom the Spirit of God was also descending. Finally, when news reached Jerusalem of the marvelous results of the first evangelization in Antioch, Barnabas was sent there, where he had the brilliant idea of going to Tarsus to look for Paul, who had been sent back in a cavalier manner. The whole history of Christianity would undoubtedly have been radically different had Barnabas not taken this initiative.
There is one final element that needs to be mentioned to complete the picture of the story we have just read. From the beginning, the head of the Church in Jerusalem was not one of the twelve Apostles, but a certain James, the Lord's brother - no doubt a cousin of Jesus - who embodied the proclamation of the Gospel to the Jews just as much as Paul embodied the proclamation to the Gentiles. We now have all the people involved. What was the problem?
A conflict had arisen in Antioch, where Christians of Jewish origin from Jerusalem wanted to force converts from paganism to follow the Law of Moses and be circumcised. In Jerusalem, we find the Apostles around Peter, then Paul and Barnabas delegated by the Christians of Antioch, and finally the Elders of Jerusalem around James, brother of the Lord and bishop of Jerusalem. The discussion had become heated, Luke tells us in his account. It was then that Peter intervened, with all the weight that his primacy gave him. His intervention was followed by a moment of silence, and then his position was confirmed by Barnabas and Paul, who recounted the signs and wonders worked by the Spirit of God among the pagans. Yet Peter's opinion was not followed. The Assembly's final decision was not the one proposed by Peter, who did not want to impose anything on the converts from paganism; rather, it was a compromise proposed by James, halfway between Peter's position and that of the faithful from Phariseeism, who wanted to impose the application of the Law of Moses on everyone.
This example is instructive for us all. First of all, it teaches us that discussions - even heated ones - are part of the oldest ecclesial tradition. It also teaches us that, contrary to what all fundamentalisms would have us believe, the rules of Christian life - and therefore also of monastic life - cannot be deduced in a purely logical and mathematical way from abstract principles. The art of compromise is not simply an exercise in opportunistic politics; compromise is often demanded by evangelical respect for differences.
Let us ask the Spirit to establish and maintain this open-mindedness and sense of dialogue within our Order, each community of our Order, our Church and our Society.
Armand VEILLEUX
