A Homily for the 5th Sunday of Easter (2007)
Sts. Paul and Barnabas sure do cover a lot of ground. In our first reading today, from the Acts of the Apostles, eight different cities are mentioned where they “proclaimed the good news,” and that is not counting the unnamed city from which they started the leg of their missionary journey that we heard today. So a total of nine cities where they not only “proclaimed the good news” but also “made a considerable number of disciples.”
The Acts of the Apostles gives us a type of snapshot of the early Church, and it is marked with a lot of dynamism. It is active and growing. In fact, the Church has the very life of Christ Jesus, Himself. Yet something else is needed, in addition to dynamism, and we start to see that something else in the early Church in today’s reading.
Dynamism without structure is like a firecracker – a lot of noise, but no lasting results. However, if you add some structure to that dynamism then the energy can be channeled and directed. The combination of structure and dynamism assures stability, growth, and fruitfulness. Since the Church was founded to endure, grow, and bear fruit until the end of time, it needed a structure, and we call that structure the hierarchy.
The Church’s hierarchy has been part of God’s plan right from the beginning. It is not a later human invention. In fact we can see this hierarchy having its roots in the words of Jesus to St. Peter, after he made his profession of faith in Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God. Jesus calls Simon, Peter which is a play on the Greek word “petros” which means “rock.” Jesus goes on to say that upon this “Rock” He will build His Church.
We should recall that originally the Hebrews were nomadic desert-dwellers. As such, they “were particularly sensitive to the point of reference provided by great rock formations, fixed as they are, compared with sand and dust which can be blown away and scattered by the wind” (Luigi Giussani, Why the Church?, Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001, p. 78). The word “rock” or “crag” is one of the most frequently used metaphors for truth and safety in the Bible. In Psalms we hear, “Though my flesh and my heart fail, God is the rock of my heart, my portion forever” (Ps 73: 26), and “God alone is my rock and salvation, my secure height; I shall never fall” (Ps 62: 3), and one last example, “Let the words of my mouth meet with your favor, keep the thoughts of my heart before you, LORD, my rock and my redeemer” (Ps 19: 15). In saying that He was going to build His Church on the Rock that is St. Peter, Jesus was saying that the papacy would be the visible sign of unity, stability and truth for His Church.
Of course this foundation was added to. In today’s passage from the Acts of the Apostles we hear that Paul and Barnabas “appointed elders for them in each church and, with prayer and fasting, commended them to the Lord.” Sts. Paul and Barnabas were not starting their own churches, for they knew that there is only one Church, the one started by Christ Jesus and entrusted by Him to the Apostles, with St. Peter as their head. Those ordained by Paul and Barnabas were local church leaders who were entrusted to care for the local Christian communities, and to continue the mission of spreading the Good News. Right from the start we see the hierarchy of the Church being established — a Pope, bishops, and priests.
For us Americans the idea of the Church’s hierarchy can be difficult to accept. We have a democratic mindset: we vote for everything, from the President and Members of Congress, to laws, to local school boards. We even vote for the captains of our teams. While the democratic mindset can be very effective for organizations that are of strictly human origin, the Church is NOT of strictly human origin. The Church is divine in its origin; it is a LIFE! It is the Life of Jesus Christ. The Church is the prolongation of the Incarnation, the Word Made Flesh, through time and space.
The Church is also like a family. Children do not have the right to vote on what they will eat or when their bed-time will be. They need their parents to teach and guide them into mature, responsible, generous, and virtuous adults. Likewise, by our baptism we became the children of God. Only God’s grace and revelation can enable us to grow into the saints we are meant to be. We do not have the right to vote on how God should send us His grace, or about what path should lead to moral and spiritual maturity. God is the one who has to nourish, guide, and teach us. That is why we call Him FATHER! He does this through His ministers in the Church, with whom He shares His authority. As Jesus says in St. John’s Gospel, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you” (John 20: 21).
We may not always like God’s choice of human ministers, because since they are human they have flaws. To make up for these human foibles and flaws, God has guaranteed that through the bishops in union with the Pope we will always have access to His grace, which strengthens us, and to the dependable truth about what we should believe (Faith) and how we should act (Morals) in order to grow up in the faith and reach the lasting happiness of Heaven.
Ponder these words from Msgr. Luigi Giussani, the founder of Communion and Liberation, “The authority of the Pope and bishops, therefore, is the ultimate guide on the pilgrimage towards a genuine sharing of our lives, towards a true civilization…. Where that authority is not vital and vigilant, or where it is under attack, the human pathway becomes complicated, ambiguous, and unstable; it veers towards disaster, even when on the exterior it seems powerful, flourishing, and astute, as is the case today. Where that authority is active and respected, the historic pilgrimage is confidently renewed with serenity; it is deep, genuinely human, even when the expressive methods and dynamics of sharing lives are roughshod and difficult” (The Journey to Truth is an Experience, Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006, p. 74).
As Catholics we are called to “pray and obey.” At each Mass we pray for the hierarchy of the Church, and in our private prayers we should also pray for the Pope, and all the bishops and priests. We need to pray that these ministers of God can overcome their flaws and foibles, so that everyone that they meet can encounter the loving presence of Christ Jesus. Likewise we are all called to practice that most difficult yet most important of virtues – obedience. God has guaranteed that despite all their imperfections, His ministers will not be able to obstruct the flow of His truth and grace through the Church’s ministry. In its official teaching about faith (what we should believe) and morals (how we should live), God has promised that His Church will not lead us astray. Obedience to Christ’s Church – whether in basic things like the Ten Commandments and coming to Mass on Sundays, or in more difficult and counter-cultural things like divorce, contraception, abortion, and embryonic stem-cell research – shows that we trust Chris, the one who established and guides His Church. As Christ renews His commitment to us by giving us His Body and Blood at this Mass, let us renew our trust in Him, and ask Him to increase our desire to follow Him through the practice of the virtue of obedience.
[Much of this homily was inspired, and parts were taken from, “Homily Packs: Fifth Sunday of Easter (C)” found at www.epriests.com, a service of Regnum Christi, 2007].
