Friday of the Second Week of Easter
(Acts
5:34-42; 6:1-15)
The Czech priest
Jan Hus led a reform movement of the Church in Bohemia during the late
fourteenth and early fifteenth century. He
seemed to have opposed the doctrine of transubstantiation although it is said
that his teachings were not heretical.
In any case, with a guarantee of safety by the Holy Roman Emperor he
went to the Council of Constance in 1415 for questioning. There he was tried and summarily executed! The Church should have heeded the advice of Gamaliel
in today’s first reading.
The wise
Pharisee counsels the Sanhedrin that religious movements are better left alone.
If they are of human contrivance, as most are, they will play themselves out. But if they are divinely authorized, persecuting
them cannot succeed and will incur God’s indictment. Christianity is the best example. The Jewish leaders did not suppress the
Church at the time. Instead, they allowed
it to become God’s major instrument in the world.
Czechs
resented the treatment of Jan Hus across the centuries. They resisted returning whole-heartedly to
the Church in the fifteenth century. Later many Czechs embraced Protestantism. At the new millennium Pope St. John Paul II
publicly asked forgiveness for the Church’s mistreatment of Jan Hus. His testimony as well as Gamaliel’s
recommends to all of us the need for religious tolerance.
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