Wednesday, June 4, 2025

 

Wednesday of the Seventh Week of Easter

(Acts 20:28-38; John 17:11b-19)

In today’s first reading St. Paul expresses concern over the truth of Christ.  He tells Church leaders that he taught the whole truth of Jesus Christ.  Now he is worried that false evangelists will come along distorting it. 

Paul taught that God created the world good and gave it to humans to care for.  He said that God made only one demand – that humans not eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. (Perhaps to avoid misunderstanding, God reserved to Himself the determination of right and wrong.)  Paul further taught that humans, deceived by the Father of lies, wanted to claim equality with their benefactor.  So they ate from the tree of knowledge, and alienated themselves from God.  Their situation was hopeless because they could never cease trying to compete with God.   God Himself had to come to their rescue.  The Father sent His Son as a human, whom we know as Jesus Christ.  The Son submitted himself completely to the Father’s will.  As Paul says, Christ gave his blood which won for him, the God-man, eternal life.  Now those who partake of that blood offered in the Church, his Body, may acquire not only forgiveness but also eternal life.

False evangelists are still among us.  They may not be bad-intentioned, but nevertheless they get the story of salvation wrong.  They may claim that they have a better idea of good and bad than Jesus taught.  They may say that God loves everybody so that a person need not join himself or herself to Christ’s body to reach salvation.  Whatever their mistakes, we do well to avoid false teachers by adhering to St. Paul’s teaching.