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.