Friday, May 5, 2023

Friday of the Fourth Week of Easter

(Acts 13:26-33; John 141-6)

Days come and go as the world turns on its axis.  But one, for Christians at least, will last forever.  Because it marked an event outside time, the day of the resurrection of Christ will never end.  Humans take part in this day when they are baptized into Christ. As Paul tells the synagogue assembly in today’s first reading, “’…he has brought to fulfillment for us, their (i.e., the apostles’) children, by raising up Jesus…’”

Paul’s discourse here is an example of early Christian preaching.  The Book of the Acts of the Apostles contains several of these speeches, mostly by Peter and Paul.  They summarize the entire gospel: Jesus is God’s word; that is his representative, who was sent to the world to give it new life.  Despite many awesome signs, the Jewish people did not recognize him as God’s emissary.  Rejecting his message, they arranged his crucifixion by the Romans.  The Hebrew prophets had foretold these events as well as his resurrection from the dead.

The Christian narrative probably sounded strange to people of the first century as it does to our contemporaries.  Surely it requires more testimony than that of a preacher.  We provide that testimony by living the new life – a life of uncompromising virtue.  By our loving acts and faultless lives, people will know that Jesus has risen from the dead and that we share this destiny.

Friday, April 26, 2013

Friday of the Fourth Week of Easter

(Acts 13:26-33; John 14:1-6)

Projection is the psychological phenomenon by which a person hides from himself an inner evil by projecting it on another.  There he can condemn the evil without feeling any guilt.  So it happens that people often see and hate in others what is most repellant about themselves.  In today’s first reading Paul enables the Jews of Antioch in Pisidia see their own sins by telling them of the crime of their coreligionists in Jerusalem.

Paul says that the Jerusalemites condemned Jesus as a false prophet and had Pilate crucify him.  But, Paul concludes, God confirmed the truth of Jesus’ message and, indeed, his whole life by raising him from the dead.  Now, he will go on to say, his hearers may have their own sins -- which by association are the same as those of Jerusalem Jews – forgiven by accepting Jesus as God’s Messiah.

We too should find our sins among those of the Jews who had Jesus crucified.  Our jealousy and envy is reflected in the Jewish leaders who wanted Jesus out of the way.  Our prejudice against others kinds of people finds a parallel in the attitude of the Jerusalem Jews toward the carpenter from Galilee.  Our failure to recognize every person as an image of God likewise is seen in the rush to have Jesus executed.  We too must repent and believe in Jesus.