Homily for Tuesday, Octave of Easter

Homily for Tuesday
Octave of Easter

April 22, 2025
Acts 2: 36-41
Christian Brothers, St. Joseph’s Residence, N.R.

St. Peter Preaching (Charles Poerson)

“The promise is made to you … and to all those far off, whomever the Lord our God will call” (Acts 2: 39).

Announcing Jesus’ resurrection and the forgiveness of sins thru him, Peter sees these as a promise of God meant for anyone who will believe and accept—believe in Jesus as the Christ, repent, and accept forgiveness.

The promise, Peter declares, is meant not only for those hearing him on Pentecost morning in Jerusalem but also for “all those far off.”  Luke has reported the presence of Jews from all over the Empire (2:5-11).  Peter, presumably, means that God’s promise extends to all their fellow Jews back in their home countries, the far reaches of the world as known in Jerusalem.

We can see a farther reach to God’s promise of salvation:  not just to Jews but also to “those far off” from Jewish belief and nationality, “far off” from hope in the 1st century.  God’s promise will extend also to Greeks and Romans, to Gauls and Arabs, and to everyone else (even the Irish).  Moreover, we see a farther reach in time, “far off” from the age of Jesus and the apostles, extending, as Jesus himself said, “to the end of the age” (Matt 28:20).

This extension in space and time is echoed in our 3d Eucharistic Prayer:  “from the rising of the sun to its setting a pure sacrifice may be offered to” the name of God thru our Lord Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit; from the sun’s rising in the east to its setting in the west, across the whole geography of the earth; from its rising in the morning to its setting in the evening, across the span of time—everywhere and forever.

This is the scope of God’s promise of redemption.  We, so far from Jerusalem and so far away in time, are grateful to God for his mercy and offer our Eucharist, our thanks, thru Christ our Lord.