Homily for Thursday, 5th Week of Easter

Homily for Thursday
5th Week of Easter

May 22, 2024
Acts 15: 7-21
Christian Brothers, St. Joseph’s Residence, N.R.

(Vatican Library)

In these days the Church is commemorating the Council of Nicaea, which began on May 20, 325.  That was the 1st ecumenical council.

Yesterday, today, and tomorrow we’re reading about the Council of Jerusalem as reported in Acts 15.  It was the 1st synod of the young Christian community, but it’s not counted among the Church’s 21 ecumenical councils.  Unlike that meeting, Nicaea brought together over 300 bishops, all but 5 from the Eastern part of the Christian world; we don’t know who or how many gathered in Jerusalem, or where they were from besides Antioch and Jerusalem.  In addition, Nicaea was convened by secular authority, viz., Emperor Constantine.  Pope Sylvester I was represented by a pair of deacons.

The Council of Jerusalem set a precedent of convening church leaders—synodally, if you will—to deal with a controversial issue, as Nicaea did concerning the divine nature of Christ.  In fact, if Jerusalem hadn’t come to the decision it did, the Church would probably never have become ecumenical, worldwide, an assembly of God’s people gathered from everywhere.  It would’ve remained a sect within Judaism.

Pope Francis said repeatedly that a synodal Church is a listening Church.  She listens to Christ’s faithful, both clerical and lay, and she listens to the Holy Spirit.  Luke tells us “much debate had taken place” in Jerusalem before Peter, Paul, Barnabas (Acts 15:7-12), and then James spoke (15:13-21).  James cites the Scriptures (Amos), showing one way in which the Church hears the voice of God.  When they finally reach an agreement, they give credit to the Holy Spirit for that as well as to their frank exchange of opinions, as Acts will tell us tomorrow:  “It is the decision of the Holy Spirit and of us…” (15:28).

As long as the Church—and individual families within the Church, like our religious communities—live in human society, we’ll continue to have issues to deal with, issues of doctrine or charism, of morality, of structure and practice, of effective evangelization.  The Council of Jerusalem, or the Synod of Jerusalem if you like, shows us a Spirit-inspired approach to the issues of our age or any age for “announcing God’s salvation day after day, telling his glory among the nations” (Ps 96:2-3).