Homily for 6th Sunday of Easter

Homily for the
6th Sunday of Easter

May 16, 1993

Acts 8: 5-8, 14-17
Christian Brothers, Iona College, New Rochelle, N.Y.

“Philip went down to the town of Samaria and there proclaimed the Messiah” (Acts 8: 5).

In the Acts of the Apostles, St. Luke shows how the Good News spread from Jerusalem to Samaria to the Jews outside Palestine to the Gentiles of the Greek world, and finally to Rome, center of the political and commercial world (as far as the 1st Christians were concerned).

So here in Acts 8 we come to the 2d stage of the Gospel’s spread.  Philip—this is not Philip the Apostle but one of the 7 original deacons who were introduced in ch. 6—goes down to Samaria.  “Down” is quite literal:  down from Jerusalem, which is built atop a mountain ridge 2,500 feet above sea level.

The Holy Spirit pouring down upon disciples of Jesus

(National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, Washington)

The Acts has been called the Gospel of the Holy Spirit because of its dozens of references to the Spirit, 2 of which show up in our reading this morning.  We believe the Spirit works to draw good from evil.  When we read ch. 7 and the opening verses of ch. 8, we see that Philip went down to Samaria because anti-Christian violence had broken out in Jerusalem.  Stephen, the most prominent of the 7 deacons, was murdered—the 1st Christian martyr; “a severe persecution of the church in Jerusalem broke out, and all were scattered throughout the countryside of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles” (8:1).  Saul, that zealous Pharisee, was going house to house in Jerusalem looking for Christians and arresting them.  That’s why Philip was in Samaria.

The Spirit of God didn’t cause or sponsor the persecution of Stephen and the earliest believers.  But the Spirit uses the actions, attitudes, talents, and even the sins of men and women to produce good to advance the kingdom of Jesus Christ.  We address God as “almighty” so often in the liturgy not only because he inspires whatever is good in us and creates whatever is good around us, but also because his goodness overcomes every evil.

You may have seen the movie Blackrobe a couple of years ago.  If you didn’t, I recommend it.  It’s about the efforts of the 17th-century Jesuit missionaries in Canada, emphasizing the cultural clash between them and the Indians they were trying to evangelize.  In the opening scenes, we visit their log chapel at Quebec, and we see a dozen or so Indians crowding in.  One of the priests takes out a handsome clock, such as would have adorned an elegant French mantle, and sets it on the altar.  The hour strikes with majestic chimes and the Indians are overawed, almost in worship.  The Jesuits all but tell them there’s a god speaking inside the clock.  Evidently the missionaries are trying to win converts to French civilization and especially to the Christian Gospel by showing wonders.

Later in the film, the young Jesuit priest who is the protagonist is challenged by an Indian shaman, a stunted, ugly, and malevolent character who wields great influence because of his knowledge of spirits and of medicine.  Still later, the priest finally reaches his mission station among the Hurons, only to find the village being destroyed by plague and his Jesuit predecessor about to die.  He is pressured into telling his would-be parishioners that if they accept Baptism God will remove the plague.

Signs and wonders, exorcisms and cures, were part of the apostolic ministry, as we heard concerning Philip’s mission in Samaria and as we read throughout the Acts and of Jesus himself.  Power over the spirit world, power over the evil of sickness and injury, are convincing signs that one carries a divine message or enjoys divine favor.  Such power in Philip brought joy to Samaria, and the early American missionaries would have liked to have had it to combat the powers of Satan that they saw all around them in the wilderness and in the native culture.

Yet signs and wonders don’t really go far toward convincing people and making believers of them.  The power that really convinces them is the power of goodness, the power of a life that is filled with Jesus and imitates him.  We have received the Spirit of Jesus in order to be like Jesus:  gentle, reverent (1 Pet 3: 16), patient, chaste, peaceable, hopeful, helpful, and so on.  There is no more convincing argument of the truth of the Gospel than an authentic Christian.  Very few of us are called to be wonder-workers.  All of us are called to be authentic witnesses.

St John and St Peter

from a 1526 altarpiece

Generally, when someone is baptized into Christ in the Acts, he immediately receives the Holy Spirit.  That does not happen in Samaria.  Instead, 2 of the apostles come down from Jerusalem, Peter and John, to lay hands on the newly baptized and so to confer the Spirit on them.

A scholastic theologian might use this text to prove that Confirmation is a distinct sacrament from Baptism, which it completes.  While that’s sound enuf theology, it’s not the point at all.

The point is the unity of the Church founded on the apostles.  No community, no parish, is complete by itself.  It’s complete only when it’s united with the apostles, with their teaching and with their practice, when it is placed under apostolic authority.  The Father sends the Spirit of truth, the Paraclete (John 14:16-17), to his children through the apostles.  In other words, the Church is necessarily hierarchical, founded on, centered on, the college of the apostles—the 12 at Jerusalem.  Their successors now spread all over the world.  Whoever is in communion with the bishop—communion of doctrines, practice, and liturgy—is in communion with the apostles and has access to the Spirit whom the Father sends.  Whoever abandons the bishop—and this is a consistent teaching of the New Testament and of the Fathers—cuts himself off from the Church and from the Spirit.  (Jesus said the only sin incapable of forgiveness is the sin against the Holy Spirit [Luke 12:10], and it’s a form of that sin to cut oneself off from access to the Spirit by abandoning the Church.)

But the message of Jesus is forgiveness and joy.  We run to Jesus—Jesus whom we know through the Church in his word and in the breaking of the bread.  We run to him to be made whole, to be taught love, to be filled with joy, and to sing the glory of God’s name (Ps 66:22).