Some men came down from Judea and taught the brothers: “Unless you have yourselves circumcised in the tradition 0f Moses, you cannot be saved.” This led to disagreement…Acts 15: 1-2. 22-29
“The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all I have said to you.” John 14: 23-29
Karl Rahner SJ (1904-1984) is regarded as one of the most distinguished theologians of the 20th century. In Foundations of the Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity (Seabury Press, NY, 1978) a book he wrote not long before he died, he stated that Christianity was not an offshoot of Judaism but a faith “which for all its relationship to the historical Jesus, still grew from the soil of paganism.” Rahner went on to explain that, in his understanding, there have been three very significant stages in the growth of the Catholic Church. The first was the time of “primitive, Jewish Christianity”, a movement in Judaism initiated by Jesus’ earliest disciples in the wake of his death and resurrection. That was a time of ongoing struggle in which Jesus’ eleven disciples, led by Peter, continued to debate, as Jesus had before them, with the Jewish religious leaders. They saw such debating as futile, and extended their reach to the Gentile communities in Mediterranean cities. Many of the Gentiles welcomed the message proclaimed by Paul, Barnabas and other disciples but hesitated when some disciples came down from Judea and told them that circumcision was a compulsory condition for full membership of the emerging Christian community and, indeed, for salvation. That led to internal conflict among those who had chosen to walk in the footsteps of Jesus. There were those who held inflexibly to tradition that was thousands of years old. The irony was that Paul, one of the newest coverts to the way of Jesus, argued that the love of God, proclaimed by Jesus, was a free gift from God. Consequently, Paul made it clear that circumcision, as far as following Jesus was concerned, counted for nothing. Had Paul, Barnabas and their supporters not carried the day in what Luke described as a period of “dissention, debate and long discussion”, the early Christian community would have become little more than a sect of Judaism. Peter had also intervened, pointing out that God “had made no distinction between them (the Gentiles) and us, for by faith he (God) had purified their hearts” (Acts 15: 9). That was for Rahner, the second very significant stage of the development of Christianity. A matter of interest is that Marist Brother Sean Sammon in an article published in the Jesuit magazine America in October 2012 affirmed Rahner’s opinion of the three pivotal events in the Church’s development (Sean D. Sammon, F.M.S. The Birth of the World Church: The Epoch Initiated by Vatican II, America, October 15, 2012).
In Rahner’s view, the third most significant stage of Christianity was the Second Vatican Council in which the gathered Bishops came from all over the world. Until then, the Church had been substantially Euro-centric. For Rahner, that signalled that the Church, for the first time in 2000 years, had become truly catholic – universal, open to embrace people from every country and culture of the world.
Let’s not ignore the fact that there is no shortage of conflict, struggle and debate in the Church of which we are all members right now. It was not coincidental that our new Pope Leo XIV, in his inaugural Eucharist a few days ago, urged us all to pray for peace in our world and in our Church. God’s Spirit is still at work in us, in our world and in our Church. But we have to let go of some of our certainties and our inflexibility and to trust that, if we open ourselves to God’s Spirit, the same Spirit will guide us along the road to peace, harmony and genuine collaboration.
For the second week in succession, our gospel-reading comes from Jesus’ Last Supper discourse to his close disciples. Once again, it is about love. However, it is not about the kind of love normally experienced in close human relationships. Jesus introduced the topic with his statement that opens the reading: “If anyone loves me, he/she will keep my word, and my Father will love him/her. And we shall come to him/her and make our home with him/her.” This is a difficult statement for us to grasp fully, until we can appreciate the fact that he is referring to what wells up in those of his followers who fully absorb what he had set out to teach them. Everyone who abides by and gives expression to his teaching moves in the direction of learning to relate to God as Jesus himself did. That will happen to the extent that we come to appreciate the immensity of the love that Jesus has for each of us. Appreciation of that kind takes a lifetime.
We have to tread warily here, simply because we risk concluding that Jesus might be putting conditions on our coming to be loved by God. Jesus is certainly not saying that we have to earn God’s love by closely following his (Jesus’) teaching. Moreover, he is not saying that God’s love is only given to those who live blameless lives. Jesus always respects the fact that we are free to open ourselves to God’s offer of love to us or not. God cares deeply about every single human being. But God does not force us into reciprocating that love. Jesus says that, when we accept that love, he and God will dwell within us. We will come, then, to be at home with both Jesus himself and God.
Jesus then proceeded to promise that every disciple who opens herself/himself to God’s love will be blessed by God’s Spirit as guide in all she/he does.
Jesus insisted in his final words to his disciples that his new commandment was that they/we love one another as he had loved them/us. He added that his gift to faithful disciples would be peace. That peace is such that it cannot be given to us by the world we know, simply because our world is not big enough and open enough to contain it. Now that’s something to get our limited heads and hearts around!