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Sacred Scriptures/Liturgy- Commentary on Sunday's Readings |
PREACHING TO THE WORLD
Second Sunday of Easter
Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, OFMCap, Pontifical Household Preacher
www.zenit.org
Acts 4:32-35; 1 John 5:1-6; John 20:19-31
The Gospel of this Sunday "in Albis" tells of the two appearances of
the risen Jesus to the apostles in the cenacle. In this first
appearance Jesus says to the apostles: "'Peace be with you! As the
Father has sent me, so I send you.' After having said this he
breathed on them and said: 'Receive the Holy Spirit.'" It is the
solemn moment of sending. In Mark's Gospel the same sending is
expressed with the words: "Go and preach the Gospel to every
creature" (Mark 16:15).
Luke's Gospel, which has accompanied us this year, expresses this
movement from Jerusalem to the world with the episode of the two
disciples who travel from Jerusalem to Emmaus with the risen Christ,
who explains the Scriptures to them and breaks bread for them. There
are three or four villages that claim to be the ancient Emmaus of
the Gospel. Perhaps even this particular town, like the whole
episode, has a symbolic value. Now Emmaus is every town; the risen
Jesus accompanies his disciples along all the roads of the world and
in all directions.
The historical problem that we will deal with in this last
conversation of the series has precisely to do with Christ's
commission of the apostles. The questions that we ask ourselves are:
Did Jesus really order his disciples to go into the whole world? Did
he think that a community would be born from his message, that this
message would have a following? Did he think that there should be a
Church? We ask ourselves these questions because, as we have done in
these commentaries, there are those who give a negative answer to
these questions, an answer that is contrary to the historical data.
The undeniable fact of the election of the Twelve Apostles indicates
that Jesus had the intention of giving life to a community and
foresaw his life and teaching having a following. All the parables
whose original nucleus contains the idea of an expansion to the
Gentiles cannot be explained in another way. One thinks of the
parable of the murderous tenants of the vineyard, of the workers in
the vineyard, of the saying about the last who will be first, of the
"many who will come from the east and west to the banquet of
Abraham," while others will be excluded -- and countless other
sayings.
During his life Jesus never left the land of Israel, except for some
brief excursion into the pagan territories in the north, but this is
explained by his conviction that he was above all sent for the
people of Israel, to then urge them, once converted, to welcome the
Gentiles into the fold, according to the universalistic
proclamations of the prophets.
It is often claimed that in the passage from Jerusalem to Rome, the
Gospel message was profoundly modified. In other words, it is said
that between the Christ of the Gospels and the Christ preached by
the different Christian churches, there is not continuity but
rupture.
Certainly there is a difference between the two. But there is an
explanation for this. If we compare a photograph of an embryo in the
maternal womb with the same child at the age of 10 or 30, it could
be said that we are dealing with two different realities; but we
know that everything that the man has become was already contained
and programmed into the embryo. Jesus himself compared the kingdom
of heaven to a small seed, but he said it was destined to grow and
become a great tree on whose branches the birds of the sky would
come to perch (Matthew 13:32).
Even if they are not the exact words that he used, what Jesus says
in John's Gospel is important: "I have many other things to tell
you, but you are not ready for them now (that is, you are not able
to understand them); but the Holy Spirit will teach you all things
and will lead you to the whole truth." Thus, Jesus foresaw a
development of his doctrine, guided by the Holy Spirit. It is plain
why in today's Gospel reading the sending on mission is accompanied
by the gift of the Holy Spirit.
But is it true that the Christianity that we know was born in the
third century, with Constantine, as is sometimes insinuated? A few
years after Jesus' death, we already find the fundamental elements
of the Church attested to: the celebration of the Eucharist, a
Passover celebration with a different content from that of Exodus
("our Passover," as Paul calls it); Christian baptism that will soon
take the place of circumcision; the canon of Scripture, which in its
core stems from the first decades of the second century; Sunday as a
new day of celebration that quite early on will take the place of
the Jewish Sabbath. Even the hierarchical structure of the Church
(bishops, priests and deacons) is attested to by Ignatius of Antioch
at the beginning of the second century.
Of course, not everything in the Church can be traced back to Jesus.
There are many things in the Church that are historical, human
products, as well as the products of human sin, and the Church must
periodically free itself from this, and it does not cease to do so.
But in essential things the Church's faith has every right to claim
a historical origin in Christ.
We began the series of commentaries on the Lenten Gospels moved by
the same intention that Luke announces at the beginning of his
Gospel: "So that you may know the truth of the things about which
you have been instructed." Having arrived at the end of the cycle, I
can only hope to have achieved, in some measure, the same purpose,
even if it is important to recall that the living and true Jesus is
properly reached not by history but through the leap of faith.
History, however, can show that it is not crazy to make that leap.
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Mary