The first debate in the early Church was whether or not gentiles could become Christians and, if so, how. All of the first Christians were Jews and they understood Christianity to be the fulfillment of Judaism. As the Apostles preached the Gospel, more and more gentiles were also converting. Would they need to embrace all of the customs and practices of Judaism in order to follow Christ?
After a period of debate, the answer of the Church, as guided by the Holy Spirit, was that gentiles did not have to become culturally Jewish in order to be Christian. As Christians, we need to follow the teachings and practices established by Christ, which are rooted in and are the fulfillment of the Old Testament. We live according to the Old Testament in the way Christ reinterpreted the Old Testament teachings and practices for us.
The First Reading for this Sunday is a scene from the Council of Jerusalem, when the leaders of the early Church met to give a definite answer regarding the question how the Jewish Law applied to gentiles. As we see, in settling the question about the law, the letter also mentions staying away from certain types of meat and from unlawful marital practices.
The types of meat mentioned had to do with sacrifices to pagan gods. The problem was not with the meats themselves, but with the manner in which they were prepared. Today, we do not face the issue of our meat being prepared according to pagan religious customs. However, our culture is filled with many other pagan practices. The application for us is to guard ourselves so as not to fall into pagan customs but to stay firmly focused on Christ. Likewise, the letter warned Christians to stay away from the unlawful marital customs of the time. The cultural landscape is different today, but the principle is the same. As Christians, we should not be swept away by cultural customs regarding relationships that would take us away from Christ.
The Council of Jerusalem set the model for resolving disputes in the Church as the centuries would unfold. In the Gospel reading for this Sunday we also see that Christ promised to send us the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, who would remind us of everything he had taught us. Let us consider for a moment how the Church understands Divine Revelation.
The Catholic Church teaches that God revealed to humanity certain truths about himself and his interaction with us that we would not have been able to discover on our own. The process of revelation started in the Old Testament period and concluded with the end of the apostolic age. The Church believes that by the end of the apostolic age, God had revealed to us everything that he wanted to include in Divine Revelation. After that, no more new teachings would be added.
Nevertheless, we see that Church teaching has developed over the years. How can that be if no new teachings are revealed? The answer is that the development of Church teaching is not new doctrine, but a deeper understanding of what the Church already believes. Also, as new experiences arise in the world, the Church applies the wisdom of her teachings to the new challenges humanity is facing. Hence the famous encyclical Rerum novarum, (or "Of New Things" in English) by Leo XIV, which applied the truths of the faith to modern economic conditions.
As councils and popes teach the Church, they guide us into deeper insights into the truth of what God has revealed to us. We need to bear in mind that the teachings of the Church are always a deepening of our understanding. The Church cannot give us a completely new understanding of what God has revealed to us. In recent years, many Catholics have expressed a desire that the Church change this or that teaching. However, the Church cannot do so. The Church can only proclaim what God had originally revealed to us.
As we contemplate God's revelation to us, we should remember that we are living in a period of preparation. The beliefs of the Church point toward the reality that we will experience in the fullness of time, when we will abide eternally in God's infinite love. We someone dies, we often speak of their heavenly reward. That reward is not some special thing that Christ gives us, but Christ himself. As we see in the Book of Revelation, the fulfillment, the eternal joy of all of creation is to be centered on Christ and to be filled with Christ's eternal, infinite love. That is what the teachings of the Church prepare us for and guide us toward.
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The readings for the Sixth Sunday of Easter, Cycle C, are:
Acts 15:1-2, 22-29
Psalm 67:2-3, 5, 6, 8
Revelation 21:10-14, 22-23
John 14:23-29
The full text can be found at the USCCB website.
Photo Credit: Biblical illustrations by Jim Padgett, courtesy of Sweet Publishing, Ft. Worth, TX, and Gospel Light, Ventura, CA. Copyright 1984. Released under new license, CC-BY-SA 3.0, from Wikimedia Commons.
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