Friends
Peace be with you.
Have you ever made a friend that you were skeptical of how long your friendship would last? Sometimes, when I’m involved with training for the Police Department or Fire Department, they’ll match me up with someone who is deeply religious and possibly even deeply Christian because they think we’ll have things in common to talk about. Sometimes they’re right. But sometimes I can sort of tell the person comes from a anti-Catholic background and is immediately disappointed to have to work with a priest or I get uncomfortable wondering at what point the person is going to turn to me to ask me if I’ve ever been saved.
I get the feeling that this was how the Apostles and disciples in Jerusalem felt when St. Paul showed up there in the first reading. We know there were at least two apostles, St. Peter and St. James, present in Jerusalem at that time. We also know they had many disciples to whom they were ministering. And we know that St. Paul had gone from holding cloaks at the stoning of St. Stephen to dragging out Christians from their homes to stand before tribunals. It says, right before his conversion, that St. Paul was breathing out murderous threats. He knows that by exposing Jews who had converted to Christianity to either the Jewish or Roman authorities, they will at least be beaten and could even be killed. That’s what makes St. Peter, St. James, and the Jerusalem disciples “afraid of him, not believing that he was a disciple”. They thought he was a spy sent to infiltrate their organization.
It makes perfect sense, then, that it takes Barnabbas, whose name means “son of consolation”, to console the fears of the church in Jerusalem that St. Paul’s conversion was legitimate and not a ruse to root them out. The other thing that happens, however, is that St. Paul bears fruit. He “spoke out boldly in the name of the Lord” to the point where some Greek speaking Jews “tried to kill him.”
Notice that, despite this persecution and resistance they are getting from the world, the church is at peace. One commentary I read said, “The placement of the final summary that reports the condition of the church (as being at peace) is interesting. It suggests that there is a relationship between the peace the church enjoyed and the sense of security it must have felt knowing it no longer had to fear the passionate opposition of one of its chief persecutors.”
Another way of saying this, one that is closer to the parable in the gospel, is that the church is bearing the fruit of conversion and that brings it peace. A few weeks ago, we brought a bunch of people into the church; baptizing some, confirming some, and giving first Eucharist to all. It was a joyous time in so many ways, unless you start to think about all the people who have walked away from the church. It seems like a drop in a very leaky bucket. Many leave because they say all religions are human organizations. I appreciated what Dr. Peter Kreeft wrote about this. He said, “The church is not a human organization but a supernatural organism. It has two natures like Christ. It looks like a merely human organization, like a club or a state or a business, but that’s its disguise. Christ has many disguises. He hides both his divine nature and his human nature behind the appearance of bread and wine in the Eucharist.”
One thing that makes us very different than a human organization is that we were founded by Jesus. He is the vine that connects us to the father. That means we are organically connected to him like the arms and legs and torso are connected to the head of a body. We are called to bear fruit, especially among those who make us a little uncomfortable. We may too quickly write off the idea of inviting people to Mass with us because their personality makes us uncomfortable. We may think they wouldn’t fit in here or maybe even that they’d come off a little too strong of personality for our calm, quiet St. Patrick’s crowd. But, who knows, that could be the next St. Paul. Who is passionately searching for the truth in your life that Jesus is calling you to invite here to know the peace only Christ can give?
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