Thursday of the Fifth Week of Easter
Acts 15: 7-21; John 15: 9-11
By Deacon Larry Brockman
Today, our first reading talks about the very first Church Council, the Council of Jerusalem. The Earliest Christians were a Jewish sect that accepted Jesus as the Messiah, and spun off from Judaism. But they brought all of the ritual and legal baggage of the strict observance of the Mosaic Law with them. Now Paul and Barnabas return from their newly founded Churches amongst the Gentiles. These Gentiles accepted all that Jesus taught and practiced; and wonderful things were reported about how God worked through them. But they could not relate to the laws and ritual practices of the Jews- things like detailed food laws and circumcision. And so, the Church was faced with a decision- to accept them or not. Peter and James, and the whole assembly in unison, decided that what was important was Jesus teaching, not traditional rituals, laws and practices. So, they decided to emphasize the direction they had been given by Jesus.
What was that direction? To go out and Baptize all nations, even the Gentiles. And so, they abandoned laws for the sake of maintaining tradition, in favor of being inclusive and open to all. In so doing, they adopted what Jesus teaches in the Gospel this morning, namely. “If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love.” Jesus primary commandment was to love God, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. Yes, love should be the primary ingredient of our dealings with others. And so out of love, we keep the “detailed” commandments. Our mission is to bring others over to our side by the love we show, so that they will embrace us and our way. We can’t do that by imposing our rules on them, just as Paul and Barnabas couldn’t do it with the first Gentiles. We can do it by loving them and showing mercy.
I think that this is the essence of what Pope Francis is trying to do in his Apostolic Exhortation on the Family. In recent years, we have all been inundated with a secular wave of attacks on our family institutions. So, we see society pushing “Alternate family structures” instead of the Traditional Family Unit; individual rights, like the “right to choose” rather than the right to life; and the right to choose one’s sexual preference as opposed to the way God made us. Pope Francis Apostolic Exhortation on the Family validated all of the traditional Church teachings on these issues. The Church has not changed its teaching, and it is important that all of us recognize that is the case independent of what the media may have reported.
However, there are other matters relating to the family that have arisen over the last 100 years, areas where culture has changed, and families have changed with it. This includes families with working men and working women; separation of multigenerational families; divorced and separated couples with shared responsibility for the children; and others. The Pope has suggested that we emphasize love, mercy, and forgiveness in dealing with those who have gone awry in these areas rather than throwing up walls based on strict adherence to the rules. His exhortation asks Church leaders to discern before acting in these areas rather than acting on the basis of the rule of law alone.
Granted, this is much harder to do. But it is a dilemma much like the one we heard about in this morning’s first reading, where the culture of the Jews was so imbedded in their religion that it never occurred to them that it was turning the Gentiles off. Our response today requires the same kind of discerning spirit as at the Council of Jerusalem. At the very least, those who violate the rules need to be treated with love and mercy.
I encourage all of you to read Pope Francis Exhortation on the Family. It is available on-line for free.