Bound in Love

With the recent Papal election still fresh in our minds, we read of the Council of Jerusalem from Acts’ Chapter 15 today. It is Scriptural confirmation about the governance of the Church. As we have moved from the reign of Pope Francis to the reign of Pope Leo XIV, it is a timely reading to consider and discuss.

Our reading today omits 20 verses, and I’m not going to read them to you but they are worth reading. In those verses we see the meat of the discussion about meat. We see in this Council how the Church should dynamically apply the Good News of the Resurrected Jesus Christ to the changing currents of history.

The issue being covered in the Council of Jerusalem is how to deal with the rules of Moses that bound every good and observant Jew. Do those rules bind every good and observant Christian? What happens to the Old Law when the New Law appears?

This council was called for the same reason that almost every subsequent council was called. The fathers of the church called the council to determine how to respond to a question about the faith that we were given by Jesus Christ. In this council, the question before the group is whether or not one must follow the law of Moses if one is to call oneself a Christian. In other words, if you are going to be a good Christian, do you need first to be a good Jew? The position given to us in the first verse is that one must be circumcised, or one will not be saved.

The question is ultimately how do we live according to the promise of Jesus Christ in the day and age in which we find ourselves? In the earliest days of the church, the apostles and disciples lived in and around Jerusalem and were surrounded by Jewish religious practices. As far as we know, all the first disciples were Jews who became converted to the way of Christ.

Now the church has to respond to the ministry of St. Paul, who was the Apostle to the Gentiles. These seekers that he encounters in modern-day Turkey and Greece are not Jews. They are pagans. They don’t already follow the Mosaic law. Paul teaches them consistently that one doesn’t need to follow the Mosaic law if one is a Christian. He says the primary purpose of the Mosaic law was to convince us of our sinfulness. In its many rules, the law of Moses finally makes us admit we cannot save ourselves. We are too sinful, and we need a savior.

The story tells us that on the way to Jerusalem, the men sent to put the question before the church are greeted with great joy as they tell about the conversion of the Gentiles. But when they get to Jerusalem, there is a party of Pharisees who become believers, and these people insist that the Mosaic law must be followed by Christians.

So now the apostles and the elders will meet together to discuss this issue. Verse seven tells us that much debate took place. We can understand this to mean that the apostles let the Holy Spirit work on their minds and their hearts so that they would come to the right decision. It is finally St. Peter, who is the first pope, who addresses the group and reminds them that God made no distinction between the Gentiles and the Jews when he sent the Holy Spirit down. He argues that the Mosaic law cannot be followed perfectly enough to justify or redeem us. We need the grace of Jesus Christ.

Peter says this directly in verse 11, when he says, “we believe that we are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus in the same way as they are.” “They” refers to the Gentiles, who are all the nations of non-Jews and do not follow the Law of Moses. And St. James, most likely the one known as the brother of the Lord and the one who served as the Bishop of Jerusalem, draws from the prophets to support the testimony of Peter. James uses the words of the prophet Amos to show those who insist that you must be a Jew that God’s plan was to rebuild the fallen hut of David so that the rest of humanity may seek out the Lord, “even all the Gentiles on whom my name is invoked.” (Amos 9:11-12.)

James finally concludes that, “we ought to stop troubling the Gentiles who turn to God.” The Council agrees to a prudent limitation that will protect Christians from mingling their rituals with those of idol worshipers; but other than that, there’s no need to follow the law of the Old Testament.

In this little story, we see how the church is governed. The church is governed — or it is supposed to be governed — by thoughtful and prayerful men who let the Holy Spirit work within them and upon them. Leaders of the church have a significant burden to carry; their first job is to hand on the faith that was given to them. Church governance and leadership is fundamentally conservative in that the first order of business is to conserve what was given to us. Each individual Christian is, of course, engaged in a lifelong process of self-improvement, growing in charity through prayer and the sacramental life. But the institution of the church is ideally very stable and prudent.

As the Catholic Church begins a new pontificate, our prayer should be for the holy father to lead the church with the same commitment to prudence and stability that we see in the Council of Jerusalem in the reading today. Our prayer should be for him to be advised by prudent men who understand the burden of servant leadership that our holy father carries with him. Our prayer should be for our bishops to follow suit in their own administration of their diocese. And likewise we should pray for our parish priests, that they be models of prudence and patience and prayer.

The model of governance for the church is also a personal model for each of us. We are beset by passions. We encounter new ideas that interest us and challenge us. We face internal pressures and urges that likewise can weigh upon us. In all these cases, God is inviting us to turn to him through his word and sacred tradition to listen to the Holy Spirit with prudence and patience so that we can remain in his church safely protected by the Holy Spirit.

Jesus promises his Apostles in the gospel today that God will send the Holy Spirit to teach us and protect us. It is our job to receive the Holy Spirit and listen to him. May our personal reception of the Wisdom of God be marked by the same prudence and patience we saw among the Apostles at the Council of Jerusalem.