for April 21
Tuesday of the Second Week of Easter

We continue our progressive reading through the Acts of the Apostles. In fact, today’s passage from Acts repeats last Sunday’s first reading. Within Acts, this passage represents a pause in the action, giving Luke an opportunity to report on the general progress of the early church. It was great progress, indeed.

Luke isolates two qualities in particular for special mention. First, he says “the whole group of believers was united. . .” For Luke, unity and harmony are principal signs of the Spirit’s action in the church. In today’s church we frequently base church unity on doctrinal unanimity: To be a Catholic you must believe everything the church teaches. But in the very early church, since creedal statements were still in a primitive stage of development, unity had to flow from a very personal adherence to the person of Christ more than from agreement on doctrinal formulas. Yet it didn’t take long for disputes to arise, the resolution of which required reaching some form of doctrinal consensus. One of those disputes concerned the admittance of Gentiles into the community of believers without requiring that they adopt Jewish observances. Later in Acts, Luke will be forced to recount this part of the story, though he will always hark back to sought for unity and harmony in the church.

The second quality Luke holds up is the generous sharing of material resources. Luke’s gospel is filled with warnings about the danger of riches. So in Luke’s idealized version of the church, private property gives way to a radical economic structure that reminds us of the modern notion of socialism. Ever since Luke’s account in Acts, the church as had an ambivalent attitude toward material goods. On the one hand, beginning in the late nineteenth century, the church adamantly adhered to its traditional support for the right of private property. But at the same time, the Church has also argued that material goods must be distributed through society in an equitable fashion so that all members of society will have access to what is necessary to preserve their human dignity. Private property can never be an absolute right, but must be qualified by other needs, especially the rights of the poor.

How would Luke portray today’s church if he were updating his account in Acts? Would he be scandalized by the divisions in our church today with its liturgy wars and theology wars? And what would he say about the way wealth has been accumulated in such a tiny portion of society, while so many live in extreme deprivation?

At first sight, Luke’s description in Acts is a glowing, perhaps over idealized, description of the early church. Probably it was never actually realized in the church at any time. But Luke’s description is meant more to challenge us to look at our church and our world in our own time, to ask hard questions about how we measure up to what the Holy Spirit is calling us. Perhaps these challenges become especially acute when we face crises such as today’s pandemic. Many people are asking how changed we will be as a society when we emerge from this health emergency. Luke’s vision may inspire some critical thinking of what we should aspire to become as both a community of faith and a society of diverse population.
—Walter Modrys SJ

Today’s readings can be found on the US Conference of Catholic Bishops website.