for May 18
Monday of the Sixth Week of Easter

The first reading from the Book of Acts continues the account of Paul’s second missionary journey through modern-day Turkey and Greece. Today’s passage finds Paul and his companions in Philippi where they go searching for a prayer service on the Sabbath. When they find one composed of a group of women, they immediately engage them in conversation. Furthermore, one of the women, Lydia, runs a business dealing in purple cloth, undoubtedly making her a person of wealth. Purple cloth was reserved for the elite and extremely expensive. Although these were patriarchal times, there were women, usually widows, who worked and ran enterprises. Lydia was probably a widow as she was head of her household and had the authority to decide to have herself and the household baptized. Subsequently she invited the missionaries to stay at her house. Such Christian households served as the earliest churches. Called house churches by historians, they remind us that the Church is first and foremost the people of God sharing Eucharist.

Like Jesus himself, the early church reached out to women no less than men. The Gospels speak of women among the entourage that accompanied Jesus in his travels around Israel and Palestine. Mary Magdalene and the other women who discovered the empty tomb are referred to by Cleopas on the road to Emmaus as “some women of our group” who “brought us astonishing news.” Women were clearly an integral part of the mission begun by Jesus and carried on by the Church as it organized itself into an institution.

The Gospel passage continues Jesus’s final words to his disciples at the Last Supper. He calls the Advocate, the Holy Spirit sent by the Father, the Spirit of truth. The Spirit will testify as to who he is, that is, God the Son, opening people’s hearts and minds to the knowledge of the Savior. And so will the disciples. The Father has of course eternally known the Son. The disciples have not. They have come to know Jesus the man, the human being who called them, formed them in ministry, and came to call them friends. Yet they too can testify to who Jesus is; they too can open people’s hearts and minds. They have been with him from the beginning of his ministry and have come to know the truth through their human experience of him.  The trouble is they don’t yet know it consciously. The mutual love and interconnectedness (“you in me and I in you”) Jesus emphasizes over and over in John’s Gospel has planted the knowledge within them, but it will be the Spirit of truth coming upon them at Pentecost that will bring it into full bloom.

The Spirit can come upon a person directly from God, but more often it comes through others. It came through the disciples who knew Jesus in the flesh. It came through disciples, like Paul, who did not. And it can come through any one of us. We are all called to let the Spirit work through us. Jesus has told us how to do that—by loving one another as he loved us. Sadly, as Jesus goes on to tell the disciples, hearts that are closed will resist the love by which he is known. The truth does not guarantee a smooth ride through life, but it assures us of God’s care for us through thick and thin, through sickness and health, adversity and prosperity, if our own hearts remain open. As the psalm response joyfully assures us, “The Lord takes delight in his people.”
—Christine Szczepanowski

The readings can be found on the US Conference of Catholic Bishops website.