for May 28
Thursday of the Seventh Week of Easter

“Divide and conquer” is the oldest trick in the books. Paul employs it masterfully in today’s first reading.  

The hapless Roman commander in Jerusalem has a simple goal: to quell the uproar among the Jews over Paul’s conduct. As he sees it, he could care less about the esoteric internecine religious dispute among people for whom he has very little regard. So he forces the Jewish authorities to convene their high court, called the Sandhedrin, naively hoping that in some way they can resolve the dispute without further public disturbance. 

At this time, the Jewish ruling class is divided into many competing classes, the principal ones being the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Contrary to the impression given by the gospel accounts, the Pharisees are the more liberal of the two. They were willing to delve into the Scriptures with a more expansive interpretative approach. In particular, they were very attached to the doctrine of the resurrection, that the righteous could look forward to some form of life after death. They claimed this doctrine was implied in the Scriptures and referred to in some of the later sacred writings beyond the Torah. The Sadducees, on the other hand, were more fundamentalist in their approach, arguing that the Torah had no such doctrine and Jews were not free to add doctrines that could not be grounded in the letter of the law. (Interesting, how this argument in some form perdures down to our own day.)

Paul exploited this division by boldly declaring himself in favor of the Pharisees’ position, and claiming, falsely, that he was being brought up on charges because of his support for the Pharisaic position. This, of course, instantly galvanized the support of the Pharisees for Paul’s cause and turned the attention of the court entirely away from him as the alleged defendant. A clever move, indeed.

This reading suggests to us some of the complexity of the religious world of the first century AD, especially within the Jewish community. It must have been difficult for ordinary people to make their way through the confusion and diversity of cultures, traditions, superstitions, prejudices to latch on it what must have seemed a new upstart religion that proclaimed such a seemingly bizarre belief:  the world was transformed by a condemned man who had nothing to recommend him but the unsubstantiated claim of his followers that he was still alive. This struggle to perceive the truth faith is the underlying theme of the Acts, centered in its later chapters at least on the struggle of Paul to preach this message in the polyglot culture of the first century.

Of course, one can read the Acts of the Apostles and keep the story neatly confined to the first century and look at the characters as firmly rooted in the religious eccentricities of their time. On the other hand, we can read the Acts and find a world not too dissimilar from our own and recognize that the squiggle of faith is something we share with our spiritual ancestors. Most of all, we can recognize that the same Spirit is acting upon us and within our Church. And that should give us comfort as we face the challenges of our own day.
—Walter Modrys SJ

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