The focus of these readings is often the preaching of St. Peter, as is the case with our second reading this morning. And Peter always preaches about the Resurrection. But the Resurrection isn’t only the content of Peter’s preaching, what he preaches about; it’s also the source, the energy behind the preaching and ministry of the Apostles.
Peter says today: “We are witnesses of all that He did . . . He commissioned us to preach to the people and testify that He is the one appointed by God as judge of the living and the dead.”
You see, we read from the Acts of the Apostles during the Easter season, because it is the story of the birth of the Church, beginning with Jesus’ Resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles. Peter and the others are witnesses and have been commissioned to preach.
So I think it’s important to note that the title of this particular book of the New Testament is the Acts of the Apostles—“not the Good Intentions, or the Excellent Plans, or the Plausible Alibis of the Apostles, but their Acts” – because as important as words are, actions are even more important.
When the first Apostles said they had witnessed Jesus’ ministry and come to believe in His Resurrection, they didn’t just say that – they acted like they believed it, because they really did believe it, and they proved it by going to ends of the earth, even to the point of dying, to spread the good news of the Gospel.
A Protestant minister by the name of Clarence Jordan, once said, “The crowning evidence that Jesus was alive was not an empty tomb, but a spirit-filled fellowship; not a rolled-away stone, but a carried-away Church.”
Yes, of course, Jesus did indeed rise physically from the dead, and the grave really was miraculously empty. But what makes our Christian faith convincing in today’s world is the very same thing that made the Apostles preaching so powerful – it’s how we Christians act, and live out our belief in Jesus Christ, risen from the dead.
It’s often the case, however, that we can become apathetic or lazy about our faith.
We can reserve our faith for an hour on a Sunday morning, and leave it in church when we walk out those doors. We can refuse to act, choose to remain silent, when our Baptism demands that we speak out, that we sacrifice ourselves in some way to way to witness to Christ and serve our brothers and sisters.
We can convince ourselves that we are too weak, too sinful, too unimportant for God to do anything new or special through us. We make excuses, we accommodate to sin and relieve ourselves of any obligation to live differently because we are Christians.
But Easter calls us out of such complacency and despair. It reminds us of the hope we have in the Risen Christ – and of the vocation we have as members of His Church, called to be His presence in the world until He comes again.
If the Church today is going to change the world the way the Apostles and first disciples did, then we need to be the same kind of spirit-filled fellowship, the same missionary community that the first disciples were. So how did they do it?
The Acts of the Apostles tells us that the early disciples “devoted themselves to the teaching of the Apostles and to the communal life, to the breaking of bread and to the prayers.”
They devoted themselves. That means they gave over all of their hearts and minds, their whole selves, their very beings. Are we whole-hearted like that in our commitment to the Church, or do we hold back? Do we give everything, or just as much as feels comfortable?
They devoted themselves to the teaching of the Apostles. Do we listen to the Apostles by reading the Scriptures they wrote – and by respecting their successors the bishops?
They devoted themselves to the communal life. Do we participate in the life of our parish community? Do we give of our time, our talent and our treasure to support the common life we share, or do we leave it to others to do the heavy lifting? Do we see ourselves as belonging to one another, or do we think that faith is a private matter?
They devoted themselves to the breaking of the bread. Are we faithful to Sunday Mass? Do we excuse ourselves from sharing our Communion with the Lord and one another – from being nourished by His body and blood, even if a priest isn’t present on a given Sunday?
And finally, they devoted themselves to prayer. Do you pray each day? Do you spend even just five minutes a day speaking with the Lord, telling him your hopes and fears, asking for His help? If we don’t pray, then we can’t claim to have a real relationship with Jesus. Prayer is a sign of our faith that Jesus has not left us, but is with us until the end of time, just as He promised.
Brothers and sisters, the world needs us, Christ needs us, to be his missionaries – to act in the world in a way that proves our faith is real. Only then will Christ be able to work through us, bringing other people to life in Him; changing the face of the world.
This Easter let us recommit ourselves – let us devote our entire selves to the teaching of the Apostles, to our common life as a parish, to the Eucharist which makes us the Church, and to our life of prayer. If we do, we can be the spirit-filled community that shows to the world that Jesus is not dead – He is risen, as He said!
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