As is the case throughout the Easter season, our first reading comes from the Acts of the Apostles – and the first line of today’s reading tells us that, “Philip went down to the city of Samaria and proclaimed Christ to them.”
Now, at first hearing, it sounds like Saint Luke is simply giving us some directional information and setting the scene. But in order to fully understand the import of this line, and in order to grasp the full impact of the rest of the reading, which tells us about the continued expansion of the Church, we have to ask why Philip went down to Samaria, and we need to speak for a moment about the events that come immediately before this passage of the Acts of the Apostles.
Last Sunday, we heard how the Apostles had been overburdened by both preaching and the need to caring for the physical needs of the Church – and how they selected Stephen and six other men and ordained them deacons to assist in caring for the needs of the widows, serving them at table.
But in the lines that follow immediately after the end of last week’s reading, Saint Luke recounts, at length, how Stephen was then brought before the High Priest and questioned because of his preaching and healing in Jesus’ name. Infuriated by his eloquence, the leaders of the people “dragged Stephen out of the city and stoned him … and Saul approved of their killing him.”
Saint Luke then gives us this crucial piece of information. He says, “that day a severe persecution began against the Church in Jerusalem, and all except the Apostles were scattered throughout the countryside of Judea and Samaria.”
So at the beginning of today’s reading, when Saint Luke simply tells us that “Philip went down to the city of Samaria,” it’s a bit like saying that Mrs. Lincoln left Ford’s Theatre! It’s certainly not inaccurate, but there’s a whole lot more we need to think about in order to fully comprehend the story.
Philip and the other believers didn’t simply move for a change of scenery. They didn’t even move so that they could spread the Gospel as widely as possible. They fled Jerusalem because Stephen had been murdered and a brutal persecution of Christians was underway!
It certainly must have felt to Philip and the other Christians that this was an unmitigated disaster. They must have, at least on some level, feared for their lives and imagined that before long they too would be called to emulate Christ, as Stephen had, and witness to their faith with their blood. They must have imagined that this meant the end of their fledgling community of believers.
But as our reading indicates, this was not at all what happened. Philip “proclaimed Christ” to the people of Samaria and they “accepted the word of God.” The people were baptized, and then the Apostles Peter and John came and laid hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit – we might say that they were Confirmed in the faith.
In other words, God’s Providence was at work in the life of the Church, and therefore even something that involved terrible suffering – something that could only have been reasonably understood as a great evil: namely, the persecution of the Church – was in fact able to be transformed into a tremendous good:
It was precisely in the spilling of the martyr’s blood that the roots of the Church were watered and grew, and it was in the persecution that scattered the believers from Jerusalem, that salvation came to be preached to the ends of the earth just as Jesus had commanded. Though powerless in the face of worldly authorities, the Church simply could not be destroyed.
This is the essence of the Christian mystery that we continue to celebrate throughout the Easter season: the paradox that it is in death that we find life; that it is in the Cross, that we find the Resurrection; that it is in loosing our life, that we find our life.
The Apostles and their companions truly believed and lived this central Christian mystery. They had faith and hope, even in the midst of terrible setbacks and suffering, that Jesus would not leave them as orphans.
And the proof of this can be found, not only in the fact that they were willing to die, to sacrifice their lives for the Gospel that they knew promised them eternal life – it can also to be found in the rich fruit that their ministry bore.
Saint Luke says in our first reading that when Philip went to Samaria and proclaimed Christ to them, the crowds believed, they were freed of unclean spirits, they were healed and cured, and finally, Saint Luke says that “there was great joy in the city.”
When we have faith and hope in God’s Divine Providence – when we yield our egos and our lives to Him – it is possible, even in the face of suffering, to know the freedom, the healing, and the joy of the Holy Spirit.
Our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI has been fond of repeating in homilies a phrase he first used in his encyclical, Spe Salve (Saved in Hope). He says: “The one who has hope lives differently.”
There are many ways in which our Christian hope, born of Easter faith, should inspire us to lead lives that are markedly different from those who do not have a relationship with Jesus Christ – who have not received the gift of the Spirit as we hear in today’s readings. But perhaps most fundamentally, our lives should be markedly different because they should bear witness to Easter joy. The principle gift of the Holy Spirit is joy.
The people who we encounter each day should be able to see and hear in our lives what the people of Samaria found in Philip and the Apostles: the joy that is born of hope in God’s Divine Providence. Not giddy, superficial happiness – but the deep joy of the Spirit, that can endure even trials and suffering, in the knowledge that “there is no failure the Lord’s love cannot reverse; no humiliation He cannot exchange for blessing; no anger He cannot dissolve; no routine He cannot transfigure.”
If we live our lives with this kind of Easter joy, then in the words of Saint Peter from our second reading, people will indeed ask us … they will want to know the “reason for the hope that is within us.” They will want to know how they too can experience such hope and joy!
And then we must “be ready to give an explanation … with gentleness and reverence ...” that all our joy and all our hope is in the Cross of Christ Jesus, who died “for the sake of the unrighteous” but is now “brought to life” … that He might lead us all to the Father.
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