Sunday Scripture Readings

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SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER,

APRIL 27

Acts 4:32-35; Psalm 118;

1 John 5:1:3-6; John 20:19-31

OUR GOOD NEWS: We express our wholehearted faith in God through mutual, caring love for fellow human beings. In the first reading, Luke interrupted his narrative of the earliest Church to summarize, for our edification and example, life in the earliest stage of Church history. "The community of believers thought the same things and wanted the same things" - literally, "were of one heart" (center of intellectual activity) "and of one mind" (seat of will). This description should apply to the Church community in our own time no less than then. Luke then described an attitude toward personal property rather than canonized any economic system (free-enterprise capitalism, socialism). "They all shared with one another everything they had": while continuing to possess personal belongings. "No one said, 'What I own belongs just to me.'" This passage offers an ideal to be striven for rather than a fond memory of a once-model past. Moreover, it allows for living the command of practical love of neighbor within various economic and cultural systems. Recent popes have made it clear that the Church favors no one system over others, even-handedly criticizing social injustices in socialist and capitalist countries. American Christians assist the poor, sick, aged and unemployed through tax revenues as well as collections under Church and other private auspices for specific needs. Luke asks: What else must be done to measure up? How can we draw upon secular skills and unevenly distributed resources to care for the world's needy? A second theme running through today's first reading concerned the proper role of authority within the Christian community. "With great power the apostles gave witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus." Divine grace worked within the apostles, enabling their preaching; and also within hearers, empowering a wholehearted response of selfless generosity. "Great respect paid" leaders thus flowed from God's grace, rather than merited by personal managerial skills. On the other hand, authority structures exclusively served the common good, in this case organizing the distribution of money intended for all in need. In the second reading, a baptismal theme introduced in Lenten readings continues through succeeding Sundays. By this rite we Christians are literally reborn, becoming God's children while professing faith "that Jesus is the Christ (Messiah)." This is the proper context for love of neighbor enjoined in today's first reading, something different from non-Christian humanistic social concern grounded upon the "dignity of humankind." Others are actually or potentially "God's children," with reverence for the dignity of God as found in all fellow human beings. "Like parent, like child." It also follows that obedience to divine commands never permits escape from responsibility for one another: "We love God's children whenever we love God and obey His commandments." This selection takes issue with modern disinterest concerning credal orthodoxy - the notion that details of personal belief don't matter. A vibrant faith life is possible only within a community whose personal and corporate existence has been molded by solid doctrine grounded in authentic Christian tradition.