Sunday, 5/5/13
Today’s Gospel is
taken from Our Lord’s words to the Apostles after the Last Supper. Jesus told
them that the Holy Spirit would teach them everything. A few minutes later he
would return to that, saying, “I have much more to tell you, but you cannot
bear it now, but when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all
truth.
Our first reading
today describes a time when the Apostles would see they had to put Our Lord’s
promise to a test. Fifteen years after the Resurrection, a question arose for
which they had no answer. For a dozen years following the Resurrection all of
their early Christians had been Jews. But then, starting in Antioch, some
Gentles heard the word and believed. With that a new question arose. Namely,
could male Gentiles become Christians without first being circumcised as Jews.
While some people
were saying it was enough to baptize the Gentiles who wanted to be Christians,
others were saying that the law of Moses still held, and those men would have
to be circumcised.
The community
decided this was one of those times that Jesus had talked about. This was an
unexpected matter for which he could not have given them advanced information.
This was a matter for which they could depend on the Holy Spirit to lead them to
the truth.
They decided that in
order for them to appeal to the Holy Spirit for guidance, they would need to
come together in one place. The leaders in Antioch sent Paul and Barnabas to
Jerusalem for the first council of the Church.
The Church held its
eighteenth general council in the sixteenth century, meeting off and on from
1545 to 1563 at the northern Italy town of Trent. Attending were only bishops
from four European countries where Catholicism was the state religion. They
approved of ordinances written by the pope’s picked Theologians.
The nineteenth
general council was held in the Vatican from 1868 to 1870. After declaring for
papal infallibility, they were permanently interrupted by the invasion of Italian
Nationalists.
The Church’s
twentieth general council From 1962 to 1965 was the Second
Vatican council. It pulled in twenty-five hundred bishops from all corners of the
world, and they met for three months in four successive years. Some Catholics
who were trained on the catechism of the Council of Trent find Vatican II to be too liberal even
though the Fathers prayed each day for the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
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