Monday of the Fourth Week of Easter

Who was I to hinder God?

I love Saint Peter’s question. The Christian’s role is often to get out of God’s way. We may help set up the situation, sharing our hope and happiness and inner peace with coworkers, friends, neighbors and family. We should answer questions about our faith with sincerity and without any trace of cynicism.

We might even, on occasion, encourage them to pursue the voice that seems to be leading them on. If they share with us their inner longing we might recognize the voice of the Good Shepherd in their experience.

But finally, we get out of the way. We might suggest but we cannot control their responses. No one knows the innermost heart of another human being. No one knows when or how that other person must respond. Few can say with any certainty, “You must do it this way!”

Missionaries in foreign countries often experience that challenge. They have their own ways of responding and clearly they have followed the Holy Spirit into distant lands, far from everything that is familiar. When people around them begin to hear the voice of the Good Shepherd the missionary might say, “You must do it this way. You have to eat as I eat and dress as I dress and talk as I talk and think as I think!” Despite his sincerity the missionary may be imposing his own culture rather than bearing Christ to this foreign land.

We hear that very issue in this story from the Acts of the Apostles. The first Christians were all Jewish; they could not imagine that gentiles might be drawn to their messiah. If they were, they would certainly have to be Jewish first, and then become Christian. But the well-educated Saint Paul and the spirit-led Saint Peter opposed that plan.

They saw clearly that Jesus saves us not as a Jew but as a human being. He is, in fact, neither Jew nor gentile, male or female, slave or free. He is for all.

Perhaps, in our time, we might even think of Jesus as The Earthling who saves every earthly creature, both animal and vegetable, by his incarnation, death and resurrection.

Saint Francis understood that well! He sent his friars to preach to every creature as he spoke to the birds and Saint Anthony preached to fish.