Saturday of the Sixth Week of Easter

 Lectionary: 296

A Jew named Apollos, a native of Alexandria, an eloquent speaker, arrived in Ephesus. He was an authority on the Scriptures. He had been instructed in the Way of the Lord and,with ardent spirit, spoke and taught accurately about Jesus...
He vigorously refuted the Jews in public, establishing from the Scriptures that the Christ is Jesus.

The Book of Revelation describes the Church as a city paradoxically built on a rock foundation that floats like a cloud from heaven to settle on Earth. And on the foundation "were inscribed the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb." He could not imagine a church without the apostles. There is no church without the apostolic witness. They bridge the gap to the vast number of people who never saw the Lord but believe he is the Son of God. 

Saint Luke's Acts of the Apostles serves that bridge with a historical account of how the Apostles fared after Jesus's Ascension. It finds supplemental testimony in other New Testament writings, especially Saint Paul's letters. These documents provide occasional footnotes like the names of missionary disciples, along with places and incidents that locate the testimony in what we know of secular history. The early church collected, copied, and treasured these writings for the same reason. Without the apostles and their writings we might know of the Lord, but would not know Him. With them we have a living Church.

The fascinating Saint Barnabas appears as one who had never met Jesus of Nazareth, nor heard him speak. But he knew the scriptures, the spirit of Judaism, and the baptism of John the Baptist. He and Paul supplied what Jesus's barely literate disciples could not provide, a deep, sophisticated, and critical knowledge and love of Jewish tradition. They could winnow the chaff of nonsense from the wheat of the Gospel. Without that knowledge, our link to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob would be tenuous; and our salvation, less secure.

Modern readers, approaching the Hebrew Bible with very different critical tools, might not readily see the connections that were so apparent to Paul, Barnabas, the Evangelists, and the Patristic bishops. They might suppose, for instance, the virgin of Isaiah 7:14 who bears a child is only a young woman, and not necessarily a virgin mother. Every modern scholar knows that Saint Matthew's word for virgin was copied from the Septuaglnt. Isaiah's original Hebrew word meant maiden.  

Paul, Barnabas, Matthew, and Luke had no doubt about the prophecy nor its fulfillment in the mysterious birth of Jesus. It made perfect sense to them and was readily accepted by the universal church. If a contemporary critic throws cold water upon that reading of Isaiah, they have misunderstood the intentions of the Holy Spirit. 

All too often these critics think they can discover a spiritual thread to our first century Messiah and dismiss the rock-like apostolic foundation that is more solid than a gothic cathedral. In so doing, they dismiss the apostles as misinformed primitives while they pose as enlightened elites. Their attitude is like that of racists who suppose the African pyramids must have been built by aliens while Stonehenge was obviously built by Europeans. 

Fulfilling the commission that Saint Luke recorded -- "that repentance, for the forgiveness of sins, would be preached in his name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem" -- the Roman Pontiff (BTW, the Latin pontis means bridge) maintains the unity of the same apostolic church of Paul, Barnabas, and the Twelve. There will always be challenges, controversy, and insatiable skepticism but the Holy Spirit still descends upon us like the dew to refresh our Petrine faith.