Memorial of Saint Athanasius, Bishop and Doctor of the Church

Lectionary: 288

After they had fallen silent, James responded,
“My brothers, listen to me.
Symeon has described how God first concerned himself
with acquiring from among the Gentiles a people for his name.

The first major crisis in Church history after the deaths of Jesus and Judas, was the quarrel about the gentiles. Can the movement founded by a Jewish messiah who spoke only to his fellow Jews include non-Jews? Neither the Lord nor his disciples had anticipated such a question, but the missionaries discovered, and were amazed, that gentile bystanders were clearly given the Spirit of the Lord. 

If they were at first amused by the anomaly of a gentile among Jews, they were soon dismayed when a few became several, and then became many; and the trickle became a flood. They were faced with either abandoning the Way for which their Lord had died, or admitting gentiles into a new kind of religion such as the world had never seen. It would be a faith and communion with unlimited scope, to include people of every race and nation, of language and people. They would speak languages they'd never heard; and eat food they'd never heard of! 

The crisis was resolved, insofar as crises can be resolved, when the leading apostles -- Peter, James, Paul, Barnabas, and several others -- met in Jerusalem. (Scholars reckon about 49 AD.) After much debate, James signaled their concord when he urged his  brothers to listen to Peter. The first bishop of the Christians in Jerusalem heard in Peter's story a fulfillment of the words of the ancient prophet Amos, 

"...so that the rest of humanity may seek out the Lord, even all the Gentiles on whom my name is invoked."

The Church suddenly realized their mission was not only for the diaspora of Jews; they were to address kings and emperors, presidents and dictators; they should speak to people in "far distant isles."  

The "Council of Jerusalem" set a pattern for the future as the Church continues to meet with the Successor of Peter to discuss developments, create policies, and discover an agreement that comes from God. When Peter moved to Rome he took the center of the Church with him; and when he died there his leadership took root. It is anchored there on a peninsula in the Mediterranean, a word which means middle of the earth. 

The genius of Catholicism resides in Peter and the papacy. That divinely appointed institution, despite its too-obvious human flaws and fallibility, has proven itself as a resilient source of unity, adaptability, and strength against the corrosion of time.