Acts 18:23-28
Psalm 47:2-23.8-9.10
John 16:23-28
In today's first reading, there is a description of members of the early church supporting and helping each other in their faith. Paul is described as encouraging all the followers. Reference is made to Apollos, a member of the church in Ephesus, a very gifted man, but not fully formed in the faith. A married couple, named Priscilla and Aquila, took a great interest in him and gave him further instruction in the faith, sharing their deeper understanding of the faith with him. Then when Apollos decided to journey from Ephesus to the church in Corinth, the members of the church in Ephesus encouraged him. They didn’t want to keep him for themselves; they realized that others could benefit from his gifts too. They not only encouraged him, but they sent a letter of recommendation ahead of him to the church in Corinth. When Apollos arrived in Corinth we are told that his knowledge of the Scriptures was a great help to the believers there. The reading paints a wonderful picture of the church at its best - believers helping, supporting and encouraging each other in the faith, helping one another to grow in the Lord. This is what the church is called up to be in every generation; this is the church in which the Spirit of Christ is alive and active. As we approach the feast of Pentecost we need to pray for an increase of the gift of the Spirit among us, as Jesus says in today’s gospel reading, ‘Ask and you will receive, and so your joy will be complete’.
The reading from Acts of the Apostles gives us an insight into how people in the early church supported one another in faith. In the reading, we were introduced to a man called Apollos. By all accounts he was a very impressive figure; he had a sound knowledge of the Scriptures; he spoke with great eloquence, and had been given instruction in the faith, in the Way of the Lord. Yet, it is clear that he needed further instruction in the faith and that was given to him by a well formed married couple by the name of Priscilla and Aquila. Apollos obviously had gifts that this married couple admired but did not have, and, yet, they had something which he, Apollos didn’t have; they had a fuller understanding of the way of the Lord. Apollos had a great deal to offer but he also had something to receive from this married couple, and he was humble enough to learn from them, not minding that they were what many of us would call 'an ordinary married couple." That is how it is in the church. Often, we fail to understand and accept the fact that we need each other’s faith if we are to grow in faith. We need the believing community if we are to grow in our relationship with the Lord. Within the community of faith, everybody is important and we have an opportunity to give from our own faith, and to receive from the faith of others. As members of the body of Christ, we all have many things to offer, and we all have something to receive. When it comes to faith and our relationship with the Lord, we are always interdependent. We need the church, the living community of faith; and it is obvious that we cannot get it alone, we need each other.
The gospel reading suggests that above all, we need the Lord who comes to us in and through the members of the church. We need to pray, to ask the Lord for the help that he alone can give us, the help that enables us to do his work, and, indeed, as he says, to do even greater works than he has done. What are we then waiting for? We observe that Jesus almost seems to rebuke the disciples for not asking when he says, ‘until now you have not asked for anything in my name’. He encourages us to ask, to live our lives as his followers not on our resources and power, but in union with him, recognizing our dependence on him. Even Jesus himself was dependent on the Father, and so at the end of this morning’s gospel reading, Jesus says of himself, ‘I came from the Father and have come into the world and now I leave the world and go to the Father’. There is a sense in which it is true to say that what Jesus says of himself there applies to all of us. We have come from the Father into the world and we will leave the world one day and go back to the Father. In between this coming into the world and this leaving the world, we are called to be in a deeply personal relationship with God the Father, through his Son, in the Spirit. God sent his Son into the world so that we could become brothers and sisters of his Son through faith and sons and daughters of God the Father, sharing in Jesus’ own relationship with God. We spend the whole of our earthly lives growing into that baptismal calling, that baptismal identity, of sons and daughters of God, and brothers and sisters of Jesus. We need each other’s faithful support if we are to become all that our baptism calls us to be. As a reminder to us, we have seen a very good example of such faithful support in today’s first reading. Apollos was a very learned Jew from Alexandria in Egypt who had been instructed in the way of the Lord. Yet, a very active married couple in the early church, Priscilla and Aquila, recognized that he needed further instruction in the way of the Lord and they took him aside to teach him further. This married couple were among the first catechists in the early church. We all need each other’s faith, each other's gifts, if we are to live our baptism to the full and so arrive to the Father from whom we have come.
We already know that there are many forms of prayer. Perhaps the prayer that comes most naturally to us in some ways is the prayer of petition. The one prayer that Jesus gave to his disciples to pray was a prayer of petition, the Lord’s Prayer. The gospels portray Jesus as petitioning God; his prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane is such a prayer, ‘Father, take this cup from me’. In this morning’s gospel reading Jesus encourages his disciples to petition God, ‘Ask and you will receive, and so your joy will be complete’. We know from experience that we don’t receive everything we ask for in prayer; For example, we may ask God to heal someone we love and it doesn’t happen, the person rather dies. Yet, Jesus encourages us to ask and in asking he promises us that we will receive. He seems to be saying that in asking, in petitioning God, we always receive, even if we do not receive in the way we wanted to receive. Our prayer of petition creates a space in our lives in which God can work for our ultimate good. In that sense no prayer, offered in faith and trust, is ever wasted. In one way or the other, the prayer is answered, so do not ever rwlent in prayer and dont be tired of asking the Father whatever you need in the name of Jesus Christ.
-PadreCharlesLwanga
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