During the Easter Season, the first reading at Mass is taken from the Acts of the Apostles.
In the readings from Acts, we hear the first preaching of the Apostles that followed Pentecost and the beginning of the Church’s public mission.
Today’s brief excerpt from St. Peter’s preaching announces the identity of Jesus, recounts how he died for sinners, and calls for conversion for the forgiveness of sins. This is the core of apostolic preaching: God has acted in history, and it calls for a response from us.
“The author of life you put to death, but God raised him from the dead” (Acts 3:15).
Pulling no punches, St. Peter says very frankly that the people of Jerusalem and their leaders bear responsibility for handing Jesus over to death. While the crowds in Jerusalem were complicit in condemnation and death of the Lord, the Church has always maintained that they acted in ignorance (Acts 3:17; 1 Corinthians 2:8), and that all sinners bear responsibility for the suffering of Jesus, and especially those who profess to know him in faith (Catechism of the Catholic Church, para. 598-599). And this was also the fulfillment of what God had announced through the prophets in advance: that his Christ would suffer. But God turned the effect of sin on its head when Jesus was raised from the dead.
‘Repent, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be wiped away” (Acts 3:19).
The announcement of the Gospel calls for a response. This is the profession of faith that we are called to make and to live. Faith has an objective component – what God has done and made known through Jesus and his witnesses, what the Church has handed on from the Apostles, and all that the Christian moral life entails. This is the map that is presented to us, but when you use a map, you orient yourself and decide how to proceed. This is the subjective component of faith – the extent to which one takes the proclamation of the Gospel to heart and responds by conforming his life to it. This is also a work of God’s grace, but grace does not work against the human will. Although you may have heard the Gospel proclaimed many times, every time is an opportunity to receive it anew and deepen conversion and repentance with the grace of God.
-Fr. Nate
