From the desk of the pastor for June 15, 2025

The Lord be with you! Last Sunday we celebrated the great Solemnity of Pentecost, which is often considered the birthday of the Church. For almost two thousand years we have been proclaiming the Good News. Now is a fitting time, therefore, to reflect on that long history of the Church. Over the next few months we are going to cover some of the most important events as well as give a general description of what it was like for the Church. We start with the Age of the Apostles.

Although we must rely heavily on tradition, we do have a good sense of what the Church was like for the first few generations after Christ’s Resurrection. Persecuted locally and dirt poor, the Church spread rapidly from Jerusalem all the way to Spain, Ethiopia, and India! Several events forever changed how she would announce the Good News.

First, the Council of Jerusalem enabled the Church to convert Gentiles and Jews alike. As we should all remember from the Acts of the Apostles, the Church met in Jerusalem around 50 AD to discuss whether Gentiles would have to follow the Mosaic Law. At this time we had three types of converts: ethnic Jews, God fearers, and pagans. God fearers were those Gentiles who had given up their pagan practices to observe the Torah with the Israelites. When God-fearers or Jews converted, they kept observing the Law of Moses since Jesus had completed, not abolished it. What to do with pagans, however, who had never observed a Sabbath?

The Council decided that they did have to refrain from acts that would pollute them - participating in pagan sacrifices and unlawful marriage - but that was it. No circumcision. No incorporation into the Jewish community. Although the Church would convert many more pagans than Jews, she did convert the majority of Jews. One can make a strong case that by 200 AD only 10% of Jews in the Roman Empire were not Christians.

In 70 AD the Romans leveled Jerusalem. The province of Israel had fallen into open revolt in 66 AD and had initially defeated the Roman forces there. Although the resistance to Rome would continue till 74 AD, in 70 AD Rome successfully besieged Jerusalem leading to the execution or enslavement of almost its entire population. The Church’s life shifted away from the Holy City to Antioch and Alexandria.

For the average Christian of the first century of Our Lord, the Roman Empire was a potential threat - not a sworn enemy. Nero did blame Christians for the fires of Rome in 64 AD, but an empire wide persecution never materialized. Instead, Christians were often ostracized and persecuted locally.

As St. Ignatius of Antioch shows in his letters, the Church already had a developed hierarchy of bishops, priests, and deacons. Proto-marytrs like Ignatius inspired the rest of the Church with their example. We will see next time that such resolve would be demonstrated time and again.

In His Sacred Heart,
Fr. John