On Friday of this week the whole Church observes the Feast of Saint John XXIII.
This man, in the five short years he served as Pope, put into motion the most consequential event for the Church of the 20th century and the first half of the 21st century.
He saw the world changing and he was committed to see the Church renewed by the power of the Holy Spirit in a new Pentecost.
He called us to return in spirit to the early centuries of Church life and rediscover the very meaning of what it is to be Church.
He called us to open the Word of God, to search the scriptures. He found in the first chapter of the Acts of the Apostles a description of life in that early Church.
They were a community, they shared what they had with each other, no one had too much and no one had too little.
They committed themselves to the teaching of the Apostles—that is, to the teaching of Jesus coming through those who were witnesses to all that Jesus did and said.
They were people of the Eucharist. The “Breaking of the Bread” was the ultimate sign of the life of the early Church. As Jesus is broken for the salvation of the world, for the good of all people, so that the compassion and mercy of the Father might descend as dewfall upon the earth.
That early Church community prayed together, they came to be as one in the daily prayer.
The definition of those who threw their lot in with Jesus Christ is that they embraced the service of the common good, they surrendered any selfishness or arrogance and knew that to throw their lot in with Jesus was to throw their lot in with each other.
Pope John said: ‘They were a community—People of the Book and People of the Cup.”
The work John started is ongoing; it is in our hands—the community of the 21st century. Pray to John this week. Ask his intercession with God that the fire and thunder and gale of a New Pentecost may touch each of us.
Father Steve Adrian
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