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Dear Parish Faithful,
In our most recent Bible Study, we read and discussed Ch. 5 of the Acts of the Apostles. There we read that for the second time (the first time is recorded in ch. 4) the apostles were detained or arrested for publicly proclaiming the Gospel that Jesus is the Christ and that He is risen from the dead. The apostles were ordered by the Sanhedrin not to preach openly about Jesus. But the Apostle Peter famously and boldly responded: "We must obey God rather than men" (5:29).
We went on and heard a passage of commentary from St. John Chrysostom about how this event can be understood in the light of the apostles' and disciples' experience up to that point in time in their newly-established faith in Christ. With his usual insight, St. John reminds us that they have experienced both "dejection" and "joy" in an almost ongoing dialectic between these two very opposite - but very human - experiences. What struck me is to what extent this can describe our own lives and the same movement from dejection to joy that is embedded in the very fabric of our lives. This seems to be an inescapable component of the human experience. Of course, we hope that the joy of knowing, trusting and loving Christ will prevail even when - or especially when - we are overcome by dejection. Here is what St. John wrote:
"First there was dejection because Christ was taken from them; then came joy through the descent of the Spirit; then dejection again because of the scoffers; then joy because of the believers and the sign; then dejection again because of the imprisonment; followed by joy in the result of their defense. And here again both dejection and joy: joy because they were well-known and God made revelations to them; dejection because they made away with some of them. Again, joy from their success and dejection because of the high priest. And the same pattern could be seen throughout.”
HOMILIES ON THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 12.
Again, sounds just like the pattern of our lives!
