Acts 14:21–27: Paul’s Mission and the Origins of Priesthood
Readings and Virtual Homily for Mass, May 18, 2025, Fifth Sunday of Easter; A Marian Moment in a Marian Month; Deep Dish at the Vatican Part Two; One Week Left to Summer, to Summer and More, to Sabbatical, My Pleasanton Mass This Month is May 25
So then, on to the readings for Mass this Sunday, the Fifth of Easter:
Acts of the Apostles 14:21-27
Psalm 145:8-13
Revelation 21:1-5
John 13:31-35
Dear Friends and Family,
Before I get to anything else with this homily, let me say this, as many people have asked me about it. I evidently neglected to list a couple weeks back, among my Masses for the month, my regular assignment in Pleasanton, at St. Elizabeth Seton. I am usually at Seton the second Sunday of the month, at 11. This month for some reason, it was more convenient for the Korean Community to schedule me over Memorial Day weekend. My Pleasanton Mass this month is Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, May 25. 11 AM. Seton campus. I look forward to it greatly, as always. Pleasanton is my "honeymoon parish;" the parish where I started as a baby priest, way back in 2006. I think a priest's first parish probably always feels like home to him -- I think everyone knows how at home I feel in Pleasanton.
I want to focus this homily on the first reading. I want to focus this homily on what that reading tells us about the organizational development of the Church in the first century. That earliest organization proved resilient; it has stood the test of two thousand years. We saw it in action just last week, with the selection of Peter's latest successor -- the 267th -- in Rome.
Today's reading from the Acts of the Apostles details events toward the end of the missionary journey of Paul and Barnabas to Anatolia (or Asia Minor, what is today Turkey). Specific to the subject of this homily, we are told that Paul and Barnabas returned to cities they had evangelized earlier on their journey, where they appointed presbyters, or leaders, for each new Christian community. Paul and Barnabas, the passage tells us
...returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch. They strengthened the spirits of the disciples and exhorted them to persevere in the faith...They appointed presbyters for them in each church and, with prayer and fasting, commended them to the Lord (vss. 21-23).
The word presbyter translates as elder and equates to the word priest, in modern English. Though tradition tells us that Jude went to Western Asia, James to Spain, Mark to Egypt and maybe Italy, Mary Magdalen to the south of France and so forth, the disciples at this time were still largely concentrated in Jerusalem. To guard and guide the far-flung flocks established by Paul and his missionary teams on their several journeys, Paul appointed leaders in each community. These leaders would have had the responsibilities of leading the community in prayer and worship, as well as seeing to the overall administration of the "local church."
This is the beginning of the office of priesthood in the infant Church. The office of deacon had already been created, as we read in the sixth chapter of Acts (vss. 1-7). The creation of the office of deacon automatically clarified the office of apostle -- to quote directly from the sixth chapter of Acts
The Twelve called together the community of disciples and said, "It is not right for us to neglect the word of God to serve at table. Brothers, select from among you seven reputable men, filled with the Spirit and wisdom, whom we shall appoint to this task, whereas we shall devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word" (Acts 6:2-5).
It appears that for some number of years the offices of bishop and priesthood were not clearly separated; we know from late first-century sources, however, that they came to be clarified as distinct offices, in the many ancient references to the "bench of presbyters" who assisted the central leader (that is, the bishop) of any given Christian community. We know that by the late first century the presbyters were deputed to lead prayer and worship, to preside at liturgy in more remote areas of a local community; as the Church grew, it became impossible for the bishop to preside at every liturgy in his district.
These districts came to be called dioceses, borrowing the Roman term for territorial jurisdictions within provinces of the empire. Already by the time of Clement, the fourth bishop of Rome (that is, the fourth Pope, and incidentally, our patron here at the parish in Hayward) the diocesan system was in full operation. We know this from Clement's letters, among other first-century sources.
(The councils of the Church which decided the canon of Scripture, incidentally, which met in the 390s, seriously considered whether Clement's letters to the Corinthians should be included in the New Testament. One of these letters to the community at Corinth, the great Greek port city with a huge number of Christians, gives direct evidence of the general understanding that the bishop of Rome had a central and unique authority. Clement admonishes the Corinthians; he instructs and guides them, clearly understanding that it was his right and duty to do so, quite beside the fact that the church at Corinth had its own bishop.)
I could go on at length about the undeniable evidence from Acts of the Apostles that the early Church modelled itself in the manner in which we find the contemporary Church organized, but I hope that the foregoing makes my point. It has been gently suggested to me that my written homilies are long enough!
(And it is true that I never worry about the length of a written homily because after all, it is not like a spoken homily at Mass, where my listeners are a captive audience. I do my best to limit my homilies at Sunday Mass to seven or eight minutes. Here, I figure, no one HAS to sit through all these paragraphs! So...I say as much as I think the subject requires...But I do want to be respectful of your time -- to say nothing of your patience!)
Well we are half-way through the month of May, a month that has for centuries been associated with Mother Mary. And I will be spending the weekend thinking, speaking, and rejoicing about/in the Mother of God at St. Clare's Retreat Center in Soquel. This will be my third retreat at St. Clare since October; it is sponsored by Bay Area chapters of the Legion of Mary, though folks are coming from everywhere. I know personally folks who will be coming from the dioceses of Sacramento, Stockton and Monterey.
The retreat organizers sent me a list of topics they would like to have addressed, and I was surprised to realize that, in my more than two decades of retreat work, much of it centered on Mary, I had never addressed these particular topics before.
So I have been educating myself, the past few days, on new aspects and understandings of Marian devotion, and of Our Lady's place, in the history of salvation. Totally cool. As is the case with most teachers, I love learning.
This is only my second e-mailed homily since the election of Leo 14. I have been, as I imagine most of you have been, on a steep and rapid learning curve about our new pope, and the more I learn, the happier I am. He sounds very much the man to meet the moment. When I celebrated the morning Mass for our school children here at St. Clement on Wednesday, I managed to tie Leo's election into my homily -- which was interactive. At the St. Clement School Masses I come down to the center aisle and ask the kids questions and THEY "give the homily." Anyway, the excitement of our kids here at St. Clement at the fact of a Pope from Chicago was tangible. I guess it is so, throughout the country.
Finally, when I get back Sunday afternoon from Soquel, I will find myself with just one week of classes left. The Class of 2025 graduates next Saturday. I have invitations to several graduation parties next weekend and beyond; will make as many as I can. As I have said so many times, this class is truly special; they simply stole my heart.
As of Sunday, June 1, I will not just be on summer vacation. I will be on sabbatical. Until January 5. Over seven months. Although they know I am taking the sabbatical, my parishioners here at St. Clement are not going to even realize that anything has changed, since I am spending the sabbatical here and will continue with my usual parish routine. As I have said to our people here, "I am not taking a sabbatical from being a priest!"
The sabbatical is to concentrate full-time on the varied projects and goals that we have set for ourselves at San Gabriel Media, my LA-based book-and-media apostolate, which I co-founded with my brother and a few ministry colleagues, back in 2020. Too much to get into here, but the timing of the sabbatical now appears to have been perfect: San Gabriel is ready to "employ" me (so to speak) full time. I am looking forward to it.
Will close here. Take care. God bless.
Love,
Fr. Brawn