No Little Dissension

I love those words from the Acts of the Apostles because they could just as easily apply to the church in our own day as to the early church. In Acts it refers to what happened when the Gentile Christians in Greece were told by some Christian Jews who had come from Jerusalem that they needed to observe Jewish law and custom to be followers of Jesus. Given that that included circumcision I think “no little dissension” is putting it mildly. In the end this led to the case being presented by Paul and Barnabas (who had been preaching the gospel to the Gentiles) before the church gathered in Rome. The apostles decided in the end that it was not necessary to be Jewish to become Christian. This is considered to be the first church council, the Council of Jerusalem.

Given the “no little dissension” and polarization we experience in the church in our own day, I appreciate that at daily mass the fifth week of Easter is spent reading the account of this controversy and how the church resolved it. No matter what we are dealing with these days it is nowhere near the depth of deciding the fundamentals of who we are. So we trust that the Holy Spirit that guided us at that first council guides us now, and that the path the church takes will in the end be led by God.

-Fr Lou