Peter justifies his conduct
1 News came to the apos tles and the brothers and sisters in Judea that even foreigners had received the Word of God.
2 So, when Peter went up to Jerusalem, these Jewish believers began to argue with him,
3 “You went to the home of uncircumcised people and ate with them!”
4 So Peter began to give them the facts as they had happened,
5 “I was at prayer in the city of Joppa when, in a trance, I saw a vision. Some thing like a large sheet came down from the sky and drew near to me, landing on the ground by its four corners.
6 As I stared at it, I saw four-legged creatures of the earth, wild beasts and reptiles, and birds of the sky.
7 Then I heard a voice saying to me: ‘Get up, Peter, kill and eat!’
8 I replied, ‘Certainly not, Lord! No common or unclean creature has ever entered my mouth.’
9 A second time the voice from the heavens spoke, “What God has made clean, you must not call unclean.”
10 This happened three times, and then it was all drawn up into the sky.
11 At that moment three men, who had been sent to me from Caesarea, arrived at the house where we were staying.
12 The Spirit instructed me to go with them without hesitation; so these six brothers came along with me and we entered into the man’s house.
13 He told us how he had seen an angel standing in his house and telling him: Send someone to Joppa and fetch Simon, also known as Peter.
14 He will bring you a message by which you and all your household will be saved.”
15 I had begun to address them when suddenly the Holy Spirit came upon them, just as it had come upon us at the beginning.
16 Then I re membered what the Lord had said: ‘John baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’
17 If, then, God had given them the same gift that he had given us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to resist God?”
18 When they heard this they set their minds at rest and praised God saying, “Then God has granted life-giving repentance to the pagan nations as well.”
The foundation of the Church at Antioch
19 Those who had been scattered because of the persecution over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch, telling the message, but only to the Jews.
20 But there were some natives of Cyprus and Cyrene among them who, on coming into Antioch, spoke also to the Greeks, giving them the good news of the Lord Jesus.
21 The hand of the Lord was with them so that a great number believed and turned to the Lord.
22 News of this reached the ears of the Church in Jerusalem, so they sent Barnabas to An tioch.
23 When he arrived and saw the manifest signs of God’s favor, he rejoiced and urged them all to remain firmly faithful to the Lord;
24 for he himself was a good man filled with Holy Spirit and faith. Thus large crowds came to know the Lord.
25 Then Barnabas went off to Tarsus to look for Saul
26 and when he found him, he brought him to Antioch. For a whole year they had meetings with the Church and instructed many people. It was in Antioch that the disciples were first called Christians.
27 At that time some prophets went down from Jerusalem to An tioch
28 and one of them, named Agabus, inspired by the Holy Spirit, foretold that a great famine would spread over the whole world. This actually happened in the days of the Emperor Claudius.
29 So the disciples decided, within their means, to set something aside and to send relief to the brothers and sisters who were living in Judea.
30 They did this and sent their donations to the elders by Barnabas and Saul.
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Comments Acts, Chapter 11
• 11.1 That Peter went to baptize a non-Jew seems to us the most normal thing. Let us not forget that the Christians of Jerusalem remained Jews, with their education, their prejudices and their sensibility. They did not see how a person could be part of Jesus’ family without first belonging to the people of God who, for them, identified itself with the Jewish nation. Could someone become their brother without first being circumcised? The warning they gave Peter is the first witness of the constant pressure that Christians have always brought to bear on their priests and bishops through out history. Everytime that someone would like to open our Church to people of another culture, a powerful group will only be willing to accept those who consent to lose their own identity and be Christians in the way we ourselves are. These believers in Jerusalem are not acting in bad faith and they accept Peter’s explanations. Like him, what courage the leaders of the Church will need to respond to the calls of the Holy Spirit when faced with the prejudices of a group!
• 19. Antioch, 500 kilometers north of Jeru salem, was the principal town of the Roman province of Syria, a pagan country, where Greek was spoken but where there was an important Jewish community. Luke does not tell us who presented the Christian faith to the pagans for the first time, nor how that happened. The Christians of Jewish origin that did it would de serve a statue, or better still a feast in our liturgy. So there is at Antioch for the first time a community where Jews and non-Jews are assembled: the future of the Church was there. The Jerusalem community is the Rome of the primitive Church. It is conscious of its authority and immediately asks to examine more closely this extraordinary new happening: a Church where Jews accept to rub shoulders with the uncircum cised.
The Jerusalem com munity behaved as having auth ority over the new churches; the case of Antioch would touch everyone since, for the Palestinian Jews, accepting pa gans was something of a scandal. Did not the Law of Moses forbid living with “uncircumcised” people?
• 27. There is mention of prophets. Among the gifts that the Holy Spirit granted to converts, the gift of “prophecy” was one of the most outstanding. On various occasions the “pro phet” would receive from God an insight into future events of the community, or something concerning one of its mem bers. They would also give homilies “in the Spirit.” Everyone would recognize the hand of God in the conviction and wisdom with which they spoke, discovering a word relevant to the present in a biblical pas sage.
The first gesture of fraternal assistance among Christians of different coun tries is un der lined. In this paragraph the elders or “presbyters” (it is the same word) are mentioned. The leaders of the Christian commu ni ty were so called, following the Jewish custom.