Whoever has my commandments and observes them
is the one who loves me.
Christian faith demands witness. Our faith is not passive. It begins with faithfulness and obedience to the Sacramental life of the Church.
The world is not favorable to the Christian witness. We are fully aware that the world doesn’t hate us, exactly, but hates Jesus first. If you think the world hates you, know for certain that it hated Jesus first. It has always been this way, beginning with early persecution of the Church.
The deacon Philip was one of the first seven deacons of the Jerusalem Church. Saul, our St. Paul, was one of the earliest persecutors of the new Church founded by Jesus Christ. That persecution had profound consequences.
Saul/Paul was aggressive in his persecution, leading to many deaths and prisoners as he hunted down early Christians. We read in Acts of Paul’s participation in the stoning of the first martyr, St. Stephen, a brother deacon ordained with Philip by the Apostles. Apparently the death of St. Stephen marked a particularly brutal persecution of Christians, and many fled from Jerusalem. That is why we encounter Philip preaching in Samaria, north of Jerusalem.
This episode allows us to see some of the earliest developments of Sacraments in the infant Church, and the importance of the Holy Spirit in our Sacraments.
Philip’s preaching led to many baptisms in Samaria. However, the Church was still quite young and had not yet fully understood even the role of the Holy Spirit. Philip did nothing wrong in baptizing only with water and the name of Jesus because he didn’t know any better. The Church hadn’t worked that out, and the Gospels were still 30-40 years in the future. However, we begin to see how the apostolic Church began to discover the critical nature of the Holy Spirit in the sacraments and the life of the Church.
When the apostles learned that Philip had only baptized with water in the name of Jesus, the apostles Peter and John were sent by the other apostles to Samaria to baptize them with the Holy Spirit. In this event we see the earliest development of two Sacraments, Baptism and Confirmation. This was probably around the year 36, not long after Jesus’ Crucifixion, Resurrection and the Pentecost.
In fact, the Gospels had not yet been written. It would take probably another 30 years before the Gospel of Matthew would be written, with Jesus’ teaching the apostles,
Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.”
Philip, one of the first deacons, was preaching and making disciples in new territory. The Church, the apostles, were watching everything unfold. They were learning. They were reflecting and meditating and remembering Jesus’ teachings. Jesus taught we should receive the Holy Spirit as we come to know Him.
They were conforming themselves to Jesus’ love, by learning how to be obedient to him.
Whoever has my commandments and observes them
is the one who loves me.
Stand firm in your faith as you learned it from the Church. We are coming to the end of the Easter season. We celebrate Jesus’ ascension to the Father next Sunday, followed by the feast of Pentecost in two weeks.
Thus we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit to each of us in our Sacraments, and into our lives, in obedience to God’s will.