{"id":1286,"date":"2016-04-28T08:24:19","date_gmt":"2016-04-28T06:24:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/?p=1286"},"modified":"2022-05-19T10:28:37","modified_gmt":"2022-05-19T14:28:37","slug":"5th-week-of-easter-thursday-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/2016\/04\/28\/5th-week-of-easter-thursday-2\/","title":{"rendered":"5th Week of Easter, Thursday (2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

As we saw in yesterday<\/a>‘s First Reading, the Church has convoked its first council in Jerusalem to discern whether Our Lord requires non-Jewish converts to be circumcised and follow Mosaic law in order to be saved. Discernment is about taking all the factors into consideration to see what God is asking, not to make an informed “vote”; we see that in\u00a0the elements at\u00a0play in today’s First Reading. After discussion and debate Peter reminds everyone\u00a0that it was at the prompting of the Spirit that he approached the Gentiles at all, as we saw a few weeks<\/a> ago. That was the first step toward seeing that salvation and a life of grace was open to the Gentiles.\u00a0It was the grace of Christ that saved all believers, not circumcision or Jewish descent.<\/p>\n

Then Paul and Barnabas recall all the graces and wonders they’d experienced\u00a0evangelizing the Gentiles, and, surely, recalling how many times the Gentiles were more excited about welcoming the faith than the Jews were, much like today, when “cradle Catholics” at times are not as enthusiastic about the faith as those who discover the faith as adults. Lastly, James, who among those who considered themselves strictly observant Jewish Christians was well respected, and probably their leader, was able to see from Scripture that the Gentiles had a part in God’s saving plan as well.<\/p>\n

It doesn’t always take a council to determine God’s will, but it does require meditating on what God has asked and how God has acted to try and see his will more clearly. Let’s strive to always have this spirit of discernment as well, both individually and as Church.<\/p>\n

Readings:\u00a0Acts 15:7\u201321;\u00a0Psalm 96:1\u20133, 10;\u00a0John 15:9\u201311.<\/em>\u00a0See also 5th Week of Easter, Thursday<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As we saw in yesterday‘s First Reading, the Church has convoked its first council in Jerusalem to discern whether Our Lord requires non-Jewish converts to be circumcised and follow Mosaic law in order to be saved. Discernment is about taking all the factors into consideration to see what God is asking, not to make an … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[5,38,10],"class_list":["post-1286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-easter","tag-fifth-week","tag-thursday"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p65qtw-kK","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1286"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1287,"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1286\/revisions\/1287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}