They Shall All Be Taught By God
When we gather together as a church community, we must understand that our time spent together is not merely about socializing. We are meant to strengthen each other, learn from each other, and express our love for each other. This cannot be done if we only limit our time in community to the beginning and ending of Mass; Mass is meant to be a starting point for our Christian life. We should make Mass the focus of our faith life, then grow in the social cohesion of our parish and the Church, and then be strengthened to take it out into the world around us. This can only be possible if we are active with our fellow Catholics. While socializing and praying with our neighbors should be our top priority for living within a church community, we must also prioritize learning about our faith. Eventually, we are called to go out into the world, and we need to be prepared and trained in order to properly evangelize to those who do not know Catholicism.
Today’s readings provide valuable insight into the instruction of faith. Philip, who is a surprisingly active figure in both the gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, certainly plays a significant role in the foundational stories of the Church, but he simply is not remembered in the way Peter or John or James the Greater are. However, this is indicative of the nature of Philip; his place in Scripture is centered on his humility, not his need to be the wisest Apostle or the most spiritual or holy. Philip is the Apostle who best represents God working through a humble and otherwise insignificant man who is himself glorified because of his role as an instrument of God. In today’s first reading from Acts, Philip specifically is the one doing the work of God. He is the one who is driven by the Spirit towards Gaza. He is the one who approaches the Ethiopian eunuch for no other reason than because he felt called to do so. He is the one who revealed Jesus Christ to the eunuch through instruction of the Scripture. He is the one who baptized the Eunuch. He is the one who mysteriously vanishes after the baptism. By any metric, a witness to this story would look at Philip and might consider that he has magical or divine powers. Some might even say that these signs and wonders are indicative of a messianic nature. But Philip was not the one who did any of this. Rather, God worked through Philip’s humanity to perform His works.
This is better understood in our readings from the Bread of Life discourse in the Gospel. This instruction from Christ was initiated by the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves, which was initiated by Philip himself approaching Christ to tell him that there was not enough food to feed the crowds. This instruction is the culmination of Christ’s public ministry; it encapsulates all the instruction we need to know about who he is. But in order for this teaching to be properly understood and to be built upon, we need that instruction to continue. This happens through us within the Church today. God instructed the eunuch through Philip. Christ revealed his sacrificial identity through Philip’s initial approach about the food. God continues to work through us in the Church to build each other up, to instruct each other, and to learn from each other. But we are not the ones who are instructing. We are merely the instruments of God to instruct the world.
Today's Readings:
