Saturday of the Sixth Week of Easter Years 1 and 2 2024

Title

Instructed More Carefully

Outline

What do we do with gifted ignorance?

I am thinking of a person with significant gifts, but who lacks understanding vs the willfully deviant from the truth.

Now Dominicans may not have this issue within themselves, but they do find it in their ministries.

At times such people are labeled “heretics” and shunned and at times their ignorance is ignored (or in free churches, extolled). But our texts tell us they should be befriended and gently guided and guided to the Holy Spirit for further instruction.

Apollos was one such person

Paul has left on what we would call an episcopal mission, visiting churches he had founded after visiting the church in Jerusalem.

Apollos arrives in Ephesus, a Jew he taught in the synagogue with rhetorical skill and a deep well of scriptural knowledge. He knew about Jesus and taught his Way, but did not know about Christian baptism, only that of John. Rather than seeing him a threat (Paul was not superbly rhetorically trained), Paul’s leaders, Priscilla and Aquila, “took him aside” and gently correct his deficiencies. And when he wants to travel on, they wrote to Corinth (or we might say the Diocese of Achaia) endorsing Apollos, which resulted in his being of great benefit to the church there.

Jesus point to another source of understanding

“Ask the Father in my name.” They had often held back from asking Jesus and he has just said that he is going so will not be there to ask. So “ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be complete.” This is not about asking for “stuff”, for our needs and wants. This is about asking about Jesus, about his Way, about his meanings. Nor is this about academic knowledge, for it is “in my name,” as a disciple who wants to follow the Way.

Jesus does not promise that he will answer, but that the Father will answer because of their commitment to him as he truly is.

Now while he indicates that he came from the Father into the world and was leaving the world to go to the Father, he does not indicate that the Father would inform them through him. No, in John ch 20 he will breathe on them and they will receive the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, along with authority. That is all they need.

Thus the Church functions from John ch 20, not Pentecost. Pentecost is for mission, a great thrust into mission beyond Judea and Galilee. John ch 20 gives the Church what it needs to be a functioning Church ready for mission, i.e. the Holy Spirit and a functioning Magisterium with authority.

This is instruction for us today

First, that person with weird or distorted ideas in the school or elsewhere in life may just be the makings of new worker in the Vineyard if we are patient enough and gentle enough and clear enough in our instruction. And it may take a bit of building relationship first.

Second, one thing to do in your times of quiet before God is to whisper your questions, your “I do not understands”, your doubts. Who knows, you might get a locution from the Holy Spirit. More likely God will let your questions and concerns ripen a bit and then they will just happen to be addressed in something you happen to read or hear or perhaps in a Sister sharing with you what she has newly discovered. Whatever way he chooses to work, I know from experience that he is still instructing me. Why just last Monday night I was listening to a talk Bp Barron gave so some seminarians and thought, “Ah ha, that is the way to explain it. That is a new insight on a difficult text.” The Holy Spirit is always ready to speak to open hearts; it is often us who do not hear his voice.