This coming Sunday we celebrate the Solemnity of the Ascension. The readings are taken from St. Luke’s Gospel and his Acts of the Apostles. Both the first reading and the gospel are accounts of the Ascension, making this event the lynchpin between the two works of St. Luke. Yesterday was an introductory post. Today’s post takes a bird’s eye view of the mission to the world after the Ascension.

Peter was the leading member of the Twelve (Acts 1:13, 15), and after the Resurrection and Ascension was gifted by the Holy Spirit to perform miracles in the name of Jesus (see Acts 3:1-10; 5:1-11, 15; 9:32-35, 36-42) and was the spokesman for the Christian community. In the early days of the Christian Church, it was Peter who was largely responsible for the growth of the community among the Gentile people of Israel, along with Philip. Paul eventually joined the community at Antioch, which subsequently commissioned him and Barnabas to undertake the spread of the gospel to Asia Minor. This missionary venture generally had mixed results among the Jews outside of Israel (the diaspora) but enjoyed success among the Gentiles in cities across Asia Minor, Macedonia, and Greece.

Paul’s refusal to impose the Mosaic law upon his Gentile converts provoked very strong objection among the Jewish Christians of Jerusalem (see Acts 15), but both Peter and James supported his position. Paul’s second and third missionary journeys (Acts 16-21) resulted in the same pattern of mixed to disappointing results among the Jews generally but of some success among the Gentiles. Paul, like Peter, is presented as a miracle worker and the object of divine care.

In Acts, Luke has provided a broad survey of the church’s development from the resurrection of Jesus to Paul’s first Roman imprisonment, the point at which the book ends. In telling this story, Luke describes the emergence of Christianity from its origins in Judaism to its position as a religion of worldwide status and appeal. Originally a Jewish Christian community in Jerusalem, the church was placed in circumstances impelling it to include within its membership people of other cultures: the Samaritans (Acts 8), at first an occasional Gentile (stories in Acts 8 and 10), and finally the Gentiles.. Fear on the part of the Jewish people that Christianity, particularly as preached to the Gentiles, threatened their own cultural heritage caused them to be suspicious of Paul’s gospel in cities such as Ephesus, Lystra, Philippi, Colassae and others. The inability of Christian missionaries to allay this apprehension inevitably created a situation in which the gospel was preached more and more to the Gentiles. Toward the end of Paul’s career, the Christian communities, with the exception of those in Palestine itself, were mainly of Gentile membership. In tracing the emergence of Christianity from Judaism, Luke is insistent upon the prominence of Israel in the divine plan of salvation and that the extension of salvation to the Gentiles has been a part of the divine plan from the beginning (Acts 15:13-18; 26:22-23).

In the development of the church from a Jewish Christian origin in Jerusalem, with its roots in Jewish religious tradition, to a series of Christian communities among the Gentiles of the Roman empire, Luke perceives the action of God in history laying open the heart of all humanity to the divine message of salvation. His approach to the history of the church is motivated by his theological interests. His history of the apostolic church is the story of a Spirit-guided community and a Spirit-guided spread of the Word of God from the Upper Room, through Pentecost, and into the world. The travels of Peter and Paul are in reality the travels of the Word of God as it spreads from Jerusalem, the city of destiny for Jesus, to Rome, the capital of the civilized world of Luke’s day. Nonetheless, the historical data he utilizes are of value for the understanding of the church’s early life and development and as general background to the Pauline epistles. 

Finally, an apologetic concern is evident throughout Acts. By stressing the continuity between Judaism and Christianity, Luke argues that Christianity is deserving of the same toleration accorded Judaism by the Roman Empire. Part of Paul’s defense before Roman authorities is to show that Christianity is not a disturber of the peace of the Roman Empire. Moreover, when he stands before Roman authorities, he is declared innocent of any crime against the empire. Luke tells his story with the hope that Christianity will be treated fairly.

The principal divisions of the Acts of the Apostles are the following:

• The Preparation for the Christian Mission (Acts 1:1-2:13)
• The Mission in Jerusalem (Acts 2:14-8:3)
• The Mission in Judea and Samaria (Acts 8:4-9:43)
• The Inauguration of the Gentile Mission (Acts 10:1-15:35)
• The Mission of Paul to the Ends of the Earth (Acts 15:36-28:31)

---

Image credit: detail of “Ascension of Jesus” | John Singleton Copely, 1775 | Museum of Fine Arts, Boston | PD-US