Let’s pretend for a moment that St. Bartholomew had produced a homemade movie about the first steps of the Church, using footage he took with his primitive prototype of an iPhone.
First scene: Christ at the Last Supper, washing the feet of the Apostles, warning them of the trials soon to come, promising to send them the Holy Spirit and celebrating the first Eucharist. The script could have come straight from John 13-17.
Scene 2: Clips of Christ’s Passion, from Gethsemane to Calvary. The shots of Christ on the cross were taken from far away; John was the only Apostle close enough to make a decent recording, but of course Bartholomew didn’t lend him his phone.
Scene 3: The Apostles struggle to come to grips with the Resurrection. There are enthusiastic but confused eyewitness accounts; Peter and John investigate and start to put the pieces together but aren’t 100% sure yet what it all means. Suddenly, Jesus comes in without bothering to knock, or even to open the door (no special effects used!), and the Apostles switch into panic mode: what an incredible acting job, worthy of an Oscar! Jesus drops in from time to time with the same results, trying to convince them that his Resurrection is for real. Most of the footage is taken in the Upper Room, and the lighting is poor (the windows had been boarded up), but the Apostles, whose hunger finally overcomes their fear of the outside world, take a fishing trip on the lake; Jesus finds them there, too. Even after Jesus’ dramatic ascension into Heaven, no one has come up with a plan for the future yet.
Next scene: Peter leads the Apostles in preaching the death and resurrection of Christ, quoting Scripture left and right and preaching fire and brimstone to the captivated crowds that spontaneous gather to hear him speak; this is no flash mob. Hundreds and even thousands are baptized daily, and every attempt to stop the Apostles, even flogging them publicly and warning them never to preach the name of Christ in public, only adds fuel to the fire.
Hold on, stop the movie. There’s a logical disconnect; we must have missed something after the Ascension. Rewind a little bit …stop, there it is.
Scene 4: The Apostles had come to grips with Christ’s death, and they were united in the Upper Room again – not in fear, but in prayer, led by Mary. This scene culminates in the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.
Why is this the turning point of the movie? The key for the early Church, as the Pope explained last week, is that the Apostles were “of one heart and one soul” as the events of the Resurrection trickled down from their minds to their hearts through prayer. The Holy Father called this stage the “little Pentecost”, the necessary link to the big Pentecost soon to come.
Shortly after Christ’s death, they tried to protect themselves at all costs, afraid to set foot outside the Upper Room and to risk sharing in their Master’s fate. The Apostles needed time – time spent in prayer – to realize that the trials they had been through had actually been a blessing: the cross brought them to prayer, and prayer brought them to true conversion of heart and a deeper understanding of the redemptive value of suffering, without which they would not have been ready for the grace of Pentecost and eventually for their own martyrdom. From that moment on, they were willing to stick their necks out to preach Christ’s message of salvation.
“We too, dear brothers and sisters must be able to ponder the events of our daily life in prayer, in order to seek their deep meaning. And like the first Christian community let us too let ourselves be illuminated by the word of God, through meditation on Sacred Scripture, we can learn to see that God is present in our life, present also and especially in difficult moments and that all things – even those that are incomprehensible – are part of a superior plan of love in which the final victory over evil, over sin and over death is truly that of goodness, of grace, of life and of God.”
By Colin Gore
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