The common man

As always, the most important common element of all of today’s readings is God.

But today there is more - a man common to all three readings: Simon Peter.

In the first reading (from Acts 2), Peter is center stage.

Then Peter stood up with the Eleven,
raised his voice, and proclaimed…

The Epistle is from Peter himself (1 Pt. 1:17-21)

…your faith and hope are in God.

And in the Gospel (Lk. 24:13-35), although it focuses on the appearance of the Risen Christ to two disciples on the road to Emmaus, our Lord’s appearance to Simon Peter is described with foundational quality (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:5):

The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon.

Amazingly, this happens on the first Sunday following the burial of Pope John Paul II, the latest successor of Simon Peter, Apostle of Christ and Bishop of Rome.

This coincidence (or if not coincidence, this providential alignment) reminds us of the continuity of Christianity throughout the millennia: God at work in the Body of Christ through the Holy Spirit.

There is an amazing feeling that comes with recognition of being part of this continuity. A literary character once expressed the feeling this way, “Why, to think of it, we're in the same story still! It's going on.” (Samwise in the Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, p. 321)

That is part of the gift of the ongoing Petrine ministry: a special instrumentality of God common to all the intervening centuries (in good times and bad, through saintly men or otherwise); an extra dimension of “connectedness” that goes all the way back to when Christ walked among us.

Of course, this is only one aspect of connectedness with Christ. Without the ongoing, pervasive work of the Holy Spirit, the historical continuity of Christianity would be only a lifeless oddity.

As John Paul’s predecessor said,
“Your faith and hope are in God.”

Pray for God the Holy Spirit to bless his people.

Pray for God the Holy Spirit to inspire the Cardinals to elect a worthy successor of Peter.

Pray for God the Holy Spirit to move in and through your own heart and your own life.

Veni Sancte Spiritus