6th Sunday of Easter 2022
Acts 15:1-2, 22-29; Apocalypse 21:10-14, 22-23; John 14: 23 -29
It struck me the other day that no one below their mid 60s will have any memory of the Second Vatican Council, which ended in 1965. Consequently, there will be little recollection of the seismic shock which the Council delivered to the man woman and teenager in the pew at the time. (Yes, there were teenagers in the pew in the 60s, though this particular teenager was more usually to be found in the sanctuary, as an altar server.)
In calling the Council, Pope John XXIII, now canonised, declared his wish to throw open the windows of the Church to allow the Holy Spirit free rein to blow through its halls and corridors, and what a searing wind the Spirit proved to be. It is probably fair to say that no aspect of Catholic life was untouched; and for many people, for much of the time, it was a disturbing experience which, when you think about it, is exactly as it should have been, because the Holy Spirit is no respecter of customs or conventions.
For many, if not for most people, the problem was that much which had appeared immovable throughout their lifetime was suddenly moving, with little or nothing in the way of explanation. Behind that lay a deeper problem: the clergy, who might have been expected to provide explanations, had little understanding themselves of what was happening, or why.
Indeed, Cardinal Heenan, the Archbishop of Westminster, is reputed to have claimed that “people have said that things are going to change. That won’t be the case in England”, a breathtaking piece of imperial smugness, a hangover from the days when two thirds of the globe was coloured pink. The implication was that we were getting it right already, and that the rest of the world would have to catch up with us.
There were casualties, as there have been after every Council. For instance, after the First Vatican Council in 1870, a group commonly known as the Old Catholics left the Church; whilst the Council of Trent, in the sixteenth century, was far more dramatic than Vatican II. Trent was the nineteenth Ecumenical Council of the Church, thus making Vatican II the twenty first. The events described today in the Reading from the Acts of the Apostles constitute what is generally regarded as the first.
It is known as the Council of Jerusalem, and it revolved around something which was to affect fundamentally the nature and direction of the Church, namely the extent to which Christians were to be bound by Jewish Law, and especially by the practice of circumcision.
As we have heard, this Council, which also invoked the guidance of the Holy Spirit, decided against the imposition of circumcision, and various other aspects of the Law; but like subsequent Councils it was met with a degree of opposition and rejection. Perhaps more seriously, in weakening the Church’s links with Judaism, the Council of Jerusalem may inadvertently have contributed to Christianity’s history of anti-Semitism, something which the Church was to tackle head-on only at the Second Vatican Council, when the document Nostra aetate was to declare unequivocally that the Jewish people are particularly beloved of God, with their own way towards Him, and a unique role as our elder brothers and sisters in faith.
Turning to the Gospel, we see that the Holy Spirit, whom the Fathers of the various Councils have invoked, is promised to all of us. Not only the Holy Spirit, but the other two persons of the Trinity, the Father and the Son, will come to dwell in the Church as a whole, but also in each of us individually. We can rely on the Holy Spirit to guide the Church; but if we truly love Jesus the Lord, and are faithful to His word, we are promised the awesome loving presence of God, the Father Son and Holy Spirit in the life of each one of us.
