In the Acts of the Apostles, Luke paints a picture of the early Christian community three times. But before this he notes that immediately after they had seen Jesus “going up to heaven,” (the Ascension) the apostles gathered around themselves a small group of the Lord’s disciples. In a way, this was the prototype Church.
The gathering took place in Jerusalem, not far from Mount Olivet, from which Jesus’ Ascension into heaven took place. Scripture tells us that this was only a “short distance away, no more than a sabbath walk.” (It was determined in the Law that on the sabbath one could travel no more than two thousand cubits, about three-tenths of a mile, and so a sabbath walk.)
The apostles stayed in an “upper room” somewhere in the city. Such a vague term does not allow us to determine their exact location. But it suggests that there already was a place in Jerusalem where the disciples could rally, though we do not know how long it had been available. This means that the apostles and disciples might not have been in total disarray after the Lord’s death. More important is the fact, certainly emphasised here, that this first “official” gathering took place around the apostles. Luke thus proceeds to name them, they are the Church’s nucleus, though not its whole. Other disciples were there as well.
By this time, Jesus had departed; and so from this point the centre of the story becomes the Church in Jerusalem. The basic composition of this Church is revealed in two brief scenes. First in this “upper room”are the leaders; the original Twelve (now eleven), “a group of women” and “Jesus’ brothers.” All these are familiar from Luke`s Gospel and constitute the essential nucleus of Jesus’ followers. Secondly, out of doors, there is the “assembled brotherhood, about one hundred and twenty in all.” Nothing in Lukes Gospel has prepared us for such a “brotherhood.” Jesus’ last hours with the Twelve, his solitary trial and death, and the gradual recovery of faith by those who saw evidence of his resurrection, hardly suggests the existence in Jerusalem of a community of believers of this size. Nevertheless, we know from (1 Corinthians 15:6) that the risen Christ appeared to a much larger group than Jesus’ closest disciples, and in any case, such a group was necessary in order to provide the “congregation” of the Church which Luke is presenting at the outset of his narrative. The figure of one hundred and twenty is probably no accident. In Jewish local government, one hundred and twenty persons constituted the smallest group permitted to have its own council; and the number was a multiple of the inner group of Twelve. Thus, Luke presents a picture—perhaps more schematic than strictly historical-the structure of the earliest Church; and such is the importance which he attaches to it that he gives again the names of the original disciples, and then goes on to describe the way in which the place left by Judas Iscariot was filled.
Although Luke notes the presence of “some women” he neither names nor numbers them. But among those who were in Jerusalem after the Ascension, Luke names only “Mary the mother of Jesus.” The one who bore the Saviour in her womb is with the apostles when the Spirit descends to bring the Church to birth. This is not surprising: in the body of Christ, whom she bore, Mary continues to occupy a privileged place in the unfolding of her son’s work.
Mentioned also are Jesus’ “brothers,” i.e. his relatives (cousins and such like. One must not be confused with our understanding of the term brother today.) these are mentioned last of all after the women. Why are they mentioned at all? Aside from Mary, it does not seem-as John testifies and Mark confirms (Mk 3:21) that Jesus’ relatives were eager to follow him: “For his brothers did not believe in him” (Jn 7:5). “But they wanted Jesus to dazzle Jerusalem with his miracles.” (Jn 7:3-4) They dreamed to see their kinsman gloriously exalted in this world. Jesus told them that they were deceived about his mission. Thereafter, the brothers of Jesus who believed in him blended into the group of disciples.
The atmosphere of this assembly is like that of a retreat. We hear nothing of the conversation that must have occurred. Not a word is said about what had happened, their feelings, their doubts, or regrets. After the Lord’s departure. This is the silence where the future grows. Instead, Luke says that they “devoted themselves with one accord to prayer.” Unity of hearts, fraternal communion, and devotion to prayers are characteristics of the early Christian community, as Luke makes clear in his “pictures.” After Pentecost, he will add “devotion to the apostles’ instruction.”
It is in this same atmosphere of meditation, fraternal charity, and prayer, that the Church prepares to celebrate today. At Pentecost, the Church will receive a new pouring forth of the Spirit, but before this we must turn our attention back to the chapter of John’s Gospel that immediately precedes the story Jesus’ passion — and his long prayer “When the hour had come for him to pass from this world to the Father.”
Addressed to the Father, this prayer, in its composition, resembles what one might call a Eucharistic prayer. Jesus pronounced it, “raising his eyes” and blessing God for the fulfilment of salvation through the Passover of his Son and for its bestowal on the disciples who received the gift of the Holy Spirit. This prayer has the Trinitarian structure of all liturgical and Eucharistic prayers: to the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit. The passage moves uninterruptedly from thanksgiving to intercession in the same format, leading always to the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit. With no parallels in the other Gospels, this text is extremely important: by placing before our eyes the mystery of salvation in its totality and by presenting its internal dynamic, it is the perfect model for all Christian prayer and liturgy. Today we read the first part of it.
“Father the hour has come.” Despite the fact that it said at this particular time, this is not really prayer “before”. Passion but a prayer that is situated in the present moment of the mystery accomplished once for all at a historical hour, though that moment transcends time. Therefore, we can say, in the Eucharistic Prayer: “Today you revealed in Christ your eternal plan of salvation” (Epiphany), “Christ became our paschal sacrifice” (Easter), “Christ ascended into heaven” (Ascension).
This is the “hour” of the Son’s glorification that gives glory to the Father and reflects back on believers. Christ has “received authority over all” from his Father. He exercises his universal lordship by giving eternal life to all those whom the Father has given him and to whom he has revealed himself: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone that believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”; “I did not come to condemn the world but to save the world.”
The work performed by the Lord—his “signs”—allows one to recognise him as the messenger of God and at the same time, to glorify the Father toward whom the disciples’ eyes are turned. “No-one has ever seen God. The only Son, God, who is at the Father’s side, has revealed him.” Jesus can, in thanksgiving, recognise that he has brought the Father’s work, which was given to him, to its end and present it to him in homage: “it is finished.” Now Jesus has only to return to the Father to receive from his hand the glory that he had in his presence before the world began. (One finds here what the “prologue” of John’s Gospel said about the “Word” who was “in the beginning” “present to God,” who “was God” and “became flesh.”
From the offering of his life and the recollection— anamnesis— of what he has done, Jesus moves to intercession as we have learned to do in the Eucharistic Prayer. He prays for his disciples who are in the world while he will henceforth be with God. They too contribute to his glory and the Father’s. They know that his is their calling: “By this is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.”They also know that the Spirit is given to them to prepare them for it: “The [Spirit] will guide you to all truth…..He will glorify me because he will take from what is mine and declare it to you.” Everything that belongs to Christ belongs to the Father, just as everything that belongs to the Father belongs to Christ. Through him, with him, in him and in the Spirit, we belong to God. One of our local Saints, Saint John Henry Newman has this to say:
“Christ, who promised to make his disciples one in God with him, who promised that he would be in God and God in us, has realised this in a mysterious way: he has accomplished this great work, this stupendous privilege for us. It seems that it was in rising toward the Father that he did this, that his corporeal ascension is his spiritual descent, that his assumption of our nature to God is the descent of God to us, that he has truly, albeit in a hidden sense, borne us to God, or that he has led God to us, depending on which point of view one adopts.”
Jesus passed from this world to his Father in prayer, a prayer that gave thanks to God for the work that reached its summit at the “hour.” So to the Church prays, following the example of the disciples gathered together in the upper room, while waiting for the gift of the Spirit. It blesses God who chose the Church to make known to the whole world “the only true God” and the one whom he sent, Jesus Christ. It gives thanks for Christ’s heavenly glory and the gift of faith that makes him known to those who faithfully keep his word.
If we suffer with him and for him, with him and in him we will experience joy and gladness when his glory is revealed. “The Spirit of glory, the Spirit of God” is upon us: may the day come when we will appear fully as what we already are!
“There is one thing I ask of the Lord, for this I long, to live in the house of the Lord, all the days of my life, to savour the sweetness of the Lord, to behold his temple.”
