30 April 2026 – Homily for Thursday of the 4th Week of Easter
Homily
The readings from the Acts of the Apostles, which we have been reading as the first reading at Mass every day since Easter, reveal to us the very essence of the Church. The Church has existed since Pentecost, even though it had not yet, of course, established the structures it would later adopt to fulfil its mission. There is as yet no question of an ordained priesthood, which would appear later, nor of organisation into dioceses headed by bishops, nor of a centralised structure, nor of councils safeguarding orthodoxy… All this would come later and would, of course, be of great importance.
A look at this nascent Church allows us to see what constitutes its very essence: the proclamation of the good news of salvation brought by Christ. This proclamation is made spontaneously by all those whom Jesus explicitly sent, but also by all those who received this message from the first witnesses. First of all, there were the women who came to the tomb on the morning of the third day. Then there are those who had a personal encounter with the risen Christ, such as the disciples on the road to Emmaus, or Paul of Tarsus.
Next came the first deacons, chosen to serve at the tables during liturgical assemblies, but who went on to bear witness to their new faith as far as the lands of the pagans. It was Barnabas, sent to investigate what was happening in Antioch, who went to fetch Paul from Tarsus. It was the young Mark who joined them, then abandoned them, but who would later become the author of the first collection of accounts about Christ, known as the Gospels, and who would also be the first bishop of one of the most vibrant local churches of the early centuries, that of Alexandria. It will be the multitudes of monks who, having received the Word in this Church of Alexandria, will carry it with them into the deserts of Egypt.
From that time onwards, many paid with their blood for their faithfulness in bearing witness to what they had seen and heard. Subsequently, the Church would adopt a hierarchical and clerical structure that would enable it to fulfil its mission in the centuries that followed and throughout the entire world. But if this message of Jesus of Nazareth has reached us, it is first and foremost through the multitude of believers who, over the centuries and millennia, have shared amongst themselves and passed on to subsequent generations the experience they had received and lived.
It is up to all of us to carry on this mission. Having all been called at the time of our baptism, we have all been ‘sent’. It is therefore of all of us that Jesus speaks when He says, at the end of the Gospel passage we have just read: ‘Whoever receives the one I send receives me; and whoever receives me receives the One who sent me.’
Armand Veilleux