May 16, 2026 – Saturday of the 6th Week of Easter
Acts 18, 23-28; Jn 16, 23-28
H O M I L Y
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
The readings from the Acts of the Apostles that we have as first reading at the Mass during this Easter Season are not simply nice narratives giving us an idea on how the Church developed during the first Christian generation. They also tell us about the nature of the Church. It shows us that there were many ways of becoming a Christian.
Of course, there was the large body of men and women who had been Jesus’ disciples during his life and had maintained their faith in Him after his death and resurrection. All of these, and not only the Apostles and the first deacons, transmitted their faith to others through their life and their words. Then, there was Paul, who personally met Jesus on the road to Damascus. In today’s reading we see another way of becoming a Christian. A Jew named Apollos, who came from Egypt, where there was the largest Jewish diaspora at the time of Christ (more or less one million Jews, according to modern historians), was a man full of fervour and an authority on Scripture. He had heard of Jesus, perhaps coming to Jerusalem for the Passover, and had come to the conclusion that he was the Christ. Although he had not received any formation from the Apostles or another missionary, he spoke and taught accurately about Jesus. Paul and the other Christians of Ephesus welcomed his preaching.
That makes it very clear that what makes someone a Christian is essentially to believe in Christ. The Church is the communion between all those who believe in Christ. Jesus did not establish any new organisation. He did not found a new organisation called the Church. He called his disciples, that is, all those who received his message, to be united by bounds of love, and to show that love to all their neighbours. The Church, according to Vatican II, is basically a mystery, that is, a sacrament: the visible manifestation of God’s love for us and his salvation, through the sign of people sharing in the same love, the same faith and the same hope. This is why a local church is not simply an administrative subdivision of the universal Church. On the contrary, every time and every place there are a handful of Christians expressing their common faith, love and hope in Jesus Christ, there is a visible manifestation and a realization of the whole mystery of the Church. There is the Church. The Universal Church is formed by the communion between those local churches.
Of course, the Church being composed of human beings, and therefore being human, needed to give itself some form of organisation. According to local circumstances, a structure was developed throughout the centuries: dioceses, archdiocese, parishes, patriarchates, the Roman curia, various ministries, old and new, etc. We may be very happy with that structure, or we may be aspiring to a great simplification of it. All this is secondary. The essential reality is that what makes us a Christian is not the fact of belonging to that structure but of having a personal faith in Jesus Christ and of sharing that faith with others in love and hope.
Then we can, as Jesus invites us to do in today’s Gospel, pray in His name. This is what we do in this Eucharist, expression our faith in communion with one another and with all those, all over the world, who have placed their faith in Christ.