Monday of the Fourth Week of Easter: Infectious Holiness

Readings:

Acts 11: 1-18
Psalm 42: 2-3

John 10: 1-10

See also:

Revelation 13: 1-18

St. Basil the Great on the Holy Spirit

Reflection:

In the first reading today from the Acts of the Apostles, the story unfolds in two parts.  First, Peter has a vision in which “unclean” foods are made “clean”; then, Peter goes into the house of a Gentile and the Holy Spirit falls upon his household.  What God says to Peter regarding the food could also be said of the Gentiles: “What God has called clean you are not to call profane.”  The story is not primarily about the fact that Christians no longer had to keep kosher; the story is about God’s cleansing of a people, of extending His promises beyond the Jews and to all nations.  This is how Christ fulfills the law but does not destroy it.  This is not a story of the renunciation of the promises God made to the Jews, but a story of the expansion of that promise to all peoples.

This is also a story about God’s all-encompassing holiness – one might even call it an infectious holiness.  In the Old Testament understanding, the holy had to be kept separated from the profane; if the profane came into contact with the holy, the holy person or object was corrupted and had to be purified.  But Christ inaugurated a new order: the profane, when it comes into contact with the holy, does not render the holy impure, but rather makes the profane holy.  Thus, Peter argues that the early Christians need not worry about breaking bread with the Gentiles; as sharers in Christ’s infectious holiness, they will not be corrupted by the Gentiles’ “impurity” but will rather be bearers of holiness to the Gentiles.

Because God alone has the power to make things holy, and because Christ is the sole mediator between God and man, it is only through Christ that we can be made holy.  He is the only “gate” by which we can pass from our life of captivity to sin and into the freedom of love.  Only by coming into contact with Christ’s “infectious holiness” can we become free and pure.  How do we attain this contact? By following Him where He goes: through death to resurrection.  We come into contact with Christ by participating in the Paschal Mystery.  In Christ’s passion, suffering and death have themselves been made holy because Christ endured them; Christ’s contact with suffering has made suffering a means of salvation, and if we suffer well with Christ, our suffering can make us holy too.

The sacrament of baptism efficaciously symbolizes this death and rebirth; thus, passing through the gate is a metaphor for baptism.  But suffering is hard; we do not want to do it.  Suffering requires us to renounce the things we love most in this world –our material possessions, the people we care about, our health, our sanity, our preconceived notions about God, our understandings of justice and goodness.  None of us want to sacrifice these things; that’s why it’s so tempting to follow false shepherds, who come climbing over the fence illegitimately promising freedom.  The book of Revelation testifies to these false shepherds, who come with displays of power and promises of wealth and security.  But they are promising something they do not have the power to provide. The only way to freedom is through Christ, and to attain that freedom we must detach ourselves from what we hold most dear in order to attach ourselves more firmly to Christ.

Such detachment is inevitable, whether we choose it or not.  Suffering has a way of finding us all.  Death will ultimately claim our loved ones.  Disasters and war can claim our material possessions.  Disease and old age can claim the health of our minds and bodies.  If there’s a lesson to be learned from the post-modern era, it’s that the more we run away from suffering and try to shield ourselves from it, the more suffering tracks us down and knocks us off our feet.  Christ teaches us that we defeat suffering not by running away from it, but by confronting it, transforming it with the holiness that He has shared with us, and turning it into a source of new life and resurrection. 

As Christians we believe that the Holy Spirit can give us the strength, courage, and grace to face this challenge.  And if we can face up to it, we can become bearers of holiness, of light and grace, to the whole world.