Of the Apostolic Mission and the Power of the Spirit Descending
A Reflection upon Acts 8:5-8 and Luke 9:1-6
Within the radiant Octave of Pentecost, when Holy Mother Church yet kneels beneath the descending Paraclete and the tongues of fire still burn upon the foreheads of the Apostolic college, the sacred Liturgy sets before us on this Dies Quinta two lections of singular force: the descent of Philip the Deacon into Samaria (Acts viii, 5-8), and the first apostolic mission of the Twelve (Luke ix, 1-6). The Church, in her wisdom, places these texts before us not by accident, but that we may behold the fructus Pentecostes — the fruit of Pentecost — already operative in the Church, and trace the line that descends unbroken from the cenaculum in Jerusalem unto every corner of the earth where the Gospel is preached and demons are cast out.
I. Philippus autem descendens in civitatem Samariæ
St. Luke writes: “Philip, going down to the city of Samaria, preached Christ unto them. And the people with one accord were attentive to those things which were said by Philip, hearing, and seeing the signs which he did. For many of them who had unclean spirits, crying with a loud voice, went out. And many, taken with the palsy, and that were lame, were healed. There was therefore great joy in that city.”
The geography is itself catechesis. Samaria — the land schismatic, half-pagan, despised of the Jews, the territory whose very name had been a byword of reproach upon the lips of the Pharisees — receives now the Word with one accord. Where Our Lord Himself had sat weary at the well of Sichar (Joan. iv) and prophesied that the hour cometh when true adorers shall adore the Father in spirit and in truth, there now Philip descends, and the prophecy is fulfilled. The harvest which Christ had sown in His colloquy with the Samaritan woman is reaped by the Deacon.
St. John Chrysostom, in his thirty-first homily upon the Acts of the Apostles, marks this with great force: he observes that the persecution which arose after the martyrdom of Stephen — wherein the faithful were scattered abroad — became the very instrument by which the Gospel was carried forth. Quod malum videbatur, bonum erat: what seemed an evil, was a good. The blood of Stephen, the protomartyr, becomes seed, and Philip is the first sower in the soil watered by it. The Chrysostom adds that it was no accident that a Deacon, and not yet an Apostle, performed these signs: for the Holy Ghost, descended at Pentecost, distributes His gifts as He wills, and confounds the wisdom of men by raising up ministers from every rank to manifest the virtus of Christ.
Venerable Bede, commenting upon this passage in his Expositio Actuum Apostolorum, notes that Philip is here distinguished from Philip the Apostle: this is Philip the Deacon, one of the seven ordained by the imposition of apostolic hands in Acts vi. And yet behold — the Deacon preaches, the Deacon casts out demons, the Deacon heals the palsied and the lame. Bede sees in this the very pattern of the Church’s hierarchical communion: the Apostles in Jerusalem remain at the source, while the lower ministers are sent forth as streams from the fountainhead. Yet the power that works in Philip is not his own; it is the virtus Spiritus Sancti which had descended upon the whole Church at Pentecost, and which now flows through her members according to the office of each.
St. Augustine, in his Tractatus in Joannem (Tract. xv, upon the Samaritan woman), had already prepared the theological foundation for this Samarian harvest: the woman at the well figures the Church called from among the Gentiles, and the Samaritans who believed at her testimony are the first-fruits of that universal call which Pentecost now consummates. What was promised at Jacob’s well is delivered in the streets of Samaria’s city: living water, springing up unto life everlasting.
And the fruit? Factum est ergo gaudium magnum in illa civitate — there was great joy in that city. This gaudium magnum is no mere natural rejoicing. It is the proper effect of the Gospel preached in power, the joy that St. Paul names among the fruits of the Spirit (Gal. v, 22): caritas, gaudium, pax. Where the Holy Ghost descends, joy follows; where demons are cast out, the soul is restored to its proper end; where the lame walk, creation itself begins to be healed of the wound of the Fall.
II. Convocatis autem duodecim Apostolis
The Gospel pericope draws us backward in salvation history, to that primal commissioning from which all apostolic mission flows: “Then calling together the twelve Apostles, He gave them power and authority over all devils, and to cure diseases. And He sent them to preach the kingdom of God, and to heal the sick.”
Here is the fons et origo of every mission the Church has undertaken and will undertake unto the consummation of the age. St. Cyril of Alexandria, in his Commentarium in Lucam, observes that Our Lord first gives potestatem et virtutem — power and authority — and only then sends. The order is theological: no man arrogates this mission to himself; no man preaches by his own warrant. Quomodo prædicabunt nisi mittantur? — How shall they preach unless they be sent? (Rom. x, 15). The Apostolate is not a vocation seized but a vocation received, and the potestas given is not natural eloquence nor human persuasion, but participation in the very authority of Christ over the principalities of darkness.
St. Ambrose, in his Expositio Evangelii secundum Lucam (Lib. vi), draws out the spiritual significance of the twofold gift: potestas super dæmonia et virtus curandi infirmitates. The demons figure the spiritual maladies — pride, lust, avarice, and the rest of that infernal cohort which holds the soul in bondage — while the diseases figure the bodily and moral consequences of sin. The Apostle, then, is sent as a physician of souls in the first instance, and only by extension as a worker of corporal wonders. Sanare in the apostolic vocabulary is always first the healing of the inner man.
The Venerable Bede, in his homilies upon Luke, takes up the curious provisions: neque virgam, neque peram, neque panem, neque pecuniam, neque duas tunicas habeatis. Why this severe poverty? Bede answers: that the Apostles might preach by their very paupertas evangelica the doctrine they proclaimed by their lips. For he who casts out demons must not himself be possessed by the demon of avarice; he who heals the sick must not be sick with the love of comfort. The apostolic life is itself a sermon. Verbum vita, vita verbum — the word becomes life, and the life becomes the word.
St. Gregory the Great, in his Homiliae in Evangelia (Hom. xvii, preached upon a similar text concerning the seventy disciples), gives us the abiding rule: Qui ad prædicationis officium accedit, viaticum in mundo quaerere non debet. He who approaches the office of preaching ought not to seek his sustenance from the world. The preacher who labors for hire has already lost his recompense; the Apostle who carries two tunics has forgotten the One in whom he ought to trust.
And what of the dust shaken from the feet? In quamcumque domum non receperint vos, exeuntes de civitate illa, etiam pulverem pedum vestrorum excutite in testimonium supra illos. This is no childish gesture, but a solemn juridical act, a prophetic sign in the manner of the Old Testament signa of judgment. St. Cyril sees in it the testimonium against those who reject the Gospel: their judgment is not the Apostle’s own, but the testimony of the Spirit working through the rejected preacher. He who refuses the herald refuses the King who sent him.
III. De Sancto Spiritu in Apostolico Munere
Why does the Church, in this Octave of the Paraclete, unite these two pericopes upon a single day? Because both are manifestations of one and the same mystery: the Holy Ghost operating through the apostolic mission.
In the Lucan pericope, we behold the institutio — the institution of the apostolic office, before Pentecost, indeed, in its seminal form, when the Twelve are sent forth bearing the potestas Christi. In the Acts pericope, we behold the consummatio — the consummation of that mission once the Spirit has descended, when even the Deacon Philip, ordained by the imposition of the apostles’ hands, exercises a virtus that confounds the demons and heals the broken.
St. Thomas Aquinas, in the Tertia Pars of the Summa (q. 7, a. 7), teaches that Christ possessed the fullness of grace as Head of the Church, and that from this fullness all the members receive secundum mensuram donationis Christi. Pentecost is the visible pouring forth of that fullness upon the Mystical Body. The Apostles, who at Luke ix were given a participation in Christ’s potestas by way of mission, receive at Pentecost the plenitudo of that participation by way of indwelling. The Spirit who hovered over them now dwells within them; the power they wielded ad extra now animates them ab intra.
This is why Philip can do in Samaria what Christ did in Galilee. Opera quae ego facio et ipse faciet, et majora horum faciet (Joan. xiv, 12). The Lord’s promise is no hyperbole. By the descent of the Paraclete, the Church becomes the prolongation of the Incarnate Word in time and space; her members become theophoroi, God-bearers, in the phrase dear to the Greek Fathers, especially St. Ignatius of Antioch.
St. Augustine, in his great sermons upon Pentecost (Sermo 267 in die Pentecostes), declares: Quod est anima in corpore hominis, hoc est Spiritus Sanctus in corpore Christi, quod est Ecclesia — What the soul is in the body of man, that is the Holy Ghost in the Body of Christ, which is the Church. This is the theological key to both our lections. The Apostles in Luke ix are the body about to be ensouled; Philip in Acts viii is the body now ensouled and acting from the power of its proper anima divina.
IV. Applicatio ad Animam Christianam
What shall we then take from this, we who read these lections in our own day, far from Samaria and farther still from Galilee?
First, that the same Spirit who descended at Pentecost descends still — in the sacraments, in the preaching of the Church, in the lives of the saints. The gaudium magnum of Samaria is not a relic of antiquity; it is the proper note of every soul in which the Spirit truly reigns. If we lack this joy, it is not because the Spirit has been withheld, but because we have not opened the chambers of the heart to His indwelling.
Second, that the apostolic poverty commanded in Luke ix is not a counsel for clerics alone, but a principle for every Christian: that we ought to carry through this world with a holy detachment, tanquam peregrini et hospites (1 Pet. ii, 11), trusting the providence of Him who clothes the lilies of the field. The two tunics forbidden the Apostle are forbidden also, in their spiritual sense, to every soul that would receive the Spirit in His fullness: the tunic of worldly attachment over the tunic of grace.
Third, that the Church’s mission is unchanged. The demons whom Philip cast out in Samaria yet prowl the world (1 Pet. v, 8); the palsied and the lame yet await the touch of grace. The Spirit yet sends His ministers, and through them, even unto the humblest faithful who proclaim Christ in word and deed, accomplishes the great works that are His proper signature.
V. Oratio
Let us pray with the Collect of the day:
Deus, qui Apostolis tuis Sanctum dedisti Spiritum: concede plebi tuæ piæ petitionis effectum; ut, quibus dedisti fidem, largiaris et pacem. Per Dominum nostrum Iesum Christum Filium tuum, qui tecum vivit et regnat in unitate eiusdem Spiritus Sancti Deus, per omnia sæcula sæculorum. Amen.
O God, who didst give the Holy Ghost to Thine Apostles: grant unto Thy people the effect of their pious petition; that to them to whom Thou hast given faith, Thou mayest likewise bestow peace. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the same Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen.
And let this further petition rise from our hearts, in union with the gaudium magnum of Samaria:
Veni, Sancte Spiritus, reple tuorum corda fidelium, et tui amoris in eis ignem accende. Emitte Spiritum tuum, et creabuntur; et renovabis faciem terræ.
Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of Thy faithful, and kindle in them the fire of Thy love. Send forth Thy Spirit, and they shall be created; and Thou shalt renew the face of the earth.