The "Gospel of the Forty Days"
Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church is located in California City, CA. Visit our website at ollcalcity.org.
References:
Jaroslav Pelikan, Acts (part of the Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible series) (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press) p. 38-41.
This Sunday
is Pentecost Sunday which remembers the descent of the Holy Spirit as told in
chapter 2 of the Acts of the Apostles. Last Sunday we celebrated the Ascension
of Jesus which remembers Christ’s ascent into Heaven as told in chapter 1 of
Acts.
The Gospel
of Mark also mentions the Ascension: “So then the Lord Jesus ... was taken up
into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God.” (Mk 16:19.) Mark might
have been there to see Jesus ascend – as he may have been at Jesus' arrest (Mk
14:51-52), and the Apostles and disciples regularly met at his mother's house
(Ac 12:12) – but how did he know Jesus “sat down at the right hand of God?”
That wasn’t anything anyone could have seen.
In Peter’s
Pentecost sermon he says Jesus was “exalted at the right hand of God” (Ac 2:33;
cf., 1 Pet 3:22). How did he know that? Where did he get this? When?
Evidently
Mark and Peter learned this from Jesus during the forty days between Jesus’
Resurrection and Ascension when Jesus was with His Apostles and other disciples
(Ac 1:3), and stayed with them (Ac 1:4) for many days (Ac 13:31).
What was
Jesus doing those forty days? Appearing many times to give many infallible
proofs of His resurrection (cf. 1 Cor 15:5-7; Ac 13:30-31), and teaching the
Apostles and other disciples (Ac 1:2, 3).
What was
Jesus teaching? Certainly about His resurrection. But Acts also tells us that
Jesus was giving them instructions or commandments (Ac 1:2), which Peter said
was the command to preach (Ac 10:42), and speaking of the kingdom or dominion
of God, or as another ancient manuscript has it, “teaching the doctrines about
the kingdom of God” (Ac 1:3).
In Jaroslav
Pelikan’s book, Acts, part of the Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible
series, Pelikan, a former Lutheran pastor converted to Orthodox Christianity,
he calls this teaching the “Gospel of the Forty Days.” He says, it “is a
continuation of the instruction given by the risen Lord to his disciples.
Earlier, at the conclusion of his Gospel, Luke described this instruction as
having begun with the disciples at Emmaus, when, ‘beginning with Moses and all
the prophets, [the risen but as yet unrecognized Christ] interpreted to them in
all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself’ (Lk 24:27).”
So Jesus’
teaching began with the fact of His own resurrection, which would naturally
lead to teaching them about His divinity and the possibility of resurrected
life for all through Him. And from the Emmaus account He was teaching them how
to interpret the Hebrew Scriptures, particularly enlightening them about what
the Torah, Psalms, and Prophets say about Him, the Messiah of God. He was
teaching them to be a witnesses to His resurrection (Ac 1:8, 22; 2:32; 5:32;
10:41-42; 13:31).
So, then,
no doubt it was during these forty days that Mark and Peter learned from Jesus
how Psalm 110:1 applied to Jesus “sitting at the right hand of God,” signifying
the inauguration of the Messianic Kingdom (Catechism of the Catholic Church
663-664).
As we read
the resurrection accounts in the four Gospels, and read the book of Acts, we
see many passages which are, or can easily be surmised to be, the content of
Jesus’ teachings while he remained these days with the Apostles before His
Ascension into Heaven. Over the next few weeks we will look at many of these to
see what this “Gospel of the Forty Days” contains.
But
first, Pelikan gives us one more thought to meditate upon: “The narrative of
Acts, indeed the history of the early church in the following centuries, can be
read as the process of making explicit what was implicit in this ‘Gospel of the
Forty Days,’ of giving ritual form and eventually written form to a tradition,
attributed to none less than the risen Lord Himself, that was oral in its
origins and in its transmission.” We will also look at some evidence for this
statement in the coming weeks. Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church is located in California City, CA. Visit our website at ollcalcity.org.
References:
Jaroslav Pelikan, Acts (part of the Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible series) (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press) p. 38-41.