The Gospel of the Forty Days: Witness, Part 2
We continuing our series of articles on
what commands (Ac 1:2) and teachings (Ac 1:3) the resurrected Lord Jesus gave,
or might have given, during the forty days before His Ascension, and continue
from last week’s discussion of Jesus’ last earthly words: “You shall be my
witnesses” (Ac 1:8). We showed how Scripture teaches that the Apostles were to
be personal, evidentiary eye-witnesses to the facts of Jesus’ life, suffering
and death, resurrection, exaltation at God the Father’s right hand, and God’s
appointed judge of the living and the dead.
As the Apostolic and Church Fathers
preserved the Apostolic Tradition, the significance of their eyewitness
testimony was recognized. For example, St. John Chrysostom (344/354-407 AD)
wrote: “How then account for the fact that these men, who in Christ’s lifetime
did not stand up to the attacks by the Jews, set forth to do battle with the
whole world once Christ was dead – if, as you claim, Christ did not rise and
speak to them and rouse their courage? ... It is evident, then, that if they
had not seen Him risen and had proof of His power, they would not have risked
so much.” (Homily on I Corinthians.)
Now before He died, Jesus had told the Eleven not only would they witness to Jesus because they had been with Him from the beginning (Jn 15:27), but that when the promise of the Father, the Holy Spirit, came, “He will bear witness to Me” (Jn 15:26).
Perhaps it is in St. Paul, who was not a disciple during Jesus’ earthly life, that we see a most remarkable manifestation of the Holy Spirit’s witness to Jesus. Paul, of course, received his Apostolic ministry “to testify to the gospel of the grace of God” from the risen, ascended and glorified Lord Jesus (Ac 20:24), and thus through the ministry of the Holy Spirit. It was the glorified Christ whom Paul saw and heard on the road to Damascus (Ac 9:3-4, 17; 22:14; 26:13-16; Gal 1:16), and who told Paul, “I have appointed you to serve and bear witness to the things in which you have seen Me and to those in which I will appear to you ....” (Ac 26:16; cf. Gal 1:16). Even the prophetic word the Holy Spirit gave through Ananias said as much, that Paul was appointed to “be a witness for [Christ] to all men of what [he had] seen and heard” (Ac 22:15).
Paul, himself, said he did not receive his
gospel “from man, nor was I taught it, but it came through a revelation of
Jesus Christ” (Gal 1:12) – again, through the ministry of the Holy Spirit
bearing witness to Christ. Yet Paul also confirmed his teaching with the
Apostolic authority in Jerusalem at least twice (Gal 1:18, and Gal 2:2-10, cf.,
possibly Ac 11:28-30 or Ac 15) as he did not want his preaching to be “in vain”
without the Church's authority.
So the Apostle Paul’s entire ministry and unfolding of the mystery of Christ can be seen as a fulfillment of Jesus’ teaching that the Holy Spirit would “bear witness to Me.”
Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church is located in California City, CA. Visit our website at ollcalcity.org.