Third Sunday of Easter April 23, 2023

USCCB Acts 2:14, 22-33, Ps 16:1-2, 5, 7-8, 9-10, 11, 1 Pt 1:17-21, Cf. Lk 24:32 and Lk 24:13-35

I first read ACTS 2:14, 22-33

Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice, and proclaimed: “You who are Jews, indeed all of you staying in Jerusalem. Let this be known to you, and listen to my words. You who are Israelites, hear these words. Jesus the Nazarene was a man commended to you by God with mighty deeds, wonders, and signs, which God worked through him in your midst, as you yourselves know.

This man, delivered up by the set plan and foreknowledge of God, you killed, using lawless men to crucify him. But God raised him up, releasing him from the throes of death, because it was impossible for him to be held by it.

For David says of him:
I saw the Lord ever before me,
with him at my right hand I shall not be disturbed.
Therefore my heart has been glad and my tongue has exulted; my flesh, too, will dwell in hope,
because you will not abandon my soul to the netherworld,
nor will you suffer your holy one to see corruption.
You have made known to me the paths of life;
you will fill me with joy in your presence.

“My brothers, one can confidently say to you about the patriarch David that he died and was buried, and his tomb is in our midst to this day. But since he was a prophet and knew that God had sworn an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants upon his throne, he foresaw and spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, that neither was he abandoned to the netherworld nor did his flesh see corruption.

God raised this Jesus; of this we are all witnesses. Exalted at the right hand of God, he received the promise of the Holy Spirit from the Father and poured him forth, as you see and hear.”

By Irish Jesuits Commentary on Acts 2:14, 22-33

We begin today reading from the Acts of the Apostles. From now until the end of the Seventh Week of Easter the weekday First Readings will be from the Acts. The Sunday First Readings will also be from Acts.

Today’s reading follows immediately on the account of the Pentecost experience. The immediate result of that experience is for Peter, filled with the Spirit and as leader of the new community, to begin proclaiming the message about Jesus Christ as Saviour to the people gathered in Jerusalem for the Jewish festival of Pentecost.

It is the first of six such kerygmas (from the Greek kerux, meaning a ‘herald’) or proclamations in Acts about Jesus as Risen Lord and Messiah-King. Five of them are attributed to Peter and the final one to Paul (to the Jews at Antioch in Pisidia, 13:16-41). Peter’s address follows a pattern that became common in the early Church: 

1. an explanation of what was happening;
2. the proclamation of the death, resurrection and glorification of Jesus the Christ;
3. an exhortation to repentance, a change of life and baptism.

Peter stood before the crowd, flanked by the Eleven (including Matthias, newly chosen to replace Judas as a witness who had been with Jesus “from the beginning”). Peter spoke, then, not just in his own name but in the name of the whole apostolic “college”. Right from the beginning, his special position in the group is recognised.

And he has “good news” (i.e. gospel, Old English god-spell; Greek, euanggelion) to communicate to them. His words reflect the content of the earliest apostolic preaching:

First, he gives witness of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and his being raised to glory.

Second, there are some general details of Christ’s ministry and how it was proclaimed in advance by John the Baptist, inaugurated by teaching and miracles, completed by appearances of the Risen Christ and the giving of the Spirit to his followers.

And third, the story of Jesus is put in the wider context of the Old Testament prophecies, while at the same time looking forward to a Messianic age. Everyone, Jew and Gentile alike, is called to a radical change of life in order to be ready for the Christ’s glorious return (believed then to be in the near future).

Peter, then, reminds them that Jesus had appeared among the people – as many of his hearers were well aware – and performed signs and wonders as the credentials of his real identity. But, in the inscrutable plan of God, he was “handed over” (again we have that term which goes like a refrain through the New Testament).

Sad to say, those who handed Jesus over were from among his own people, perhaps including some of those listening to Peter, and they had even delivered him into the hands of the Romans (“men outside the Law”) for crucifixion. There must surely have been some uneasy feelings among the crowd when he said that.

But Jesus was liberated from the pain of death, as death had no power over him. Peter sees in words spoken by King David their fulfilment in Jesus, his descendant. The words spoken of David, “You will not abandon my soul to Hades [Sheol, the place of the dead]”, are seen as applying more appropriately to Jesus because David died, was buried and the place of his tomb was known to his hearers. But Jesus “is the one who was not abandoned to Hades, and whose body did not experience corruption”. Instead, “God raised this man Jesus to life and all of us are witnesses to that.”

We, too, are called to be witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection and his living presence among us by the way we live both individually and as a community.