The whole history of the earliest Christian Church is the history of apostleship. Mission. Witness. The apostles are always on the road. Of course, this reflects the essence of apostolic ministry as such. In the Jewish religious brotherhoods of the Gospel era, a messenger...
The whole history of the earliest Christian Church is the history of apostleship. Mission. Witness. The apostles are always on the road. Of course, this reflects the essence of apostolic ministry as such. In the Jewish religious brotherhoods of the Gospel era, a messenger (that is exactly how the Greek word "apostle" is translated) had to be first of all precisely a witness, a witness of certain events that had taken place in a particular community. Jewish brotherhoods, like the earliest Christian Church, were community movements that had a council of elders but neither a single center nor a rigid structure. Under such conditions, the institution of messengers-apostles played the role both of a connecting link between the communities that made up the brotherhood and of a distinctive means for exchanging spiritual experience: after all, among other things, apostles could also tell about important events in the spiritual life of a particular community.
For the Church, of course, the main event was the resurrection of Christ. It made the very existence of the Church possible, and it is no surprise that the community of the apostles, the direct witnesses of this event and of everything connected with it, became the nucleus of the Church. Without apostolic witness, the life of the earliest Christian Church was unthinkable: it was precisely this witness to the reality of the Resurrection that gave meaning to Christianity and gave hope to those newly coming in. Paul's witness had special significance: he met the risen Christ after Pentecost, and he was converted not on the basis of others' testimonies, but on the basis of his own experience.
This meant that meetings with Christ did not remain in the past, that they belonged not only to those forty days that separate the Resurrection from the Ascension, that they are part of Christian history, the history of the Church, the history of the Kingdom entering the world. But apostolic witness also contained something else, something that could not exist in traditional apostleship. This is the Kingdom itself, which a Christian, if of course he is a Christian not only in words, always carries with him. It is the main Christian witness.
Otherwise it will not be possible to bear witness to Christ and to the Kingdom; words alone are not enough here. And if a Christian bears witness to the Kingdom that he carries with him, then through him the Kingdom spreads in the world, taking hold of more and more of it. This is the main task of the Church: to remain in the world while carrying the Kingdom to it. And the word about Christ and about the Kingdom is only a supplement to the main thing. An important supplement, but not an absolutely necessary one: where the power of the Kingdom is manifest and its breath is blowing, words are not needed very much.
15
15:36 Let us go and visit the brethren in every city where we have preached - This was all that St. Paul designed at first; but it was not all that God designed by his journey, whose providence carried him much farther than he intended. And see how they do - How their souls prosper: how they grow in faith, hope love:what else ought to be the grand and constant inquiry in every ecclesiastical visitation? Reader, how dost thou do?