Main news for 22 May 2024

The reaction of the Jews listening to Peter's preaching may seem strange, given that his last words spoke of their guilt. Peter, calling them to believe in Jesus Christ, is not afraid of this truth. We need to learn from him how to act when, in speaking about something or preaching, we are not afraid to tell a person the truth, even knowing that it is "against him."

And what is the reaction? "They were cut to the heart." And this happened precisely because what was said was the truth and was said with love. Besides, these people did not close themselves off or harden themselves against the truth spoken to them; they accepted it and wanted to change something. Then God responds to this readiness of heart and sends a gift: compunction of heart, something that changes the heart itself, and changes it for the better, building mercy and love for those around it. And the Lord was no exception: they came to love Him too. And what can be more wonderful than the feeling of love for God?

The Church is young and full of strength, strength breathed into it by the Spirit of the Lord. Those being saved are added by the thousands, many signs are performed, all the believers have received the gift of the Holy Spirit and remain in the fear of God; their life is a model of the full life of a Christian (see Acts 2:42). Not life at all, but a dream... But a dream is still something mostly unattainable, something invented to ease the conscience. People say: this is an ideal incompatible with reality. But what the first Christians live by is precisely the real reality, more real than what we live in now.

And in His conversation with Nicodemus, the Lord speaks exactly about this new being, about the Kingdom of God that is within them and among them (see Luke 17:21, Matt. 18:20). Through repentance, through baptism by water and the Spirit, through birth from above, we can enter, or more precisely, we give Christ the opportunity to bring us into this other life (see John 3:13). We may not yet have noticed it ourselves, but He has already done everything. What remains for us is only to believe this as we believe nothing else, to believe so that we gradually become aware of what has happened to us...

As we can see, the people who heard Peter took his preaching seriously. The question "So what should we do?" did not sound by chance. In fact, if this concerns the rejection of the Messiah Himself, and a conscious one, there is no escaping the consequences of such a sin. Both Yahwism and Judaism traditionally viewed conscious sin as something whose consequences weigh over a person endlessly, even if that person deeply and sincerely repents of what he has done. And here the sin was participation in the death of the Messiah... There was something to think about and something to fear.

Peter immediately points the people listening to him to the only possible way out of the situation. It is a way out made possible precisely thanks to the One whom, according to the apostle's word, people killed and God raised. And this way out is connected with the possibility of sharing in that new life, the life of the Kingdom, which on the day of Pentecost became a reality open to everyone.

Entering the Kingdom, a person begins his life anew. From a clean slate. The consequences of all the sins he has committed remain in the former life, provided, of course, that the person does not drag them along with him. And so that this does not happen, the very conversion of which the evangelist speaks is necessary. In the Synodal translation it is traditionally called repentance, but the matter is precisely conversion: the corresponding Greek word of the original, at least, means exactly this. And conversion is not only a return to the God from whom one has turned away. And not only emotional remorse over sins committed.

It is also reflection on what one has done, awareness of the spiritual quality of one's actions, of the intentions that stand behind them. And it is a conscious rejection of those among them that are incompatible with the Torah, with the Gospel, and with the commandments given by God. Then one can truly begin a new life from a clean slate. Then the communal life described by the author of Acts could also become a reality: after all, it can exist only as long as every member of this community lives the life of the Kingdom in all the fullness available to him. As it should be in the Church with a capital C.