Catholic lectionary for 1 June 2025

King James Version (en)

Acts of the Apostles, Chapter 7, verses 55-60

⁵⁴ whereupon they stone him to death, who commendeth his soul to Jesus, and humbly prayeth for them

⁵⁵But he, being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up stedfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God,

⁵⁶And said, Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God.

⁵⁷Then they cried out with a loud voice, and stopped their ears, and ran upon him with one accord,

⁵⁸And cast him out of the city, and stoned him: and the witnesses laid down their clothes at a young man's feet, whose name was Saul.

⁵⁹And they stoned Stephen, calling upon God, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.

⁶⁰And he kneeled down, and cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. And when he had said this, he fell asleep.

Revelations, Chapter 22, verses 12-14, 16-20

⁹ The angel will not be worshipped, ¹⁸ Nothing may be added to the word of God, nor taken therefrom

¹²And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be.

¹³I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.

¹⁴Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.
...

¹⁶I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star.

¹⁷And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.

¹⁸For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book:

¹⁹And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.

²⁰He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.

John, Chapter 17, verses 20-26

²⁰ to glorify them and all other believers with him in heaven

²⁰Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word;

²¹That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.

²²And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one:

²³I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.

²⁴Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.

²⁵O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee: but I have known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me.

²⁶And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.

NOTES

The prayer Jesus offers for His disciples sums up everything said during the Last Supper. It is usually called the prayer for unity, and one can undoubtedly agree with this. Yet it concerns not only outward unity. Jesus again asks the Father to preserve between Him and His disciples the same union that He has with the Father (vv. 21-23). Apparently no testimony is possible without such unity; without it the world will not believe that the apostles truly were sent into the world by the Savior Himself.

Yet bearing witness to the Kingdom and revealing the Kingdom to the world are precisely the chief task of those who are sent. Addressing the Father, Jesus in a sense hands over to the apostles the mission the Father entrusted to Him, while entrusting the apostles themselves to the Father. He says: I have given the life of the Kingdom that You gave Me to everyone who wished to receive it; I have accomplished everything You entrusted to Me (vv. 1-5). I revealed Myself, You, and Your Kingdom to those whom You sent Me, and they accepted everything (vv. 6-8). And now, Jesus says, I am leaving while they remain, and I pray for them, for those who belong to You (vv. 9-11).

Such a request was entirely natural, for the apostles were now becoming witnesses to the Kingdom about which Jesus had previously spoken to the world, and the apostolic community was to become the nucleus of the Church. Previously Jesus Himself had kept His disciples safe in a world hostile to them. Now, as He goes to the Father, He asks the Father to help the apostles preserve the joy of the Kingdom that they knew during the Savior's earthly ministry (vv. 12-13). This does not mean removing the apostles from the world to some other, special reality. The Kingdom had to be revealed here, not somewhere on another planet or in another dimension (vv. 14-16). But to reveal it, the apostolic community had to be sanctified by receiving the fullness of God's living revelation, which the Savior Himself embodied (v. 17). Only then could the apostles become witnesses to the Kingdom and their community the nucleus of the Church, whose very purpose would be to preserve the Kingdom in our still not fully transformed world and bear witness to it. This nucleus would grow, and the Church would expand, including everyone who sought the Kingdom and eternal life (vv. 18-21).

In today's reading Jesus prays to the Father for His Church. And the main thing He asks for is unity. Today, two thousand years later, we see that those who believed through the word of the apostles, believers in Christ, are not united. How many barriers and partitions there are among us! And it is no accident that Jesus says...

In today's passage from the Gospel of John, there is a very important idea for a Christian: the idea of unity, one of the foundations of the Church's understanding and experience. Moreover, in the Gospel it appears as...

The question is what kind of unity is meant by the words: "...that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You..." and what follows. They are usually interpreted this way: Jesus called for everyone to hold the same doctrinal formulas and belong to one all-embracing church organization. Yet, as we know, formalism and over-organization kill, while living relationships give life.

Rather, this is not so much about a church structure uniting everyone under its jurisdiction, although such a structure often flows naturally from unity of faith and life in the Christian community; after all, everyone in our world has to take on certain legal obligations in order to coexist fully with other people. Much more plausibly, Jesus was inviting the disciples to seek inner unity, not horizontally but vertically: like His unity with the Father, each person should have unity with the Father and the Son, who come to the one who keeps Their word and "make Their home" in his heart and in his life. In fact, only through a living mystical bond with the Father and with the Word who reveals Him is the inner Kingdom built, spiritualizing human existence at its deepest depths. Then all everyday affairs and church projects receive a firm foundation in the hearts of people attuned to the hearts of the Three: the Father, the Son, and the Spirit...

Everything in this world is mortal: countries, peoples, and church structures, all of which can collapse before the eyes of a single generation, as happened in the tragic 1920s and 1930s in the Soviet Union. But what remains unchanged is that unity, that personal communion with God, which in any historical conditions and life circumstances remains the eternally flowing spring of Christian prayer and action.

FAQ

In the book of the Revelation of St. John the Divine, in the last chapter, should verses 18 and 19 be applied to this book alone or to the entire Bible?

Since the Book of Revelation was written (like all the other books of Scripture) as a separate work (at that time the New Testament did not yet exist as a whole, and the Old Testament had not yet been finalized either), these words should, in the strict sense, be understood as referring specifically to Revelation...

How was it possible for such a phenomenon as the division of churches (Catholic, Protestant, Lutheran, Orthodox, Old Believer....) to occur? To whom (which church) can a Christian turn so as to not make a wrong step, in your opinion?

The division of the Churches occurred as a result of human sin; the Lord Jesus Christ Himself created one Church and specifically prayed for its unity. At first, differences (dissensions, as the Bible calls this phenomenon) were perceived as the richness of the Church...

The division of the Churches occurred as a result of human sin; the Lord Jesus Christ Himself created one Church and specifically prayed for its unity.

At first, differences (dissensions, as the Bible calls this phenomenon) were perceived as the richness of the Church. But at the end of the first millennium, the mutual alienation of the Churches of the West and the East led to the fact that Christians of the two parts of the Roman Empire ceased to understand each other and, what is most terrible, lost the sense of the importance of unity.

Over the course of several centuries (from the 6th to the mid-11th) differences in the way of thinking and acting of the West and the East did not prevent unity; however, several times during this period, a schism between the Churches occurred due to the political pressure of the state authorities of the West and the East. Finally, by the 11th century, against the background of mutual misunderstanding, this political schism in 1054 became final. It lasted 910 years and was overcome in 1964 at a meeting between Pope Paul VI and the Patriarch of Constantinople Athenagoras I, although reasons for mutual reproaches and dissatisfaction continue to arise to this day.

In addition, in the depths of the Western Church by the 16th century, dissatisfaction with its own shortcomings had matured, which led to the emergence of Protestantism, which subsequently divided into countless branches.

All this was, we repeat, caused by purely human reasons, or rather — sins. In essence, the matter lies in our inability to love and accept those who differ from us. Gradually, the main motive for mutual reproaches between the Churches became a lack of faith and a desire to justify one's own spiritual tradition not by the fact that people find Christ in it, but by its advantages over others.

Division and its consequences are the foremost sin of Christians. How did it become possible? Like any sin — because God respects our freedom. In the Church, in accordance with its nature, two principles operate — God's will, good and perfect, leading the Church to holiness and unity, and human nature, fluctuating between obedience to God and its own sins. If the second principle did not exist, there would be no division, but then it would not be a Church, but a concentration camp, and there would be no place for us all in it. After all, the fact that God accepts us while we are still sinners is our only hope for salvation.

To whom, to which Church a Christian (a person who has come to believe in Christ) should turn so as not to make a wrong step, is determined by each person in prayer. In principle, there is a cultural community of people, which is largely formed under the influence of certain confessions. That is why in every country one can distinguish a Church close to the majority. In Russia, this is undoubtedly the Russian Orthodox Church. However, each person's path to God is unique, and the Lord calls different people into different parts of the Church. The point, actually, is not in a right or wrong step, but in where Christ wants to grant an encounter with Himself specifically to this person.

At the same time, it is important to distinguish parts of the Church from countless sects and so-called "new religious movements." The simplest criterion is the origin of the Church from the apostles and its connection with global Christianity. In church language, this is called apostolic succession. On the territory of our country, apostolic succession, besides the ROC, is also possessed by the Roman Catholic and Armenian Apostolic Churches.

Understanding the versions of Protestantism is not so simple; here there are no clear criteria of ecclesiality. In addition, it is important to keep this in mind: if a person was baptized in childhood (in Russia this almost always means Orthodoxy), then there is no point in changing confession without very serious reasons, unless they were baptized in some dubious sect... It is much more important to find a specific community for oneself within one's own confession; after all, within every "normal" Church there is a fairly wide diversity.

The main thing is very simple: you need to seek Christ Himself, and He will show you the Church...

"He who unites himself with the Lord is one spirit with Him." Please explain how this should be understood? Is it really as Witness Lee from the sect calling itself the "Local Church" teaches? He says, based on this text, that the Spirit of God merges with the human spirit and forms a certain composite "Mingled Spirit." I know that this contradicts traditional Christianity, but how then should 1 Corinthians 6:17 be understood?

To us, just as to you, the explanation you provide seems strange. The Apostle Paul, as far as can be understood, is speaking about the following...

To us, just as to you, the explanation you provide seems strange. The Apostle Paul, as far as can be understood, is speaking about the following. He who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body. Conversely, the apostle writes, he who unites himself with the Lord is one with Him in spirit. The apostle uses the verb kollao in both cases, literally meaning "to glue, to cleave, to join." He is appealing to the imagery conveyed in the Book of Genesis by the words "and a man shall cleave to his wife, and they shall become one flesh." This is where the verb "cleave" comes from.

Just as the words "they shall become one flesh" do not imply merging, so in the second case the bold imagery of the apostle does not imply the merging of the human spirit with God. On the contrary, the apostle is faithful to the tradition of the Old Testament, which uses marriage as an image of the relationship with God, where there is essential unity, the closest of bonds, while preserving the distinction of persons, where the persons do not merge into one, but become inextricably together. In the union of people "in one spirit with the Lord" there is similarly no merging, the essential distinction of individualities similarly remains, but the closeness of this unity is such that it is impossible to imagine one without the Other.

Thus, it refers to what the theology of the first millennium (so-called patristic theology) termed "theosis" (deification). The Lord Jesus Christ spoke of this: "that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you, may they also be one in us." This is the entering of people into the mystery of the love of the Trinity, such love that overcomes difference and unites without violating freedom and individuality. Just as the Father and the Son are one, so too can a person who has cleaved to the Lord be one with God and other people. Strictly speaking, this unity without merging is paradoxical; human thought knows no examples of it other than the Trinity. And such union with God is precisely the ultimate goal of our lives.

Therefore, the Apostle Paul is speaking in a somewhat unusual manner about the covenant (union) with God, to which humanity is called.

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