NOTES for Act 4:32-37

Today's reading from the Acts of the Holy Apostles begins with astonishing words: "Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul." Is such a thing possible? Can we even imagine it? Our unanimity, or even simply our like-mindedness, usually lasts for such a short time... More than that, it is often in the church community that we "relax" - and all our "home" problems crawl out into the light. It is well known that it is especially hard to maintain peaceful relationships with those closest to us. The same thing happens in the Church.

But the first Christians, it appears, did not have this problem. What is the point here? A special grace? Of course, without grace nothing is possible, but it seems that first of all the point is people's openness to this grace. The Lord is always the same, He is unchanging, and He not only can but wants to grant the same grace of unity to all of us, to our Church, and to our communities.

When reading the description of the early Christian community, today we notice first of all the common ownership of property that characterized it. Yet this was probably only one possible form of Christian communal life at that time. Some episodes in the Book of Acts make it clear that giving all one’s property to the Church was not compulsory; it was the personal, voluntary choice of someone joining the community. What was indispensable, however, was what the author of the book calls “one heart and one soul.” A community can exist without common property, but not without one heart and one soul, even if common property becomes a compulsory norm within it.

Indeed, what does it mean to be of one heart? In the Bible, the heart is the spiritual center of the human person, the spiritual “I,” the genuine center where the person begins, where the breath of life given by God touches human nature. It is here, in the heart, in the depths of the spiritual “I,” that the intentions are born which determine what a person will be before God and other people. The strength and, above all, the degree of awareness of each intention determine how pure and intense a person’s spiritual life will be. If every member of the community does not care for their heart in this sense, they destroy the community. If they do care for it, the community becomes a kind of school of spiritual life, not a theoretical school but a practical one.

Then the community acquires something like a single heart, because the intentions arising from every heart are directed toward one thing. Then “one soul,” or more precisely one shared life, also becomes possible. The Greek word used by the sacred author, like its Hebrew equivalent, denotes the soul as the stream of life in which we dwell and which at the same time flows through us. In this stream, the spiritual joins the natural, while its strength is given by God, who grants us life. As for the quality of the stream of life, whether the spiritual or the natural predominates within it, everything depends on us, on the intentions arising from our heart, from our spiritual “I.”

It depends on us what our life will be, both in spiritual purity and in spiritual intensity. It also depends on us who will be given access to our life. A true community is possible only when the stream of its life is one.

Every current, every individual life entering the common stream, must of course have the corresponding spiritual quality. Otherwise the common stream will become cloudy and dirty or disappear altogether. Yet such a common stream of life, a “common soul,” is an indispensable condition for the community’s existence. Property may or may not be held in common; that depends on the particular conditions and circumstances.

But the soul must necessarily be shared; otherwise the community disappears, even if all outward forms of communal life are preserved. The Christian community in Jerusalem possessed precisely such a common soul, behind which stood one heart. As long as this state of affairs endured, God’s breath moved freely within it and met no obstacle.

Confirming Jesus' words, “The one who believes in Me will also do the works that I do, and will do greater works than these, because I am going to My Father” (John 14:12), we read the lines of today's passage from Acts. Christ has gone to the Father, and the believers in Him who remain on earth work miracles. We all remember the story of the rich young man (see Matt 19:16-26). But that young man did not put the Lord's advice into practice, at least not at the very moment when he received it... When he heard Jesus say that he lacked only one thing—to sell his possessions and follow Him—the young man went away sadly, admitting how difficult such a step was. But what do we see here? Through their preaching the apostles kindle such a fire in people's hearts that they themselves go and sell their possessions, giving the money to those who brought them the news of the Savior and shared Christ's light with them. Those who give feel neither regret nor greed, because Christ Himself does this within them.

Judging by the testimony of the Book of Acts, the early Christian Church was meant to be a community where, among other things, common ownership of property was the norm. Later many Christians, and not only they, tried to follow the early Christian ideal. Some succeeded better, some worse. But what moved all these people? After all, common ownership of property was practiced by representatives of certain religious-philosophical teachings even in pre-Christian times, not to mention Jewish religious brotherhoods like the Essenes. What prompted these very different people to give up their property in favor of the community?

Very often the main motive turned out to be the striving for ascetic life, which moved not only Christian monks of the Middle Ages and the modern period, but also, for example, the followers of Pythagoras, in whose communities common ownership of property was also, if not obligatory, then apparently quite widespread. Here a person was moved first of all by the desire to simplify his life as much as possible, including its economic and social ties. By renouncing property, the person thereby also renounced society, as well as what bound him to society.

Another case is the renunciation of property in the context of an approaching eschatological and apocalyptic perspective, as happened, for example, among the Qumran Essenes. Here the conviction played its role that the world was doomed to destruction because of its impurity, and that only those belonging to the community of the "pure," by whom the Qumranites of course meant themselves, could be saved. Here the donation of property to the community was equivalent to a contribution to the construction of the only saving ark on earth, for which nothing should be spared.

But could the early Christian Church have been guided by ascetic or apocalyptic motives? Probably not, after all. The matter was not abstinence and not the coming end, but the life of the Kingdom. Here there was another, no less powerful stimulus: the experience itself of life in the Kingdom. For the Kingdom is possible only as giving, as the renunciation of one's separateness, as readiness to share everything one has in order to receive everything in return for the small part one gives. Here to give means not to renounce or lose, but to acquire and receive. This is precisely the case where sharing means multiplying. And common ownership of property turns out here not to be the embodiment of an idea, ascetic or eschatological, but the natural continuation in the untransformed world of that life of the Kingdom which someday, after transformation, will become natural and organic for it.

The Apostles were not frightened by the Sanhedrin's threats and prayed that God would give them courage to proclaim the Good News. Many of them would later die as martyrs and become examples for many thousands of Christian martyrs. The courage for which they ask has nothing to do with a readiness to commit a reckless act. For the Apostles, God's will is far more real and substantial than all the threats made by Christ's opponents. Christian courage is therefore directly connected with faith—with the fullness of life in the risen Lord Jesus. The stronger this faith, the more evident it is to a person that no threats can compare with the blessedness and happiness Christ gives. Conversely, the fear of losing life, property, work, or friendship, from which all of us suffer to some degree, calls the reality of our faith into question...