Proclaim the Gospel

By Lou Occhi

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/042322.cfm
Acts 4:13-21
Mark 16:9-15

Today’s gospel relates the story of the resurrection of Jesus according to Mark. If you read the account of the resurrection in the other gospels you will find them similar in the facts that Mary Magdalene was the first to find the tomb, the tomb was empty, Mary Magdalene reported the empty tomb to the apostles and the apostles did not believe. Many of the other details in the gospels are a bit scrambled. In order to reconstruct the resurrection story you need to read all four gospels and arrive at some sort of consensus. The actual line of events is not critical. What is critical is that Christ rose from the dead and it has affected the entire world. It seems that His work is now done, but that is not the case. He finishes by telling his disciples to proclaim the gospel throughout the world.

Several years ago, Lee Strobel wrote ‘The Case For Christ’. No, it has nothing to do with beer. Mr. Strobel was an investigative reporter for a newspaper. He and his wife were atheists and were quite happy with the arrangement. Then his wife made friends with a Christian and was converted. This caused Mr. Strobel to use his investigative skills to prove that the resurrection never happened. He reasoned that proving the resurrection never happened would cause his wife’s belief in Christ fall apart. Then he and his wife could continue to live atheistically happy ever after.

In his endeavor to investigate the resurrection, he interviewed doctors, psychologists, historians, archeologists and many others. All of this was to no avail. In the end, he became a believer. Now he is minister of a church and he and other members of his family have written a variety of books on Christianity.

All of this about Mr. Strobel is to emphasize the necessity to truly believe Christ rose from the dead. Remember, the disciples of Christ did not believe until they saw Him. This is in spite of the fact that they saw Him raise people from the dead, cure lepers, make the cripple walk, the blind see and change water into wine.

In the last part of Mark’s gospel Christ tells his disciples “Go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature.” I have to admit the word creature confused me a bit. I checked some other bibles and they use slightly different words instead of creature. One used the word mankind, another used people, and one last one used the word creation. When I think of creature I think of all the animals which includes people. Creature comes from the word created and we are in that mix. Translating one language to another is difficult. We have run into that problem in our own recent history. In my lifetime mass was in Latin. Then, we changed the mass to English. The method of translation was to change the Latin to English that tried to capture the intent of the Latin. This ran into difficulty. As a result, the translation now used is a more literal translation.

In any event, this leads us right into the first reading from Acts. In this reading, Peter and John heal a man crippled from birth. The man was sitting at the entrance to the temple begging for alms. When Peter and John walked up to him, he asked them for alms. Peter said that he had no alms to give but that he would give him what he has. He took the cripple man by the hand and stood him up. The man’s legs were restored and he was literally jumping for joy. Naturally, this drew a crowd and Peter and John began preaching about Christ. Because this was at the entrance to the temple, the authorities witnessed the entire event. The leaders, scribes and elders who were present considered Peter and John uneducated, ordinary men. Uneducated meant that they were not trained to teach scripture. Yet they were amazed at what Peter and John were saying. The Sanhedrin, seventy Jewish religious lawmakers, pulled Peter and John in to explain what they were doing. The Sanhedrin then forbade them from continuing to preach in the name of Jesus. Peter told them to judge whether they should do what they were being told or do what God has asked of them. Because Sanhedrin was in fear of the crowd there was nothing they could do.

Peter and John did not stop their evangelizing and neither should we. I think there are a couple of obstacles in anyone’s efforts to evangelize. The first is biblical. Jesus told us not to be like the Pharisees and pray where others would see them. Instead, pray where others could not see them. The other is fear of rejection. When I am flying somewhere by myself, I like to say the rosary. I do this by cleverly hiding my rosary under my coat or a magazine and hope that no one sees me. This leads me to a short story. There was an older man on a train in Europe praying the rosary. A man sitting opposite him asked why he was wasting his time with that old fashioned practice. The man went on to talk about his various degrees in science and that there is no God, only the myth. He continued rambling on about how he had learned in his studies that science is the explanation for everything. When they arrived at their destination, the old man handed him his card and told him if wanted to continue the discussion to call him. The man saying the rosary was the famed scientist Pierre Curie. Maybe Dr. Curie had an effect on the other man or maybe not. The point is that perhaps the younger scientist began to wonder about his current spiritual position. There should not be any reason why I need to hide my rosary or that I am praying. It doesn’t mean that I should swing my rosary over my head and draw special attention to myself. However, someone might see the rosary and be inspired to pray as well. I probably will still try to disguise my rosary but I won’t be nearly as fanatical about trying to hide it when the beverages are being served. 

Today we are surrounded by spiritual trash. There are satanic conferences, many abortions, wars, atheism, etc. It is imperative that we come out of our spiritual closet. We can evangelize by simply being who we are. I don’t think there is anyone I know that doesn’t know I am Catholic. I don’t push my faith on anyone, but I am not a closet Catholic. Some of my best religious discussions have been with a Jewish friend of mine. It is amazing how much we share in our beliefs.

Jesus lived with us. He shared all our joys, sorrows and sufferings with us. He subjected Himself to scourging, crowing with thorns, beatings and death on a cross so that we would be saved. After three days, He rose from the dead to show us death has been defeated. Now he asks us to follow Him and continue His work so that we too will be raised from death.