Whither Antioch, the setting for today’s Second Reading? The world turned on this verse, from Acts 11, that “For a whole year (Paul and Barnabas) met with the church and taught a large number of people, and it was in Antioch that the disciples were first called Christians.” The first followers were able by a genuine miracle not only to plant but also to spread the good news of Jesus Christ to places outside Judea and the lands where Jesus of Nazareth walked. Antioch was a large thriving city set at a crossroads, and historians have concluded that spiritual blessings and strategic benefits rose out of the evangelizing efforts the people of “the Way” made there (please go here for a closer and contemporary look at what is now called Antakya, in present-day Turkey).

Would it be better to have the kind of relationship with the word “Christian” that we have with the word “pious,” that is, it’s a term we use to describe others, but never ourselves? Or would that be akin to putting our light under a bushel? Matthias, whose feast we celebrate this Wednesday, was chosen to join The Twelve because his fellow disciples knew his heart. “You call me ‘teacher’ and 'master’ and rightly so, for indeed I am,” Jesus says (John 13: 13). Would it better to dwell with His question, “Who do the people say (I am)?” and hold it as a goal? 

When Christianity was in its first expressions Antioch, Rome and Alexandria were the centers of scholarship and authority, later joined by Constantinople and Jerusalem. There was not always concord, and the schisms that arose then have by a genuine tragedy endured to the present day. The most moving part of Pope Francis’ funeral at Saint Peter’s was when the Eastern Rite Catholic prelates came onto the square and canted a blessing for him before his body was returned to the basilica to begin the procession.² Their churches are in union with Rome, but seeing them in their diversity made me think of the many expressions of Christianity that were absent. And that schisms do not belong to history only.³

Jesus wept for Jerusalem (Mt 23: 37; Lk 13: 34) which did not know enduring peace when He walked there, and which rejects it now. Alexandria is the center of Coptic Christian life in Egypt, where our brothers and sisters live in an uneasy peace with their neighbors and rulers. Constantinople is now Istanbul, a bustling and dramatically beautiful city with a sclerotic civil sector that is turning its back on tolerance. Please pray with me for all these cities, for their flourishing and for harmony among their peoples. 

That leaves Rome, “the eternal city” to which all roads lead, and where we place our hopes as the papal conclave convenes.  Its splendor comes to mind when I think what Jesus said in His parable, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Mt 25: 34). Please join in praying for God’s blessing to rest on the conclave, on the one who is elevated, and on the Church in all her foundations and expressions, that all will desire and build up the Reign of God.

Fr. Robert Wotypka