MAY 8, 2026 FATHER MICHAEL COUTTS
A little over 60 years ago, we had the Second Vatican Council. At that time, the Church looked at itself in order to reform itself and came up with four main documents, four main decrees.
The first was looking at the Church’s nature and identity. What was the Church? The Church was supposed to be Lumen Gentium, a light to the nation, to invite people to walk out of darkness into light.
And secondly, what was their mission? How were they going to do all of this? They were going to do it, as the Second Decree said, Gaudium et Spes, with joy and with hope.
But they needed some inspiration, they needed some strength. And that came to the Third Decree, which was Verbum Dei. The word of God, the source of all its strength and joy and mission, was from the scriptures.
The very first decree, which comes at the end as a follow-up, was how was this going to be shared in its way of preaching and its way of prayer and in its rituals? And the decree was Sacrosanctum Concilium, the sacred council on how we pray and how we go about praying things.
This is a far cry from the First Council of the Church in Jerusalem. And that is where Paul and Barnabas will take the decrees of that First Council and go up to Antioch.
At that time, it was not all the bishops and their experts. It was not only limited to the apostles and the elders, but all the believers in the Church, and there were very few at that time.
So they were facing persecution, persecutions from the Jews and persecutions from the Gentiles. And therefore, in looking at its identity and the way they would proceed, they would look for things in a very practical way. There was no theology, as such. That would come much later in the Council of Nicaea in 325 and the Council of Constantinople in 381 and the Council of Ephesus later on.
When they discussed the divinity of Christ, the way we spoke about the Trinity, the theology about Mary. But at this time, they were simply saying, “How do we go about preaching the kingdom of God?” And they came up with four decrees. Three of them had to do with very practical matters, dietary decrees. And the fourth one had to deal with morality.
They should not eat food that was offered to idols. They should not eat food that was strangled. They should not eat food that had blood still in it. And this made sense from a very practical way. This was the day before refrigeration, and with all the E. coli that we have today, we could realize how easily it would spread.
And the fourth was to deal with morality: keep pure, avoid from fornication.
Now, what had happened was the people who were being persecuted by the Jews and the Gentiles, because the believers believed that, with a Jewish background, that the Gentiles who were going to be Christian had to follow all the traditions of the Jews.
And the Gentiles said, “No, we don’t need to do that.” And so there was a clash, and it started off in Antioch. And so Paul and Barnabas come down to the church in Jerusalem and put forward this discussion. And they looked at it and they said, “One thing we have to do is that the belief is in Jesus Christ, and therefore we should not put burdens on the Gentiles.”
And so this decree that they had was received with great joy by the Christians, both Jews and Gentiles in Antioch.
And it was at Antioch that, for the first time, they called the believers Christians. And what were they saying? They were saying, “Look, we need to believe in Jesus Christ and practice it on the one basis, love one another as I have loved you,” as we hear Jesus in the gospel today.
So there is no need of the traditions of circumcision and keeping the Sabbath according to the traditions of the Jews. Keep it and be holy. This was the decree that still works within our Church today.
As we come to the gospel, we find something quite different. Namely, Jesus had just washed the feet of his disciples. Now this was a job for servants and slaves.
Then Jesus removes, puts on his outer garments once again and sits at the table, and the whole atmosphere is changed. He is no longer treating them as a servant would treat a master. He is the master, but he is not treating his disciples as people who learn. He is treating them on the same level as he is.
It’s the first example of synodality, a word that we don’t seem to like. He says, “I am calling you friends now. I am calling you friends because I have got a mandate for you to love one another as I have loved you.”
A love that will show its standard and its sacrifice the same way Jesus showed, namely to give up his life for the sake of those who loved him.
God has loved the world from the beginning of all time. Our story of creation is just a nanosecond in the whole story of evolution as our scientists believe.
13 billion years ago, God was in love with the creation that he had of all the galaxies and all the universe. The love of God was shown in a relationship and keeping them in existence by their being in the very existence of God.
And then in the fullness of time, as we hear in the Letter to the Hebrews, God sent His only son, his son who could show us who this God who loved us, the God we call Father, the God who holds us in the palm of God’s hand.
And how we could see in a very tangible way that this is a God who does not let us down. It’s a mind-boggling system. How can this God who is totally in charge of everything belong to us in a very tangible way?
This is the preaching of the kingdom of God, not just our salvation, but the salvation of the entire creation. As Paul says in the letter to the Romans, the whole creation is groaning until it receives its fulfilment, its own salvation.
The trees, the infrastructure, the huge big tractors that we see working, you and I have been called to lift up their praise to God. This is the grace given to us. What a monumental task. And we are just sinners today, yet we have been given this task because Jesus walks with us. God bless you all.
