The Apostolic Church

Between the Resurrection of Christ and the death of the last of the apostles lies the first age of the Church, the one we call apostolic. In less than three generations, a small band of Jewish disciples gathered in Jerusalem became a community spread through the great cities of the Empire, distinct from Israel, open to all peoples, endowed with a faith, with leaders and with rites that gave it shape. What this newborn Church was, how it came to be, how it lived, how it crossed its own borders, is told above all by the book of the Acts of the Apostles.

Born of Easter and Pentecost

The Church holds her beginning from the Passover of Christ, not from herself. The risen Lord, before ascending to heaven, gathers his own and promises them power from on high. Fifty days after Easter, at the Jewish feast of Pentecost, that promise is fulfilled: the Holy Spirit descends upon the gathered disciples, who begin to speak in other tongues. Jews come from all the East, each from his own region, hear them proclaim the wonders of God in his own language. At Babel of old, the pride of men had confused their tongues and scattered the peoples; at Pentecost the Spirit does the reverse: he gathers the scattered peoples by making them hear a single message. That day Peter stands and openly proclaims that God has made both Lord and Christ this same Jesus whom men had crucified. Three thousand people receive baptism. The Church is on her way.

In this waiting, the Eleven remain united in prayer, and Scripture names in their midst the Mother of the Lord: they were constant in prayer, “with some women, with Mary the mother of Jesus” Acts 1:14. The Mother of Christ is there on the Church’s first day, as she had been at his birth.

The college of the Twelve

At the heart of this community stand the Twelve, whom Jesus had chosen and formed during his public life to be the witnesses of his resurrection and the foundation of his Church. Their number has a meaning: like the twelve tribes of Israel, they signify that the Church is the people of God gathered anew. The betrayal of Judas having left an empty place, the apostles fill it at once by choosing Matthias, for the college was to remain whole. Among them Peter holds the first rank: Christ had made him the rock on which he would build his Church, the one the gates of death could not overcome. From the first pages of Acts, it is Peter who speaks in the name of all, who presides and who decides: he already exercises the office the Church will recognize in the bishop of Rome, his successor.

The life of the first community

The faith of the first Christians turns at once into a way of living. Acts records four traits of it, which draw the face of the Church forever: the faithful were assiduous in the teaching of the apostles, in the fellowship, in the breaking of bread and in the prayers. The teaching of the apostles is the faith received from Christ and handed on faithfully, what will be called Tradition. The breaking of bread is the Eucharist, the meal where the Lord gives himself under bread and wine, as he had commanded on the eve of his death. The prayers and the fellowship made of the multitude a single body: the believers had but one heart and one soul, held all things in common, and the richer sold their goods so that none should be in want. This charity, before any discourse, made the faith visible.

These believers gathered “on the first day of the week”, the day Christ had risen, to break bread: “On the first day of the week, we were gathered to break bread.” Acts 20:7 This day, distinct from the sabbath, they called the Lord’s day (Revelation 1:10); it is the origin of the Christian Sunday, the mark that early set the assembly of the Church apart from that of the synagogue.

The first witnesses in blood

The Christian newness soon collides with the authorities of Jerusalem, who order the apostles to be silent; but Peter and his companions answer that one must obey God rather than men. The first to pay for this refusal with his life is Stephen, one of the seven men set apart for the service of tables and the care of the poor, the first deacons. Accused of blasphemy, he is stoned, praying for his executioners as his Master had done on the cross; a young Pharisee named Saul guards the garments of the killers, the very man who will become Paul. Soon after, King Herod has the apostle James, brother of John, beheaded. These first martyrs open the long line of those who will render to Christ the witness of blood. The persecution scatters the faithful out of Jerusalem, and wherever they pass they announce the Gospel: violence, far from quenching the faith, spreads it.

From Jerusalem to the nations

Until then the Gospel had been carried only to Jews. The decisive step was to admit the pagans to it. God shows this to Peter in a vision, then leads him to a Roman officer, Cornelius: while Peter speaks, the Holy Spirit descends upon these pagans as he had descended upon the apostles, and Peter baptizes them, understanding that God makes no distinction between men. At Antioch in Syria many Greeks are converted, and it is there that the disciples first receive the name of Christians. From that city sets out Saul, become Paul, called by Christ to carry his name to the nations, whose journeys and letters will build Churches throughout the Greek world. The entry of the pagans raised a grave question, one that would decide the future of the Church.

The council of Jerusalem

A controversy divided the faithful: for some, the converted pagans had first to become Jews, to receive circumcision and keep the law of Moses, without which they could not be saved; others denied it. Around the year 50, to settle the matter, the apostles and the elders gather at Jerusalem, debate, hear Peter and Paul report what God has done among the pagans. James, the brother of the Lord, who presided over the Church of Jerusalem, pronounced the sentence that rallied the assembly: the Law would not be imposed on the converted pagans. The common verdict opens with a formula that will become the model of all councils: “For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to lay on you any burden beyond these necessary requirements.” Acts 15:28 The pagans who believe in Christ need not bear the yoke of the Law: they are saved by grace, not by the works of the Law. This assembly is the first council. It sets the way the Church will henceforth settle her gravest questions: by gathering her pastors to seek together, in the Spirit, what is right. All the great councils of the following centuries, from Nicaea to our own day, will do no more than take up this gesture.

The legacy of the apostles

The apostles died one after another, most of them as martyrs. Peter and Paul sealed their witness at Rome, put to death under Nero around the year 64. In the year 70, the Roman armies destroyed Jerusalem and its Temple: the worship of the old Covenant came to an end, and the Church, now separated from Judaism, appeared as the sole heir of the promises. At the end of the first century the last of the Twelve, John, passed away in turn, and with him the apostolic age came to a close. Yet the apostles did not leave the Church an orphan. They left her first the writings of the New Covenant, the Gospels and the letters in which their preaching is kept. They left her above all successors: by laying their hands upon others, they had established in each Church bishops charged to guard the faith received and to hand it on intact. Thus the faith passes from the apostles to the bishops, from generation to generation, without break: this is what we call apostolic succession. The Church of the origins is not a golden age lost behind us, but the living root from which the whole of Christian history has grown. The Body of Christ, animated by his Spirit, received there its lasting form and carries on in the world the mission received from its Lord.

These bishops were surrounded by a clergy: as soon as the Gospel reached a city, the apostles established there elders, or presbyters, to lead the community, and deacons, instituted from Jerusalem for the service of the poor. Bishops, priests and deacons: the threefold ministry the Church still knows receives its shape here.