The Book of Acts
The Acts of the Apostles recount how the Gospel, setting out from a small group gathered in Jerusalem, spread to the heart of the Roman Empire. Written by Saint Luke as the continuation of his Gospel, this book is the account of the origins of the Church. Its true actor is not first Peter or Paul, but the Holy Spirit, who drives the witnesses ever further. It is the book of mission, where one sees the Good News cross every frontier, from the holy city to the ends of the earth.
The continuation of the Gospel
Luke had written a first book on all that Jesus did and taught up to his Ascension; the Acts are its second volume, devoted to what Christ continues to do through his Spirit, by means of his apostles. The link is direct: the same author, the same recipient, and one same thread running from the birth of Jesus to the arrival of the Gospel in Rome. What the Gospel said of Christ, the Acts say of the Church: it is born, grows, suffers, and proclaims, animated by the presence of its risen Lord. Without this book, one would know almost nothing of the first thirty years of the Christian faith. Luke does not write from afar: a companion of Paul, he shared part of these journeys, and in several places his account suddenly shifts to “we,” a sign that he was a witness of the facts. A careful historian, he sets the events in the real world of his time, with its governors, its cities, and its roads, so that the Acts are at once a book of faith and a firsthand document on the birth of Christianity.
The book of the Holy Spirit
At every stage, it is the Spirit who decides, sends, prevents, or drives forward. He descends at Pentecost, fills the apostles, designates those who must be sent, leads Philip onto the road, stops Paul here and calls him there. The Acts could be called the Gospel of the Holy Spirit, for one sees ceaselessly at work in it the third Person of the Trinity, promised by Christ and given to the Church. The apostles are not leaders who build an organization; they are witnesses who obey a force that surpasses them. The growth of the Church is not their work, but that of God, who uses weak men to carry his word. This is a consolation for every age: the Church holds not by the strength of its members, but by the presence of the Spirit who leads it despite their limits. What Luke shows at the origins holds still today, for the same Spirit animates the Church and keeps it through the centuries.
Witnesses to the ends of the earth
Before going up to heaven, Christ traces the program of the whole book in one sentence: “you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Acts 1:8 These words draw the map of the Acts, like circles that widen: first Jerusalem, then Judea and Samaria, finally the pagan world. The account follows exactly this movement, from the holy city to Rome, capital of the Empire. The Gospel is not made to stay shut within one people: it is destined for all men, and the Church is missionary by nature. The witness, in Greek martys, is the one who attests what he has seen; and many will seal their testimony with their blood, giving the word its meaning of martyr. By carrying the Gospel from Jerusalem to the nations, the Acts also fulfill what the prophets had glimpsed: Isaiah had announced that the light of God would extend to all the nations and that salvation would reach the ends of the earth; he had seen the peoples go up to Jerusalem to learn there the ways of the Lord. What the prophet contemplated from afar, the Church realizes: no longer the nations going up to a Temple of stone, but the Gospel going down to all nations. The mission is not an invention of the apostles, it is the design of God announced long before, at last unfolded.
From the Ascension to Pentecost
The book opens on the Ascension: the risen Christ, after forty days, is taken up to heaven, and two angels announce that he will return in the same way. Then the apostles, with Mary and the women, gather in the Upper Room and persevere in prayer, awaiting the promise. This waiting is fruitful: the Church does not launch into mission by its own strength, it first awaits the gift from on high. Nine days of prayer, and on the tenth, the Spirit descends. The whole book will be born of this moment when a handful of fearful disciples, shut in by fear, will be transformed into fearless witnesses. The first Christian community stands there, in prayer, on the threshold of its birth. A first gesture marks this beginning: the Eleven choose Matthias to replace Judas, so as to be twelve again. This number is not trivial; it answers to the twelve tribes of Israel, and it says that the newborn Church is the true people of God, the renewed Israel the prophets hoped for. Even before receiving the Spirit, the community reconstitutes itself according to the ancient figure, showing that Christ founded not a new sect, but fulfilled and gathered the people of the promises.