"WE ARE WITNESSES"

The daily mass readings during the Easter Season retell every year the story of the early Church according to the Acts of the Apostles. And each year, as I listen to and read Luke's account of the first days of the spread of Christianity, I notice more and more one word that keeps recurring, especially in the many speeches given by Paul and Peter and others. These earliest preachers of the Gospel use this word to describe themselves so often that scholars consider this the first name that Christ's followers applied to themselves. The word is "witness." (The word doesn't appear on my list of labels for posts on this blog, but I imagine that I must have written one or two reflections on this topic already.)

My father, a lawyer, had shelves of books of various kinds at home. Right in the midst of the technical volumes, there was one whose title stood out: "So, You Are Going to Be A Witness."  I don't remembering ever opening it, but the title has stuck with me for over seventy years. And today it has taken on a pointed, personal meaning.

The original word for "witness" in the Greek is, as you may know, martus (plural martyroi)." Among the first followers of Christ the word very quickly took on the meaning that it has for us today:  a "martyr" was a "witness" who died for his or her faith in Christ. So the word had a much heavier weight when Peter or Paul preached "we are witnesses to all these things." Here is a list of just some uses of the word "witness": Luke 11:48, 24:48; Acts 1:8, 22; 2:32, 3:15, 5:32, 10:39, 41; 13:31; 22:15; 26:16)   

Besides the idea of "witnessing," a second important characteristic of the early church's remembrance oft he Easter story and of Jesus' appearances after the resurrection is the fact that each of those appearances ends with the believers being given a mission of some kind, from a simple task such as "Go and tell my brothers to go into Galilee (Mt. 28:10)," all the way to the great commission "Go, make disciples of all nations (Mt.28:19)."

The combination of the two ideas of being a witness and of being sent out on a mission summarize the baptismal commitment of every one of us Christians. and the title of that book, "So, You Are Going to Be A Witness," keeps me asking myself what kind of a witness I am being to the presence of the Risen Jesus to my brothers and sisters.

May the risen One teach you and me how to be great witnesses to the reality of His new life!