ACC ~ Acts 1 v12 - 14

OVERVIEW:

Recent commentators note first how Luke is careful to portray the disciples as still obedient to the law by his reference to the “sabbath day’s journey.” Again, the mention of Mary here at the beginning of the church recalls her presence at the beginning of Jesus’ life and ministry: she is the only one present from beginning to end, at the infancy, in Jesus’ public life and at the postresurrection gathering. We also meet here for the first time the notion that this group was of “one accord,” an expression that is found five other times in the book of Acts and only once elsewhere. Commentators also point to the number of times the community is described as gathered together for prayer, just as Jesus is recorded to have prayed. The list of apostles is given (minus Judas); “the women” are mentioned, as are Jesus’ brothers. Our two patristic witnesses, Bede and Arator, pay little attention to the historical sense of this passage. Both are fascinated by the “sabbath day’s journey.” That the sabbath referred to life in heaven is not an uncommon interpretation in the Fathers, and here we find Bede transfer the referent of sabbath from a historical day to a possible future state that one reaches through the week, the six days, of work. Arator traces the contradistinctions between Mary and Eve. While his main concern is this distinction between Eve, the mother of humankind, and Mary, the mother of God, the narrative frame hints at how the apostles’ return to Mary is, as it were, a return into the womb where the Savior was formed, in order to be reborn in a descent of the Spirit.

1:12 | They Returned to Jerusalem

A SABBATH DAY’S JOURNEY. BEDE: According to the historical sense, this indicates that the Mount of Olives was a thousand paces distant from the city of Jerusalem, for the law did not permit one to walk more than a thousand paces on the sabbath. According to the allegorical sense, however, anyone who becomes worthy of an interior vision of the glory of the Lord as he ascends to the Father, and of enrichment by the promise of the Holy Spirit, here enters the city of everlasting peace by a sabbath journey. There will be for him, in Isaiah’s words, “Sabbath after Sabbath,” because, having been free of wicked works here [in this life], he will be at rest there in heavenly recompense. On the other hand, anyone who in this world, as if during the period of the six [week] days, has neglected the working out of his salvation, showing scorn for that text of the Gospel [which says], “pray that your flight may not be in the winter, or on the Sabbath,” will at that time of everlasting rest be shut out from the boundaries of the blessed Jerusalem. COMMENTARY ON THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 1.12B.

1:14 | Devoted to Prayer

GROWING GREAT BY BRINGING FORTH GOD. ARATOR: They sought by a swift path, with which it was possible to go a mile on their sabbath, the well-known walls where Mary, the gateway of God, the virgin mother of her Creator, formed by her own son, was sitting at a religious gathering. The second virgin put to flight the woes of Eve’s crime; there is no harm done to the sex; she restored what the first took away. Let grief not raise up complaints or vex mourning hearts with groaning over the old law; these very forms of wickedness and crime rather cause delight at this bargain, and a better lot comes to the redeemed world from the fall. The person, not the nature [of a woman], caused ruin; in those days [of Eve] a pregnant woman [brought forth] peril. In these [of Mary] one grew great to bring forth God, the one begetting mortal things and the other bearing divine—she through whom the Mediator came forth into the world and carried actual flesh to the heavens. ON THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 1.