Teaching with Authority

Gospel Reflection for April 27, 2023

Today’s first reading, Acts 8:26-40:

The angel of the Lord spoke to Philip,
"Get up and head south on the road
that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza, the desert route."
So he got up and set out.
Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch,
a court official of the Candace,
that is, the queen of the Ethiopians,
in charge of her entire treasury,
who had come to Jerusalem to worship, and was returning home.
Seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah.
The Spirit said to Philip,
"Go and join up with that chariot."
Philip ran up and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and said,
"Do you understand what you are reading?"
He replied,
"How can I, unless someone instructs me?"
So he invited Philip to get in and sit with him.
This was the Scripture passage he was reading:

Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter,
and as a lamb before its shearer is silent,
so he opened not his mouth.
In his humiliation justice was denied him.
Who will tell of his posterity?
For his life is taken from the earth.

Then the eunuch said to Philip in reply,
"I beg you, about whom is the prophet saying this?
About himself, or about someone else?"
Then Philip opened his mouth and, beginning with this Scripture passage,
he proclaimed Jesus to him.
As they traveled along the road
they came to some water,
and the eunuch said, "Look, there is water.
What is to prevent my being baptized?"
Then he ordered the chariot to stop,
and Philip and the eunuch both went down into the water,
and he baptized him.
When they came out of the water,
the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away,
and the eunuch saw him no more,
but continued on his way rejoicing.
Philip came to Azotus, and went about proclaiming the good news
to all the towns until he reached Caesarea.

As a convert to Catholicism, this passage is especially meaningful to me. You see, the tenants of Protestantism are “Sola fide” and “Sola scriptura”…. faith alone and the Bible alone. Protestantism holds that the sacraments are mere symbolism, Jesus did not found a Church to which He gave His authority to interpret Holy Scripture and teach on doctrine and morals, and that all that matters is faith. Martin Luther purposefully changed the very Word of God to “faith alone,” allying himself with the Father of Lies who would glibly site scripture to our Lord in the desert, twisting it to his own purpose.

Here, in the Bible, we find Holy Scripture refuting the very notion of sola scriptura. The idea that anyone can read the Bible and ascertain a valid interpretation of what is written has spawned thousands of Protestant denominations. Each of these churches disagree with the other…. and all with the Catholic Church. Yet, there is only one God who is eternal… the same yesterday and today, for whom a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like a day. God is unchanging. His truth is the only truth, and that is embodied in Jesus Christ, the Word of God. Again, there is only one Truth. All else is merely the opinion of flawed and fallen man. To only one Church did God confer His guarantee that “the gates of hell will not prevail against it.” He gave His church the command to teach and the power to bind and loose. Frankly, while we find much ecumenical agreement among our protestant brothers and sisters who honestly love God, only the Catholic Church that Jesus founded and guaranteed has the fullness of the truth and the authority to teach it.

"Do you understand what you are reading?"
He replied,
"How can I, unless someone instructs me?"

If I were protestant I would say that anyone who reads the Bible will be enlightened by the Holy Spirit, and all interpretations are valid… unless they disagree with my own interpretation. If I am protestant, and you disagree with me, you are an apostate and I am righteous. If we are Catholic, we trust in the Church that is named by the same Bible as the pillar and foundation of the truth. My opinion does not matter, nor does yours. We are children of God, instructed and guided by the priest whose authority comes from ordination by the Church whose popes and bishops we can trace back to the very Holy Apostles of Christ. We never need worry that the Church is wrong, because our Lord guaranteed it. If I find something in the Bible that differs according to my interpretation, I am not only wrong but in danger of hell, because to reject Catholic teaching is to deny the divinity of the very Jesus Christ who guaranteed His Church.

“A false interpretation of Scripture causes that the gospel of the Lord becomes the gospel of man, or, which is worse, of the devil.” ~ St. Jerome.