The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)
Day 333: Peter Is Rescued from Prison (2024)
Thu, 28 Nov 2024
Today begins with Acts 12 and the miraculous rescue of Peter from prison by an angel. Reflecting on this story, Fr. Mike helps us grapple with the mysterious reality that we are each called to say "Yes" to God’s destination for us, even when we might not know the way. Lastly, Fr. Mike delves into St. Paul's hard teachings to the Corinthians on sexuality morality and excommunication. Today's readings are Acts 12, 1 Corinthians 5-6, and Proverbs 28:1-3. For the complete reading plan, visit ascensionpress.com/bibleinayear. Please note: The Bible contains adult themes that may not be suitable for children - parental discretion is advised.
Chapter 1: What is the significance of Day 333 in the Bible in a Year podcast?
Using the Great Adventure Bible timeline, we'll read all the way from Genesis to Revelation, discovering how the story of salvation unfolds and how we fit into that story today. It is day 333. That's triple three. The number, a holy number. It's the number of the Trinity three times. It's incredible. It's a 333.
Not only that, it is the last day on the last second, the last page of the Bible in your reading plan. We're reading today Acts of the Apostles, chapter 12, as well as St. Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, chapter five and six and Proverbs chapter 28, verses one through three. As always, the Bible translation I'm reading from is the Revised Standard Version, Second Catholic Edition.
I'm using the Great Adventure Bible from Ascension. If you want to download your own Bible in a year reading plan, you can visit ascensionpress.com slash Bible in a year. And you would also be able to check off the last day on the second to last page and realize you only have, I don't know, three quarters of a page left and it would be, you would feel accomplished.
You probably, hopefully you feel accomplished and actually legit. Like hopefully you feel accomplished because this is incredible. This day, three 33. That means that for 333 days, whether they were consecutive days or not, it doesn't matter. The fact is you made it to this point, and that is remarkable. You can also subscribe to this podcast if you'd like.
You don't have to, but you're invited to on day 333. That's how we do it. It is day 333, reading Acts of the Apostles, chapter 12, St. Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 5 and 6, and Proverbs chapter 28, verses 1 through 3. The Acts of the Apostles, chapter 12. James killed and Peter imprisoned by Herod.
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Chapter 2: What events led to Peter's imprisonment?
About that time, Herod the king laid violent hands upon some who belonged to the church. He killed James, the brother of John, with the sword. And when he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter also. This was during the Days of Unleavened Bread.
And when he had seized him, he put him in prison and delivered him to four squads of soldiers to guard him, intending after the Passover to bring him out to the people. So Peter was kept in prison, but earnest prayer for him was being made to God by the church. An angel rescues Peter from prison.
That very night, when Herod was about to bring him out, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers bound with two chains, and sentries before the door were guarding the prison. And behold, an angel of the Lord appeared, and a light shone in the cell, and he struck Peter on the side and woke him, saying, Get up quickly. And the chains fell off his hands.
And the angel said to him, Dress yourself and put on your sandals. And he did so. And he said to him, Wrap your cloak around you and follow me. And he went out and followed him. He did not know that what was done by the angel was real, but thought he was seeing a vision. When they had passed the first and the second guard, they came to the iron gate leading into the city.
Chapter 3: How was Peter rescued from prison?
It opened to them of its own accord, and they went out and passed on through one street, and immediately the angel left him. And Peter came to himself and said, Now I am sure that the Lord has sent his angel and rescued me from the hand of Herod and from all that the Jewish people were expecting.
When he realized this, he went to the house of Mary, the mother of John, whose other name was Mark, where many were gathered together and were praying. And when he knocked at the door of the gateway, a maid named Rhoda came to answer. Recognizing Peter's voice in her joy, she did not open the gate, but ran in and told that Peter was standing at the gate. They said to her, You are mad.
But she insisted that it was so. They said, It is his angel. But Peter continued knocking, and when they opened, they saw him and were amazed. But motioning to them with his hand to be silent, he described to them how the Lord had brought him out of the prison. And he said, Tell this to James and to the brethren. Then he departed and went to another place.
Now when day came, there was no small stir among the soldiers over what had become of Peter. And when Herod had sought for him and could not find him, he examined the sentries and ordered that they should be put to death. Then he went down from Judea to Caesarea and remained there.
The Death of Herod Now Herod was angry with the people of Tyre and Sidon, and they came to him in a body, and having persuaded Blastus, the king's chamberlain, they asked for peace, because their country depended on the king's country for food. On an appointed day, Herod put on his royal robes, took his seat upon the throne, and made an oration to them.
And the people shouted, The voice of a god, and not of man! Immediately, an angel of the Lord struck him because he did not give God the glory, and he was eaten by worms and died. But the word of God grew and multiplied, and Barnabas and Saul returned from Jerusalem when they had fulfilled their mission, bringing with them John, whose other name was Mark.
St. Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians Chapter 5 Sexual Immorality Defiles the Church
It is actually reported that there is immorality among you, and of a kind that is not found even among pagans. For a man is living with his father's wife, and you are arrogant. Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you. For though absent in body, I am present in spirit.
And as if present, I have already pronounced judgment in the name of the Lord Jesus on the man who has done such a thing. When you are assembled and my spirit is present with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. Your boasting is not good.
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Chapter 4: What teachings does St. Paul share about immorality?
The wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion. When a land transgresses, it has many rulers, but with men of understanding and knowledge, its stability will long continue. A poor man who oppresses the poor is a beating rain that leaves no food.
Father in heaven, we give you praise. We thank you so much.
Thank you, Lord, for calling us. Thank you not only for calling us to yourself. Thank you for calling us to repentance. Thank you for calling us away from our sins and back to you, back to your heart, back to your love, back to your will. Lord God, we so easily, so easily, we walk, we go astray so easily. We can run from you. And not only that, we can even justify our running from you.
Help us to never, ever run from you. Help us to never give in to our base desires, never give in to our inclination or temptation to sin, but help us in every way to say yes to you, to say yes to your will, to say yes to your call to us to repent, to turn away from what kills us and turn towards you who gives us life. In Jesus' name we pray.
Amen.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. So while the Acts of the Apostles, we have James, the brother of John, who was killed by Herod. In this one chapter, in chapter 12, we have this story about how, on one hand, an apostle, James, is killed by Herod, and another apostle, Peter, is rescued by the Lord from Herod.
It brings up the question of, wow, God miraculously delivered Peter from prison, why didn't he miraculously deliver James from being beheaded? And this can become one of the, again, an incredible weight, incredible question, an incredible unanswered question, a mystery, capital M mystery.
When we look at the world and we say, okay, Lord, this, I just, you, you spared my life here, but ah, this person I love, the person I know about, maybe someone I never even met, but I heard about, they weren't spared. Why, Lord? And we can be so conflicted by this question that ultimately the answer we don't know. other than we are called to trust the Lord.
James, in the last moments of his life, trusted in the Lord. Peter, as he was lying down, believing these to be the last moments of his life, trusted in the Lord. We don't know the way to the destination. We only know the destination. The destination is God himself. The destination, the end of the journey is him. The point of the journey is him. Again, the destination is life with him forever.
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Chapter 5: What does St. Paul say about lawsuits among believers?
And sometimes, just like we saw today in chapter 12 of the Acts of the Apostles, sometimes the way to the destination immediately is that death, that suffering, that pain. And sometimes it's a miracle, being part of a miracle like St. Peter was. The only thing we get to do is we get to say yes to that. We get to say, okay, Lord, whatever it is, we trust in you.
So that was chapter 12 of the Acts of the Apostles. We also had chapters five and six of 1 Corinthians, which hopefully is challenging for us. So I mentioned yesterday how to live like a Corinthian was basically to say that someone was living a broken life. We'll say it like that. living a broken life when it came to morality.
As we noted that things were gonna get bad, I think it's PG-13 to be able to say that here is a believer who's living with his father's wife. Yeah, and so basically his stepmother, essentially. And the problem that St. Paul has here is he's saying, this kind of behavior doesn't even happen among pagans, much less here as Christians. Now, here's an interesting thing.
You could say, well, where did Jesus say don't do that? And yet we know that we are not to do that.
Not only does the Old Testament allude to this, but we also recognize that sexual morality doesn't necessarily, you know, the teachings of the Lord and teachings of the Bible and teachings of the church don't always specify every possible deviation or every possible, for lack of a better term, perversion or misuse of the sexual function doesn't do that because we're really creative as human beings and we can distort good things all of the time.
But what St. Paul is saying is I'm basically heartbroken and also somewhat horrified by the fact that here is this person among you who claims to be a believer who is publicly living in a way that goes against what we believe. And you guys are fine with it. And in fact, he even says you're arrogant. You boast of this. Are you not rather to mourn?
This is one of those things that happens a lot, right? So there could be public people who are clearly violating the laws of God, clearly violating the laws of the church. They're claiming to be Christians. They're claiming to be Catholics. And here is St. Paul. He would have no time for that, just like he has no time for that right here. What his remedy is, he says, deliver him to Satan.
I'm telling you this. When you're assembled, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of his flesh. Now, this is not kicking him out. This is the source of what we call excommunication. Excommunication is that you're no longer in communion with us. Therefore, you need to realize that your actions have placed you outside the relationship of the church. It's really interesting.
Excommunication doesn't do something other than it just simply recognizes something. What I mean by that is here, if you remember the old Flintstones opening where at one point Fred Flintstone takes Dino, Dino, the dinosaur dog thing they have, and like sticks him outside, puts him down, shuts the door. Sometimes we can think if that image strikes you as, oh, I have that memory.
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Chapter 6: How can we glorify God in our bodies?
The church, therefore, is to say, we're declaring, we're pointing out to you, this is where you're standing. Therefore, you are not in communion with us. Therefore, you can't receive communion. That's part of the whole thing, that you can't receive communion because you're not in communion with us, because you're standing outside the family. You're standing outside the community.
And by pointing this out, the idea here is, as St. Paul even says, deliver him to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. The idea being that he realizes he's outside and he comes back in. He realizes, I need to repent of my ways because right now, people just tolerating this doesn't call him to conversion in any way, shape or form.
And unfortunately that this thing that happened in first Corinthians is still happening. It's happened for the last 2000 years. And the church has had to exercise this power of excommunication has had to exercise this power of being able to say, okay, you're claiming to be one of us. You're not living like us. Um, So we have to point this out. And you're not repenting.
I mean, obviously, every one of us sins, every single one of us sins. That's a different thing. You know this if you're a Catholic, that if we have serious sin, grave sin, mortal sin, we have to go to confession before we receive communion. I mean, we have to repent of our sins before we receive communion. That's not the same thing as excommunication.
But we do have to be reconciled first before we receive communion, or else that's another sin. So there's that reality, of course, that every one of us sins, but this is, St. Paul's talking about, this is a public sin. This isn't just some kind of, no one really knew about this, whatever he was, any kind of sin that'd be more private, I guess, more unknown.
This one is completely known because of that, because it's so public. Um, for the sake of the community and for the sake of this man's soul, he has to be excommunicated in order for him to realize this and bring back. Okay. Hopefully he got the cut, all that. Um, yeah, you know, here we go. But going on to say, St. Paul points out.
That I wrote you to not associate with immoral people, immoral men, he says, but he doesn't mean the immoral of the world because he's like, because then you won't be able to associate with anybody. But I'm talking about those brothers and sisters here in the community who are acting and living in this particular way. Treat them as you would treat an outsider.
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Chapter 7: What is the importance of repentance in our spiritual journey?
And this is really, really important. Again, I don't know how to do this exactly in my daily life, but I think part of what it means is allowing the Holy Spirit to convict us of our sins and allowing fraternal correction, right? This fraternal correction of when a brother comes to me or sister comes to me and says, listen, I see what you're doing.
I see where you're standing and calls me to repentance. I have to listen to them. And maybe I have to do that to others as well. because we can't live this kind of divided life. In chapter six, St. Paul talks about lawsuits.
Then here are Christians treating each other like they're strangers, treating each other like they're enemies and bringing each other to task, to court, and says that's a disgrace. It's a disgrace that Christians would turn against Christians and actually sue each other, which is remarkable. Later on in that same chapter, he says the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God.
And he makes it very, very clear that here's a list of sins. Here's a list of ways in which people can sin that will separate them from God. And some of them are distant from us. Some of them are very close to us.
So idolaters and adulterers, again, living outside of marriage, nor homosexuals or homosexual actions, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, no robbers will inherit the kingdom of God. Now, in that list, we can say, well, I don't do all those things. And St. Paul didn't say you have to do all of them. It's even one of them, right?
That sense of like, I don't deal, I'm not an adulterer. Okay, but have I stolen? Well, I'm not a thief. Well, okay, do I get drunk regularly? You know, that sense of we can sometimes excuse ourselves and make ourselves the exception. But there is this list of sins that can separate a person from the Lord and keep them from eternal life with him. This is a word of God list.
So we need to pay attention to every single word of God. Now here's the great news. St. Paul says to them, and such were some of you, all this whole list, immoral, idolaters, adulterers, homosexuals, thieves, greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers, This is what some of you were. But he goes on. This is so good, you guys. This is the great news. But you were washed. You were sanctified.
You were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the spirit of our God. This is every one of us is broken. Every one of us is broken. No one is an exception. And every one of us is loved. None of us is an exception. Therefore, all of us have to let go of whatever sin it is. I've always felt this way. It doesn't matter.
I have to let go of this sin and turn to the Lord Jesus because he desires you and he desires me to let go of our sins, to turn to him in repentance, a spirit of sorrow and a spirit of trust in him and let him redeem us. As he says at the very end of this chapter is incredible. You are not your own. Someone says, well, this is my, again, I've always felt like this. I've always done this.
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