No Further Burden

Sixth Sunday of Easter

Council of Jerusalem

Reading: Acts 15:1-29

There’s a spiritual revolution underway in today’s first reading from Acts. To grasp the full impact, we need to know something about the first real theological crisis of the early Church. The issue was this: some Jewish Christians had started teaching that Gentile converts had to be circumcised—in other words, they had to submit fully to the Mosaic Law—before they could be baptized.

Now, the instinct was understandable. “If we had to live under these burdens, then so should they.” Equal treatment for all, right? Furthermore, coming from the lens of the Old Testament, it made a considerable amount of theological sense. Although these early believers had accepted Jesus as the Messiah, it was difficult for them to conceive of salvation apart from the Law, which had marked them out for generations as God’s elect.

But Peter and the other apostles, guided by the Holy Spirit, discerned something new. They came to see that the salvation accomplished by Christ had inaugurated the beginning of a new era, in which love, not the Law, would be the definitive sign of belonging God’s chosen people. And so, in a remarkable moment of clarity and courage, they declared to the Gentile churches: “It is the decision of the Holy Spirit and of us not to place on you any burden beyond these necessities…”

In that single sentence, they laid aside the heavy yoke of the Law and offered instead the light and gentle yoke of love. It’s not that the Law was abolished; it’s that it would no longer served as the condition for communion. And crucially, this was a decision of the hierarchical authority of the Church, who both recognized the theological reality and declared that it was so.

To borrow James Alison’s language, this is the moment when the Spirit revealed the Law to be, not abrogated, but moot, and the Church, catching up to the Spirit’s initiative, confirmed it by a definitive act.¹

I’m sure the relevance of this story is not lost to queer Catholics today. There are many in the Church who, like those early Judean Christians, still insist that LGBTQ+ Catholics must meet a higher standard than others to be considered faithful. That our lives must be celibate by default. That our love is categorically excluded. Even the possibility of blessing us as individuals is advanced by the Vatican only with footnotes, cautions, and preemptive clarifications.

Some in this theological camp protest: “We’re only asking you to live by the same standard we were taught.” But as with those early disciples, that appeal to fairness reveals a deeper misunderstanding. They have not yet realized that they too are free. They are no longer bound by a law that divides clean from unclean, worthy from unworthy.

And if they are free, then so are we.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus promises that the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, will come to teach us and remind us of all that Jesus Himself taught. This is the Spirit whom He promised would lead the Church “into all truth” (Jn 16:13)—not only the truths we’re ready for, but also, perhaps, the ones that unsettle us. The ones that stretch our understanding of holiness. The ones that redraw our maps of grace.

“Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our dwelling with them” (John 14:23).

This promise stopped me dead in my tracks when I read the Gospel this morning. It is a declaration of divine intimacy, offered to “whoever loves.” Full stop. Not whoever is celibate, or whoever fulfills the Law, or whoever conforms to the Church’s categories of moral purity—but to whoever loves me.

Crucially, this isn’t just a future promise or an abstract idea. It was the Spirit’s descent upon the Gentiles in Acts 10 that inspired the decision we read in Acts 15. When St. Peter witnessed the Spirit at work in people whom the Law considered categorically unclean, he didn’t respond, “Let’s circumcise them and get them up to speed on the Law.” No, his reaction was to repent and say, “God has shown me that I should call no one profane or unclean” (Acts 10:28).

The great lesson of this theological crisis is that the Spirit’s action comes first. The Church’s job is to catch up. It was the Holy Spirit who led the way, first and foremost, through the lives of people whom the Church did not yet know how to welcome. And the Church, through a process of discernment, came around to ratify and confirm what the Spirit had already revealed: that these people belong, just as they are.

What would it mean to read LGBTQ+ lives through that same lens? To see queer love, queer fidelity, queer joy and suffering, not as obstacles to holiness, but as the very places where the Spirit dwells and makes Christ known? What if we stopped looking for reasons to exclude and conditions to be met, and started looking for the fruits of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control—in the lives of LGBTQ+ people and their relationships?

Would we not, like Peter, be astounded?

I believe we are living in an Acts 15 moment. The Church is discerning whether it can finally say to its LGBTQ+ members: “It is the decision of the Holy Spirit and of us not to place on you any burden beyond these necessities.”

Now, I’m not naïve. I don’t expect to live to see any such declaration. The Church, after all, has the inertia of centuries to contend with; her decisions are not so nimble now as they were in the first century. It will not be easy, and change will not come quickly, but I am hopeful that it will come.

Because the Spirit has already been poured out upon our homes, our families, our communities, and the fruits of that Spirit are evident in our lives for anyone with eyes to see.

The Advocate is still teaching and reminding us of the truth, still unsettling our far too certain judgments, and the Word of God has taken root in places the Church has long refused to look.

Dear friends, we are not Gentiles waiting to be let in. We are already God’s beloved. Already filled with the Spirit. Already earthly dwelling places of the Blessed Trinity.

And maybe—just maybe—that means we have a mission. Not to fix the Church. Not to justify our existence. But simply, openly, faithfully, to live in such a way that the Spirit’s fruit is unmistakable in our lives. To be witnesses to grace in unexpected places.

Let the Church listen. Let it remember. Let the Spirit do its work.

And in the meantime, let’s rejoice.

Because God is with us. His Spirit is already here. And we belong.

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Reflection Questions:

1. Where have I seen the fruits of the Spirit in people or places the Church has struggled to affirm?

2. What “burdens” have I inherited or internalized that the Holy Spirit might be inviting me to set down?

3. How might I bear witness to the Spirit’s presence in my life, especially in ways that reveal love as the true law?

1. See “James Alison speaks on LGBTQ people, natural law and conscience,” Outreach, May 25, 2023.