4th week in Easter Time, Friday – 26th April 2024 – Acts 13,26-33; Jn 14,1-6
Fulfillment of Promises
The first reading records one of Paul’s most important sermons, demonstrating Jesus as the Messiah. He summarizes the paschal mysteries of Jesus’s suffering, death and resurrection as fulfillment of salvation history. Paul shows how these events fulfill the Hebrew Scriptures and reveal the close relationship between Jesus and His Father. He makes it clear that the inhabitants and the leaders of Jerusalem failed to recognize the true identity of Jesus as the expected Messiah and as the promised Son of David. In doing what they did, they were only fulfilling the well-known words of the Old Testament Prophets. Paul emphasizes that it is the expected fulfilment of everything that was prophesied. Jesus is the expected climax to the history of God’s people. God fulfills his promises to Abraham and his promise to David by raising up Jesus. Because the risen Jesus is an eternally living son of David, whose reign will never end, he unconditionally fulfills the promise that David’s throne will stand forever (2 Sam 7,13). By his resurrection, Christ was enthroned as Messiah, and from then on, his human nature enjoyed all the privileges of the Son of God.
